124 
crop was caught by frost. It has produced flowers at Kew during 
six months of the year, viz., September, October, and from Feb- 
ruary to May. 
Smilax megalantha, C. H. Wright. (Liliaceae. | 
This species was originally described by Mr. Wright in the 
Kew Bulletin, 1895, p. 118, from material collected in Szechuen 
by Pratt, and on Mount Omei by Faber. Mr. E. H. Wilson found 
it in Western Hupeh in ravines north and south of Ichang in 
Rasch and December, 1907. From seeds (No. 661) collected by 
him and sent to Kew the following year from the Arnold Arbore- 
tum, plants were raised which have grown very well and are now 
established in the Bamboo Garden. Asa foliage plant it promises 
to be the finest of all the hardy smilaxes in cultivation. It isa 
promises to make a valuable addition to our rather scanty ever- 
green climbers. fs 
XIX.—SETARIA OR CHAETOCHLOA ? 
O. Srapr. 
In the year 1897 F. Lamson Scribner (in U.S. Dept. Agr. 
Div. Agrost. Bull. iv. 38) proposed the name Uhaetochloa tor the 
genus of grasses generally known as Setaria. The reasons for 
doing so were stated to be that “‘ the name Setarva .. . which 
has been taken up by many botanists for a number of well-known 
weedy grasses with dense, spike-like, bristly panicles, was first 
applied by Beauvois (in Oware and Benin) to a_ species of 
Pennisetum ’’, and secondly that ‘‘ at an earlier date the name 
was employed by Acharius to designate a genus of lichens.”’ 
When working out the genus Setaria (Gramineae) for the Flora 
of Tropical Africa I had to decide which of the two names should 
taken up, and for that purpose examine their history. 
It is quite true that the name Setaria was used for the first time 
by Acharius on p. 219 of his Lichenographiae Suecicae Prodromus 
(1798). But he proposed it to designate a ‘‘ Tripvs ”’ of the genus 
Lichen and not a distinct genus. At that date Acharius was still 
of opinion that the time for breaking up the Linnean genus Lichen 
into smaller genera had not yet come, as the organs of fructifica- 
tion on which a system of genera would have to be based were 
still unknown. “‘Sin exstierint hae fructificationis partes, haud 
_take his tribus for genera (“ quivis si placet, et validior ‘subest 
