10> (TDNTRIBUTIONS TO WESTERN BOTANY NO. IS 



business does not loaf on the job, or be so hopelessly lacking in ecological 



knflwledge_ as he is. When we look at this last botanical abortion of 



Rydberg and compare it with his flora of Colorado, which covers the 



i^ame field, we shudder at what the next edition will be like. But where 



one gets his species from his imagination instead of nature there is no 

 otbjer result. possible.. ■ 



An illustration of the lengths to which he goes in species manufac- 

 ture is shown by his 50 species of Draba, where there may be 20 at the 

 farthest* He also makes 50 species of Arabis, w^hen it is doubtful if 

 tliere are over 20 valid species. In his treatment of Parrya he shows no 

 oJgmality, nor any proper conception of the real characters of the genus. 

 He^ still servilely foiiow^s Greene in keeping up Arabis graminea Grecxie, 

 w-fiich is not an Arabis at all but a Braya, Braya granininea. Jepscn 

 tjiows much more care and study in his recent Flora of California, where 

 he puts Gray's Draba eurycarpa in Parrya, where it w^ould seem to belong. 

 ^io field" botanist can ever agree with either Greene or Rydberg in their 

 treatment of species if he has any knowledge. For their treatment is sim- 

 ply whimsical. Rydberg does not yet seem to have discovered that there 

 13 a study called ecology. I am told that Rydberg's Flora of Colorado 

 was a case of botanical pirating, he having published, under his own 



name: 



tated. L hope this is not true, but there is a vast difference between the 

 tTAO publications accredited to Rydberg sufficient to account for dual 

 authorship: Rydberg has several times been roasted for unethical acts in 

 ihe past, and his neglect of acknowledgment of obligation to others, par- 

 tfcularly older botanists, is conspicuous. 



Taking up Thlaspi Rydberg shows his usual lack of morphological 

 mfomiation in making his keys, which he founds in part on the shape of 

 the pods at tip. The real shape of pods is determinable only in fully 

 ripe fruit, and much fruit is not fully ripe, therefore the seeming acuteness 

 of the pod is just a matter of immaturity. For example, he^credits T. 

 Californicum to Utah and Montana when there is no evidence that it is 

 found outside of the Sierra region if there. Then he founds glaucum and 

 purpurascens on the color of the sepals which amounts to nothin'r Nut- 

 tallir and Coloradense are on as trivial grounds. Parviflorum is°founded 

 en the small petals, a common character in all Cruciferae which is par- 

 ticularly evident in allied genera. I fail to see any character that will 

 fold in any of the proposed species. 



r r^— revising Lepidium we find accentuating trivial forms wjiich do not 

 hold in the field. For example there is no character given by anyone 

 that clearly distmguishes L. Virginicum, medium and Texanum, and 

 ruderale. Robinson tries to keep up a distinction on the accumbent and 

 incumbent cotyledons, petaled forms and incisions of leaves but in prac- 

 t^e we find a-petalous forms with accumbent octyledons, and with coty- 



