[Crown Copyright Reserved. 
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW. 
BULLETIN 
OF 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. 
No. 5] [1920 
XXIHI.—A REVISION OF ISOPYRUM 
(RANUNCULACEAE) AND ITS NEARER ALLIES. 
J. R. Drummonp and J. Hurcurson. 
he genus Jsopyrum was established by the elder Linné in 1742 
(Genera Plantarum, ed. II. p. 245). The generic description may 
be rendered into English as pARnaes 
“ Calyz none. Petals five, ovate, equal, spreading, deciduous. 
Nectaries five, equal, tubular, very short, placed within the 
corolla: the mouth of each oblique, undivided. Stamens in- 
definite, shorter than the corolla; filaments capillary; anthers 
simple. Ovaries two, ovate; styles simple, as long as the ovary; 
stigmas obtuse, as long as the stamens. Fruit a pair of recurved. 
unilocular, crescent-shaped pods; seeds very many. 
A note is added: ‘‘ Hence neither of the ones Aquilegia nor 
of Helleborus, much less of Thalictrum. 
e above generic description does not fit the actual characters 
of any of the three species which its author subsequently assigned 
to his new genus (Species Plantarum, ed. 1753, vol. i. p. 557); 
and it appears to have been based on the accounts embodied in the 
works cited, and particularly on Boccone’s illustration of Isopy- 
rum thalictroides in which the ‘two legumes ’’ are inaccurately 
ure 
The character ‘‘ seeds very many ’’ obviously belongs to Tsopy- 
rum fumartotdes, described in Hortus Upsaliensis in 1747 
(p. oaks and the only apes a in the Linnean Her- 
fomariviten, Linn. — p. 157” in his Enumeratio Horti et 
Agri Gottingenensis, p. 97, remarking that it “‘ belongs, just as 
Trollius does, to Helleborus ’?:—but he omitted to point out the 
discrepancy which the Linnean pr si involved by its com- 
_ bining the ‘two legumes ’’ of Boccone’s plant with the “ many 
* seeded ’’ capsules of Amman’s age Ss in a single generic 
character, the ‘‘ legumes’’ in the European plant being at most. 
(979.) Wet, 135—P. 47. 1,000. 6/20. J.T. &S., Ltd. G, 14. Sch. 12. 
