DATURAS SAITOED. 



543 



the Asiatic species, substituting for it Datura fastuosa, which was 

 first published as a specific name in the second edition of Species 

 Plantarum, and transferring the name Datura metel to an American 

 plant specifically distinct from the true Datura metel of Linnaeus. 10 

 Under the brief description in Hortus Cliff ortianus, above cited, 

 the first two references lead to the identification of the Stramonia, 

 or Pomum spinosainu described and figured by Bauhin with the Stra- 

 monia of Fuchsius and the Nux methel of Avicenna. Bauhin's fig- 

 ures agree with that of Fuchsius 

 (1542) in the form and surface of 

 the fruit, which bears very short and 

 thick spines, not subulate or needle- 

 like prickles ; indeed, his second illus- 

 tration (fig. 2) is a reduced copy of 

 Fuchsius's. It was not until after 

 the publication of the Hortus Clif- 

 fortianus (1737) that Rumphius 

 published his Herbarium Amboinense 

 containing the plate reproduced in 

 the accompanying illustration. ( Fig. 

 3.) Linnaeus is careful to cite this 

 plate, both in the tenth edition of his 

 Systema and the second edition of 

 Iris Species Plantarum, as an illustra- 

 tion of his Datura metel. In the 

 former work he publishes D.fastuosa 

 as the name of the second figure on 

 the plate, not as a numbered species, 

 but as a variety B ; in the latter work 

 he gives it specific rank, making it 

 differ from the typical D. metel in 

 having tuberculate instead of prickly 

 pericarps. Fortunately the figures 



themselves show that these differences are nominal, and one has 

 only to examine the fruits of the various forms of this East In- 

 dian Dhatura to be convinced of the variability of their tubercles 

 or prickles. (See plate 1.) That the white and purple forms 

 of the single or double flowered plants should all be referred to one 

 species by Linnaeus, is justified by the best modern authorities on 

 East Indian botany; but that the name D. fastuosa should be adopted 

 for the species and the previously established type (D. metel) reduced 



10 Spc Britton and Brown, Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada, and 

 the British Possessions, second edition, vol. 3, p. 170, 1913, where this name is applied to 

 a plant said to be a " native of tropical America." See also Gray's New Manual of 

 Botany, seventh edition, p. 717, where the same plant is declared to be " adventitious from 

 tropical America," 



Fig. 2. — Bauhin's figure of Datura 

 metel L., after Fuchsius (1542). 



