﻿522 Underwood : The ternate Species of Botrychium 



thus reduce the species of the world to a minimum, but it seems 

 the more logical course to recognize as species those groups 

 of forms that are so clearly marked that no one would question 

 them as distinct things, which though related sometimes rather 

 closely, are not mistakable for one another and cannot be consid- 

 ered as variations induced by age, or by climate or environment 

 acting on individuals recently alike. From any evolutionary stand- 

 point we must necessarily consider all related species as originally 

 springing from a common stock ; but when characters have be- 

 come so fixed as to be unmistakable, it is more simple, more con- 

 venient and more logical to recognize the groups of individuals 

 bearing them as species. 



The two species of Botrychium known to Linnaeus were in- 

 cluded in his generic aggregate Osmunda which appears to us the 

 more ridiculous because it contains plants which are now recog- 

 nized as belonging to no less than four distinct families, the Ophio- 

 glossaceae, the Osmundaceae, the Polypodiaceae, and the Schizae- 

 aceae. As compiled by Linnaeus in his Species Plantarum (1753), 

 Osmunda contained the following species : 0. zelandica, 0. Lu- 

 naria, O. virginiana, 0. phyllitidis, 0. hirta, 0. hirsuta, 0. adianti- 

 folia, O. vcrticillata, 0. cervina, 0. bipinnata, 0. filiculaefolia, O. 

 regalis, O. Claytoniana, 0. cinnamomea, 0. Struthiopteris, 0. Spi- 

 cani and O. crispa, species that are now scattered among the genera 

 Helminthostachys, Botrychium, Anemia, Acrostic hum, node a, Os- 

 munda, Blcchnum and Cryptogramma. Other species were added 

 to Osmunda by Thunberg, Cavanilles and Lamarck, so that the 

 latter recognized 30 species in his Encyclopedic Methodique of 

 which the volume containing this genus was published in the fourth 

 year of the Republic (1797), and the number was not increased 

 during the closing years of the century. In 1801 Swartz* cut off 

 from this group three of the Linnaean species 0. Lunaria, 0. vir- 

 giniana and 0. sey/andica, which together with O. temata Thunb. 

 and a species of his own making, formed his genus Botrychium. 

 He was none too soon for in the same issue of the same journal, 

 Bernhardi, unaware of Swartz' work and evidently not informed 

 by the editor o f the duplication, established the genus Struthiop- 



•Schroder's Journal fur die Botanik a» : no. i8ci. 



