1904 | CURRENT LITERATURE 153 
The honeysuckles. 
THE FOURTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT of the Missouri Botanical Gar- 
den, covering the year 1903, fully maintains the high standard of scientific 
excellence which has characterized this series of papers from the start. The 
report of the director contains much of interest in regard to the growth and 
usefulness of the various collections, their increase for some years past being 
graphically shown by a series of diagrams. 
The body of the report is devoted to a systematic treatment of the 
genus Lonicera by Mr. Alfred Rehder, of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard 
University. Although published under the modest title of a synopsis, this 
important paper is in reality a detailed monograph. It is true that specific 
descriptions, except in the case of newly characterized species, have been 
omitted in order to keep the paper within the limits of convenient publica- 
tion, but the unusually full keys present so completely the differential features 
that the lack of further descriptions will scarcely be felt. r. Rehder began 
his work on the genus at the Botanic Garden of the University of Gottingen 
and completed it at the Arnold Arboretum. During its progress he has been 
able to visit a great number of the larger herbaria, both of Europe and 
America, and to see living in the wild and under cultivation more than a 
third of the species of Lonicera. Without tending to a minute division, he 
recognizes as valid 154 species and subdivides many of them into more or less 
clearly marked varieties and forms. The citation of bibliography, synonymy, 
icones, exsiccatae, and ranges is marvelously detailed. The genus is divided 
into two subgenera, CHAMAECERASUS (including 131 species) with 2-flowered 
mostly pedunculate cymes and distinct leaves, and PERICLYMENUM (includ? 
ing 23 species) with 3-flowered sessile cymes, the upper leaves being usually 
connate. The first subgenus is again divided into four sections, namely, 
Tsoxylosteum Rehder with regular corollas; Istka DC. with labiate corollas, 
connate usually red- fruit, and solid branches; Coe/oxylosteum Rehder with 
labiate corollas, connate usually red fruit, and fistulose branches; and 
Nintooa DC. with labiate corollas and distinct usually black fruit. These 
sections are again subdivided into many subsections, mostly of the author’s 
own delimitation. Of the twenty American species recognized, only seven 
belong to the first great subgenus Chamaecerasus, and these are all of the 
section Isika, the remaining thirteen North American and Mexican species 
being of the subgenus Periclymenum. The author makes some thirteen new 
species (and specific combinations) chiefly of Asiatic plants, and also recog- 
nizes some thirty-five new varieties and forms. So far as America is con- 
cerned, the novelties are chiefly Mexican. Little change is made in the 
naming and specific delimitation of our North American species. Due atten- 
tion has been given to the numerous artificial hybrids, horticultural species, 
and forms of unknown habitat — the bane of the systematist. . Rehder’s 
paper is truly noteworthy, not only for its sound scholarship, but ie the equal 
personal familiarity with the plants of the two continents; indeed, it is prob- 
