A STUDY OF RHUS GLABRA 1 7 1 



glabra that we must if possible segregate from the bundle of 

 species which bundle he so named, our task is one demanding 

 the very best skill of both the taxonomist and the historian. 



EARLY HISTORY. 



Prior to the discovery of America the Rhus of all botany was 

 a monotypic genus. It began and ended with Rhus carta)/ a, 

 also by some authors called Rhus obsoiu'oruui, a shrub of the 

 Mediterranean region, well known in the useful arts from im- 

 memorial ages. 



No second species of Rhus was known until as late as the year 

 1620, when Caspar Bauhin, publishing an illustrated quarto 

 containing names and descriptions of more than 600 new plants 

 from various parts of the world, brought to the notice of bot- 

 anists what he chose to name Sumach angustifolium} This 

 was known to have come from the New World, though in an 

 herbarium specimen only. Historically this is the earliest and 

 oldest element entering to the confused R. glabra Linn. Bauhin 

 himself in the year 1620 showed a preference for the Arabic 

 name Sumach, the exact equivalent of the Greek and Latin 

 Rhus ; but in his more comprehensive work of three years later, 

 the Pinax, as if having decided to use the Greek and Latin 

 rather than the Arabic name of the genus, he adopts Rhus, 

 renaming his new American species, Rhus augustifolia? 



At the time of its publication in 1620, and long afterwards, 

 the material on which it was founded was believed to have been 

 derived from some island off the coast of Brazil ; but a century 

 later, no further specimens of it having been received from any 

 part of South America, and because of its now having come 

 to be known as certainly North American, the idea of its being 

 indigenous to Brazil was abandoned. 



In so far as I have been able to examine early records, the 

 next mention of any American Rhus is in Banister's Catalogue 

 of Virginian Plants, published in the year 1688. That this was 

 some member of the group of R. glabra we are assured by his 

 note that the branches are glabrous. The one with soft hairy 



1 Prodromus Theatri Botanici, p. 15S. 

 2 Pinax Theatri Botanici, p. 414. 



