128 A note' on fragaria. 



This sufficiently disposes of Mr. Druce's attempt to replace 

 F. elatior Ehrhart by F. muricata L. But there is ample evidence 

 to show that, even apart from this, Linnaeus himself regarded his 

 muricata as an obscure plant. In the second edition of the Species 

 Plmitarum (p. 709) the descriptive phrase runs: " Fragaria caule 

 erecto suffruticoso, foliis hirsutis. f." This mark he thus explains 

 in the preface : " si ahquando contigerit uon sufficienter inspexisse 

 plantam, vel specimen imperfectum obtinuisse, signo t hoc notavi, ut 

 alii eandem accuratius examinent." Duchesne (/. c. 106) gives in 

 a footnote the following extract from a letter which he had received 

 from Linuffius : '^Fragarim miincatm tdini\m\\-m^QYT\in\xm. specimen 

 vidi in Herbario amici ; cum vero ejus sufficientes notas nulio modo 

 eruere poteram, hujus memini in Speciebus signo f adposito, quod 

 indicat me non rite vidisse plantam ; sed earn allegasse ut alii in- 

 citarentur in ejus examen et descriptiouem." 



A note on " the Plymouth Strawberry " may be added in passing. 

 When Duchesne wrote in 1766, he said '*il paroit ne pas avoir 

 aujourd'hui d'existence," and he owed his knowledge of it to a 

 fragment of a dried specimen sent him from Bologna. The writer 

 in the Gardeners' Chrunicle considered the last reference to its actual 

 occurrence in cultivation, prior to its rediscovery in 1887 in the 

 Edinburgh Botanic Garden (where it had been known for some years), 

 to be that in Eay's Historia Flantarum, i. 609 (1686) — " Canta- 

 brigiae in horto per aliquot annos colui." But in the Banksian 

 Herbarium there is a specimen which shows that the plant existed 

 in at least one garden in the eighteenth century. This was sent to 

 Jacquin (who transmitted it to Banks) by Marsili, who was long in 

 charge of the garden at Padua ; it bears the following note in 

 Marsili's hand: "Fragaria muricata, Duchesne, Hist, des Frais. 

 Mr. du-Chesne dans son histoire naturelle des Fraisiers, a Paris, 

 1766, 8°, se plaint que cette espece de Fraisier se soit perdue dans 

 touts les Jardins d'Europe; mais elle s'est heuresement [sic] 

 preservee par mes soius dans celui de Padoue." This must have 

 been written towards the end of the century. The fruiting speci- 

 men is a very good one, and shows the frilled calyx, "like unto a 

 double ruffe" and the "many small harmlesse prickles" on the 

 fruit, which Parkinson describes. 



To return to Mr. Druce's synonymy, it will be observed that he 

 adds to F. muricata a reference to Mill. Gard. Diet. ed. 8 (1768). It 

 is evident at a glance that Miller's plant and Linnaeus's are not 

 identical, for Miller cites as a synonym of his muricata, " Fragaria 

 fructu parvi pruni magnitudine" — a phrase which Linnaeus had 

 cited under his "var. saliva'' of F. vesca, and which Ehrhart him- 

 self cites, as he does also Miller's name, as representing his elatior. 



I cannot suggest what Mr. Druce intended by his reference to 

 " F. moschata et dioica Duchesne, p. 115." I find no such combina- 

 tion on the page quoted or elsewhere, nor is the name dioica 

 included in Duchesne's list of his plants. 



Although Linnaeus's muricata cannot replace F. elatior Ehrhart, 

 the latter must yield precedence to Duchesne's earlier F. moschata. 

 This was pointed out some years since by Decaisne (Jardin Fruitier, 



