DATURAS SAFFOEP. 



545 



to a synonym, as in Trimen's Handbook of the Flora of Ceylon, is 

 inexcusable. 11 Still more surprising is the treatment of this species 

 by Nees von Esenbeck, who rebaptized the species D. alba, citing as 

 its type the very plate of Rumphius which Linnaeus cites as the 

 typical form of his D. metel 12 (fig. 3); while C. B. Clarke, in 

 Hooker's Flora of British India, not only ignores Linnaeus's refer- 

 ences above mentioned in connection with Datura metel but trans- 

 fers this specific name from the Asiatic metel-nut to a plant of 

 American origin and cites 

 as an illustration of the 

 species, not the figures 

 of Fuchsius, Bauhin, or 

 Rumphius, which fix Lin- 

 naeus^ species, but an 

 illustration in Curt is's 

 Botanical Magazine (see 

 fig. 4) of a plant grown 

 in London from seed of 

 American origin, 13 clear- 

 ly identical with Miller's 

 Datura innoxia, which 

 will be described below. 14 

 For the misunder- 

 standing of Linnaeus's 

 Datura metel, Dunal is 

 largely responsible. In 

 De Candolle's Prodro- 

 mus (vol. 13, pt. 1, pp. 

 541-544) the section of 

 the genus to which D. 

 metel belongs is treated 

 by this author in a most 

 unsatisfactory manner. 



tv t T • , Fig. 4. — Datura innoxia Miller. (See also pi. 3.) 



Disregarding Linnaeus's 



reference to the Stramonia of Johannes Bauhin (fig. 2) as the basis of 

 D. metel, and, indeed, not referring at all to its original publication in 

 the first edition of Species Plantarum, he describes as distinct species 

 the various forms originally regarded by Linnaeus as varieties of the 

 East Indian Dhatura, and still so regarded by botanists familiar with 

 East Indian botany; accepts Nees von Esenbeck's D. alba, substituted 

 for the previously described D. metel, and identified, like that species, 



11 Trimen, Handb. Fl. Ceyl., vol. 3, p. 238, 1895. 



12 Nees von Esenbeck in Trans. Linn. Soc, vol. 17, p. 73, 1834. 

 w Hooker, Fl. Br. Ind., 3, 243, 1885. 



11 Miller's Gardn. Diet., ed. 8, Datura No. 5, 1768. 



42803°— 22- 



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