22 THE JOURNAL OF BOTA>^Y 



other than an unusual extreme variation (or sport?) with subsessile 

 flowers of S. petrcemn Sm., i. e. oiJR. rubruinJanez. 1900. The name 

 S. s_picatitm must therefore be used for that species. The fact that 

 it is a " nomen infaustum " is not in modern nomenclature a valid 

 gi'ound for rejection. The corrected synonyms of the two species 

 is : — 



1. RiBES EUBKUM L. Sp. PL 200 (1753) excl. habitat; Kchb. Fl. 

 germ. exc. 562 (1832) et auct. jjlur. pro maxima parte; non Janc- 

 zewski nee Schneider. 



[H. V'ulgare Lam. Encycl. iii. 47 (1789) nomen abortivum ; 

 H. pendulum Salisb. Prodr. 355 (1796) nomen abortivum.] 



H. rubrum subsp. sllvestre var. Broii>Jieldianiiiii Syme, E. B. iv. 

 4-4 (1865) including- subsp. sativum, p. 42. 



R. doineaficiuii Jancz. in Compt. Kend. Acad. Paris, cxxx. 589 

 (1900). 



" E. rubrum coll." Hedlund in Bot. Not. (1901) 92. 



B. vulgare Schneider, III Handb. Laubholzk. i. 403 (1905); 

 Janczewski in Mem. Soc. Phys. Hist. Nat. Geneve, xxxv. 276 (1907) ; 

 Schinz in Vierteljahrschr. Naturf. Ges. Zm-ich, Iviii. 68 (1913). 



2. R. SPICATUM Robson emend, mihi ; li. spicatum Robson in 

 Trans. Linn. Soc. iii. 240, t. 21 (1797) ; Smith, E. B. 1. 1290 (1804) ; 

 lusus rarus, including R. petrctum Smith, E. B. t. 205 (1800) non 

 Wulfen. 



B. rnhnim, vav. puhescens [Swartz Summ. veg. Scand. 2 (1814) 

 nomen nudum] Hartman, Handb.' ed. 1, 112 (1820) ; ed. 3, 62 

 (1838). 



i?. riihriim subsp. silvestre var. Sniifhiauum Syme, op. cit. 44 

 (1865) including var. spicatum. 



'' R. piihescens coll." Hedlund, op. cit. 98 (1901). 



R. rubrum Janczewski, op. cit. 589 (1905) including R. litJntani- 

 cvm ; Schneider, op. cit. 403 (1905) ; Janczewski, op. cit. 287 (1907) ; 

 Linn. 1. c. solum quoad habitat. 



It should be pointed out that Hedlund seeks to distinguish 

 *' R. pubescens" from " R. Smidtianum'''' [sic]. Bui; Hartman, who 

 first describes 2)'"bescens (as a variety of rubrum) bases his plant on 

 Smith's R. petrcstim thus : " /3. pubescens : blad och blomklasar 



smfiludna, R. petrceitm Sm " Moreover, Hedlund erroneously 



refei's Syme's var. BromJieJdiavum to his R. jnthtscens, despite its 

 pendulous racemes. 



I have followed other workers in including garden })lants with 

 pendulous racemes in the same specits as the Avild ones. Many of 

 our cultivated plants- — including the Red Currant as Mr. Bun^-ard's 

 article so conclusively shows — are now known to be of mixed 

 parentage, arising by hybridisation between two or moi'e species. 

 it does not follow that garden jolants with most of the characters of 

 R. ruhriom var. silvestre {e.g. pendulous racemes, etc.) are merely 

 garden forms of the wild plant. They ma}' well be segregates from 

 liybridifation in which R. rubrum {vulgare) was one parent. The 

 garden plants on a natural classification are therefore " R. rubrum 

 var. sili^estre X R. .'ipicatum vel (et) x R. petreeum form'se segregatae." 

 R. rtibrum L. was to a great extent this. It would seem, therefore, 



