SEGREGATION OF GENERA IN 

 LENTIBULARIACEAE 



John Hendley Barnhart 



The New York Botanical Garden 



The true bladderworts seem to have been overlooked by the 

 earher botanists. All are small herbs; the European ones are 

 aquatics (a sadly neglected class of plants) ; and none are of the 

 slightest economic importance. Their discovery may be placed 

 with much definiteness in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, 

 for the species now. known as Utricularia vulgaris was described 

 and illustrated in the German edition of Lobel's herbal, in 1581, 

 although it was not mentioned in the Latin edition published 

 five years earlier, in 1576. It may be remarked in passing that 

 Lobel's crude wood-cut of 1581 is an excellent habit-sketch of the 

 plant; better, in fact, than any known to me in the numerous 

 elaborately illustrated works of the three following centuries. 

 Six years later, in 1587, was published the name Lentihularia of 

 Gesner, derived from .the lentil-like bladders overlooked by Lobel. 



During the next century and a half the genus received scant 

 attention. A second European species, now known as Utricularia 

 minor, was distinguished, and Linnaeus, at the end of this period, 

 in 1737, changed the name of the genus to Utricularia; but in 

 1753, when he first used uniformly binary names, he recognized 

 only seven species. These agreed in having two stamens, a 

 single pistil, a two-parted calyx, a gamopetalous corolla with a 

 palate and spur, a one-celled ovary and capsule, and a free-central 

 placenta. And from that day to this, nearly every botanical 

 taxonomist has referred to Utricularia all plants possessing the 

 characters just mentioned, no matter how diverse they might be 

 in other respects nor how incongruous the result. 



When I began to devote particular attention to this group of 

 plants, some years ago, it was soon manifest to me that their 

 classification was in the utmost confusion. Herbarium material 



39 ■ 



