CONTRIBUTIONS TO WESTERN BOTANY NO. 15 *^15 



GREENE 



There have been several notable deaths in the botanical woHd 'since 

 my last Contributions. Greene, the pest of systematic botany, has^ gone 

 and relieved us from his botanical drivel. They say that the good that 

 men do' lives after them, but the evil is interred with their bones. I sus- 

 pect that his grave must have been a big one to hold it all. 



An illustration of the dishonesty of E. L. Greene is shown in liis 

 description of his new genus Disaccanthus on page 224 of Leaflets, pub- 

 li*ed in 1906, where he publishes Disaccanthus validus, based oii^ my 

 Streptanthus platycarps, collected in 1884. He first stated that it "war, 

 collected somewhere in western Texas" by me, when the label on the 

 only specimen he ever saw stated that it was got at El Paso. Then he 

 knew when he published his new name that the specimen was in fniit 

 with a few flowers, and so how did he know that it was not what T had 

 called ? Greene was first, last and all the time a botanical crook, and «n 

 unmitigated liar, when it suited him to try to make a point against some- 

 one else. ' He describes the pods as 4 lines wide and obtuse, when tliey 

 are 5mm. wide and very acute. The flowers are creamy-white, or pur- 

 ple, and with conspicuously oblanceolate petals. Then he dei=cril3es die 

 plants as stout, when they are slender. The root leaves are pmntrtely 

 divided. The flowers are inflated below and not in the middle. Hi'- 

 material on which he based his species was the only material that I ever 

 distributed as Streptanthus playcarpus, and the name should be S. camj- 

 patus. He also makes another name D. IMogollonicus out of stuff 6i his 

 own collecting, which seems to be the same, as is also his D. luteus. One 

 can have patience with a fool but not with a crook. S. carinatu^ is 

 described as having purple flowers. All my material "from that region 

 has purple or white flowers or cream-colored, the petals sometimes bem^- 

 purple, but there seems to be no other character, while we know fbe 

 flowers' of all the species vary from white to purple, but the angled tmd 



carinate calyx is characteristic. ^ •• -,* -i 



I got my material which Greene saw and used as his type m April, 

 1884, at El Paso, Texas, as is distinctly stated on tlie label. The actual 

 place of collection was just north of the city on the hills. My material 



fi*s Gray's 



Wright. 210) as to the color and shape 



type was described (PI. 



described. One thing Greene 



are not at all keeled, but the 



type 



decidedly so. He evidently got his names mixed, as S. caHnatus, wTiich 

 is also described in the same place, is given as having purple Howers. 

 My old material of this species, which I gathered at Rincon, New" Mexico, 

 April 30, 1884, and which I had also called S. platycarpus, 'ha*s the 

 characteristic flowers keeled conspicuously, "but yellow. 'My observation 



