65 
connection is suggested for Caryophyllaceae, Chenopodiaceae and 
other herbaceous apetalous dicotyledons. 
(7) While Hutchinson’s separation of Dicotyledons into two 
groups, woody and herbaceous, is not followed, in a number of 
other respects the Hutchinson system is accepted. 
(8) A large part of the Sympetalae are maintained as in the 
Engler system, but their multiple origin is indicated, approxi- 
mately as suggested by Wernham. 
Systematic botanists for practical purposes favor the mainte- 
nance of classification of large groups to which they are accus- 
tomed. “‘ Most systematists who are occupied with plant species, 
genera or families, floristically or by monographs, are also today 
in the first place diagnosticians,” writes Hubert Winkler in a 
ogenetic problems either not at 
— 
recent article, “ they encounter phy 
v7 
all or only within the groups under consideration.” 
Herbarium Research and Field Work 
By Henry K. SVENSSON 
Eleocharis 
The extensive paper on the sedge genus Eleocharis which was 
completed in 1939 and published as Brooklyn Botanic Garden 
Contributions No. 85 included a resumé, indexes, and maps and 
illustrations by Miss Purdy for approximately 150 species dis- 
tributed throughout the world, and it is particularly interesting as 
being one of the few botanical treatments of world-wide scope 
carried out in this country. Since the great concentration of this 
group of sedges is 1n the tropical and temperate regions of America, 
such a work could probably not have been carried out to approxt- 
mate completion by a worker in the Old World, where only small 
representations of American plants are available; on the other 
hand, since the majority of American species were described on 
the basis of fragments received in Europe in the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries, recourse has been necessary to nearly all of 
the large European institutions where specimens are preserved 
which are the foundation of present-day names. 
Interest in the world-wide distribution of Eleocharis, as men- 
