20 GREENE 



In the study of some species of Thalictrum I had need to consult a 

 certain page of the Species Plantarum. Reading his account of T. 

 fiavum, and next below it that of T. lucidum, his concluding note 

 regarding the species last named quite startled me. His Latin sen- 

 tence here, as in many another place, is highly figurative, quite after 

 the style of many a classic rhetorician and poet; and I read it again, 

 and very carefully, to see if the idea which the first reading conveyed 

 to my mind was quite that which the author meant to convey. There 

 could be no doubt. Putting it into plain English prose; making it 

 read as one would now write the same thought, his note on Thalictrum 

 lucidum is this: "The plant is possibly not so very distinct from T. 

 flavum. It seems to me to be the product of its environment. "^ 



As helping toward a full understanding of this pregnant remark 

 it must be said that the sy>q.c\q.s flavum inhabits the cool moist meadows 

 of northern Europe, while lucidum belongs to southern France and to 

 Spain. Each has then decidedly its own environment. Each was 

 known to be equally established as a permanent and indigenous plant 

 form. Linnaeus's reason for naxamg flavum as the parent and luci- 

 dum as the offspring, was a reason no better than this. T. flavum 

 was of his own northern country and he knew it well. T. lucidum was 

 a southerner, and he was less familiar with it; probably had never 

 seen it but in a northern garden. That was all. It was a thing far 

 enough from being amenable to his definition of a variety. It seemed 

 a species; yet he doubted that it was any more than a daughter species 

 to Thalictrum flavum. The one had been created a species in the 

 beginning, the other was probably not so old; more likely to have 

 come into existence away down among the more arid hills of Spain; 

 but it had come to stay. Rather many plant forms that had been 

 reckoned good species before Linnaeus and that are now again so 

 considered everywhere today, were with Linnasus mere varieties of 

 other species. But he declined so to treat Thalictrum lucidum. If 

 the relation between this denizen of the fervid South and his plant of 

 the frigid Scandinavian peninsula should be declared nothing more 

 than the relation between a specific type and its variation, botanists 

 would be asking how long before he would make an end of species 

 altogether. He was not himself convinced that it was a mere variety, 



* Planta, an satis distincta a T. flavo? videtur temporis filia. Species 

 Plantarum, i Ed., p. 547; 2 ed., p. 770. 



