THE GENUS MANETTIA. 



(TEOPICAL AMERICAN KUBIACE^.— X. 



continued from Journ. Bot. 1917, p. 285.) 

 By H. F. WEiiJfHAM, D.Sc, F.L.S. 



History. 



The genus Manettla was known so long ago as 1756 by Patrick 

 Browne, who described and figured the species now called M. Lygistum 

 Swartz in his Civil and Natural History of Jamaica, of which the 

 first edition bears that date. Browne described this as "Ltuistum 

 — -flexile f rut icosum,foliis ovatis oppositis, petiolis pedatis, racemis 

 alarihus.'''' His figure (t. 3. f. 2) is obviously that of a typical small- 

 flowered Manettia (section Lygistum, v. infra). In the second 

 edition of the same work, dated 1789 — when binomial nomenclature 

 was well-established — the same plant appears as JPetesia Lyyistum. 

 The last name originated in the meantime from Linnaeus, in the 

 tenth edition (1759) of his Systema Natures, p. 894, in which he 

 quotes Browne's t. 3. f. 2. Petesia was sunk subsequently into 

 Itoiideletia. 



In 1771 Mutis published Manettia, in Linnseus's Mantissa, p. 553, 

 basing the genus upon a Mexican plant, " an annual herb," which he 

 called M. reclinata {loc. cit. 558), identical, I think, with tlw plant 

 that Aublet discovered in Guiana and described four years later as 

 Nacihea coccinea (see inf)-a). Aublet, in 1775, in his Plantce Guia- 

 nenscs described and figured two species of a new Rubiaceous genus 

 Nacihea (Joe. cit. i. 95. t. 37. ff. 1, 2) ; his figures leave no doubt 

 that this genus is identical with Browne's Lygistum and Petesia. 

 Linnicus, however, in the 1779 edition of his Systema, records Petesia 

 Lygistum and Manettia reclinata as of separate generic rank. The 

 earliest recognition of the; identity of Manettia and Petesia is due to 

 Swartz, who pul)lished the name Manettia Lygistum as synonymous 

 with Petesia Lygistum, under the same genus with M. reclinata 

 Mutis, in his Prodromus, p. 37 (1788). In the following year, 1789, 

 Schreber recognized the identity of Manettia Mutis, and Nacihea 

 Aublet, in his edition of Linnieus's Genera Plantarum (i. 75) ; but 

 he introduced in the same work another name (ii. 790) Bellardia, 

 with separate generic description, which is none other than of a small- 

 flowered Manettia. 



Journal of Botany, Sept., 1918. [Slpplement.] h 



