272 THE JOURNAL OF BOTAJsT 



name, and it is fatal to E. Lehmann's defence of V. Tournefortii 

 in his otherwise admirable paper on the agrestis group in Bull. 

 Herb. Boiss. 2nd ser. viii. (1908). 



V. jjersica Poir., which comes next in order of date, is not V.Jili- 

 formis, nor V. polita Fries as suggested by Lehmann, but can hardly 

 be anything else than Y. Btixhaumii. Nevertheless its identity 

 cannot be determined with absolute certainty until Poiret's original 

 type can be found and examined : so far this has not been done and 

 possibly the type no longer exists. V. persica therefore remains open 

 to the' accusation of being nomen duhium, and the employment of 

 Tenore's name, although the latest in date, is probably the safest 

 course to follow. 



Buxbaum in plate xl. of his Plantae minus cognitae, Cent. i. 

 (1727), shows two Veronicas of which he gives the old-style phrases 

 on pp. 25, 26. Figure 1 represents Y. filiformis Sm. in Trans. Linn. 

 Soc. i. p. 195 (1791), under the title of Yeronicn Orientalis^ Hederae 

 terrestris folio, fiore «/ic»Tourn. Cor., collected in Bithynia near the 

 Bosphorus and near Amasia. His quotation from Tournefort is not 

 exact : the precise phrase in Tourn. Cor. p. 7 (1719) is Yeronica 

 Orienfalis,foJiis Hederae terrestris^jiore magno. It is uncei-tain 

 whether the substitution of " albo"" for ''magno"" was intentional or 

 a slip of the pen. Smith calls the flower blue and Boissier (Fl. Or. 

 iv. 466) says " corolla caerulea." 



Figure 2 is that on which Tenore based his name of Buxhaumii. 

 It is called by Buxbaum himself Yeronica Jioscnlis ohJongis pedi- 

 cidis insidenfibiis, Chamaedryos folio, major, and was collected in 

 cornfields near Pera (Constantinople). The addition of the word 

 major shows an intention to distinguish the plant from Y. fosciilis 

 ohlongis pedicnlis insidentihiis, Chamaedryos folio oi Morison (Hist, 

 pt. 2, p. 322, tab. xxiv. no. 22 (1672)), quoted by Tournefort (Inst, 

 p. 145). Morison's plant has small corollas and is said to be found 

 everywhere in fields and at the foot of walls ; it is commonly referred 

 to Y. agrestis L. The ubiquity assigned to it at that date excludes 

 the possibility of Morison having had Y. Bucchatimii in view. 



This ]jlant has also been wronglv referred to Y. filiformis Sm. by 

 Savi (Bot. Etr. i. p. 15: 1808), DC. (FL Fr. Suppl. p. 388: 1815) 

 and others. It is confusion between Buxbaum's two plants that 

 makes Gmelin's name as well as that of Mertens and Koch unusable. 

 The difference between them was well known to Tenore who saj^s, 

 " The figure (2) of Buxbaum represents exactl}" this new species of 

 Yeronica, but it has not been recognised or described by any 

 botanist *. Yeronica filiformis, quite different from this, is placed 

 by its side in the plate of the aforesaid author, and is quoted by 

 Smith and by the Encyclopaedia." The distinction is clearh^ pointed 

 out in M.B. Fl. Taur. Cauc. iii. pp. 16, 17 (1819) andean be studied 

 in Boiss. Fl. Or. iv. p. 466. 



Gmelin's account of Y. Tovrnefortii is too ambiguous and con- 

 tradictory for it to be possible for anyone who has not preconceived 

 ideas to say what he really intended to describe. The very name 



* This is not quite correct, for Smith in Fl. Gr. had described the plant as a 

 variety of F. (ujredin, but A\ithout referring to Buxbaum's figure. 



