18 GONTRIBUTIONS TO. WESTERN BOTANY NO, 15 



alwajs clean.^ Sli€( was all • business and spent no time on fonnalities 



^niipressed 



A person with a wonderful 



personality^ and not at all social. She discussed contemporary botanists 



frankness 



she had a 



marvelous keenness of botanical discrimination, and a perfect memory. I 

 never had the slightest fear that she would ever show anything but judi- 

 cial judgment on any botanical proposition, or she would ever be anything 

 but perfectly fair. Many times. I urged her to write out in fuU an 

 account of her botanical work before it wasi too late. Her reply was, 

 **'What does the world care for me?" Her death left her work an a 

 chaotic condition. She of all others was the best equipped to write a real 

 flora of California, and it was a calamity that she did not do it. The 

 brochure of Setchell on the Brandegees gives in an impersonal way a 

 review of ' their work, but I have felt that it needed the addition of a 

 per.^onal account which I have done so far as my acquaintance with them 

 r/arrnnted. 



Some eastern botanists got an idea that Mrs- Brandegee was a virago 

 because of "the way she handled Greene, but this was an erroneous idea- 

 Greene was a man who never had any personal frfends, his overweaning 

 opinion of himself, which he was always injecting into his conversation. 

 repelled people. He was a moral reprobate, a retired Episcopalian min- 

 ister, kicked out of the pulpit because of sexual vices, and a conscienceless 

 liar. The way Mrs. Brandegee handled Greene was perfect, and entirely 

 fr^e from any feminine bias. She knew him more intimately than others 

 because she was a student under him at the beginning, and a coworker. 



CRYPTANTHA BY PAYSON 



This po^'tlmmous work by this talented young man appears to be the 

 be.^t ever done by him. Though I do not agree with him at all in his 

 cono-ption of species, believing him too much of a hair-splitter, I recog- 

 nize his very conscientious work and the infinite pains he has used in 

 getting results. When it comes to splitting genera we have two concepts — 

 the Grayan and' the Brittonian. The latter has always been discredited 

 by its origin, which was institutional jealousy. However we find many 

 botanists who wholly or in part have gone over to the European idea, 

 which for descriptive purposes I prefer to call the Brittonian. Femald 

 decs not differ in effect from Britton; he is just as much of a hair-split- 

 ter. Robinson in his treatment of Mexican plants does not seem to vary 

 much either. To a collector in the field they are all tarred with the same 

 stick. Rose has Been for years fn the Brittonian camp. The prevailing 

 way at present is to make genera of any groups however small if those 

 sho^v no intrcgradation, but in effect this is not obsen-ed. To me the 

 Graynn concept is far more scfentific and desirable at least from the 

 K: _*::o!nt of ecology and gcnctici. I admit that there can be divergence 



