﻿250 Farwell: Michigan Species of Poly 



A very careful study of these descriptions never should have per- 

 mitted any confusion as to the application of the names; if there 

 are but two species in North America, then the proper names for 

 them are Polygonatum puhescens (Willd.) Pursh, for the plant with 

 pubescent leaves, and P. biflorum Walt., for the plant with glabrous 

 leaves. Willdenow's plate illustrating the former (see Plate 12) 

 is excellent and is exactly matched by plants in Michigan. Both 

 C. biflora and C. canaliculata are described as having oblong 

 leaves and two-flowered peduncles; in the former the flowers are 

 described as yellow and in the latter as of the size and appearance of 

 those of C. Polygonatum, which are green and about seven lines in 

 length; the leaves in the former are said to be three-nerved but 

 Willdenow makes no mention of this feature; Kunth, however, in 

 his description of Willdenow's plant says the leaves are ovate- 

 oblong, about three inches long by sixteen or seventeen lines in 

 width and striately many-nerved. The two cannot therefore be 

 of the same species. Pursh described P. angustifolium with 

 elliptical-lanceolate leaves; Elliott described P. biflorum Walt, 

 likewise; in other respects these descriptions are essentially the 

 same as that of Walter's C. biflora, each quoting the latter as a 

 synonym. But an oblong leaf that is acute may be essentially 

 the same as a leaf that is elliptical-lanceolate, and these three names 

 and descriptions may, therefore, be considered as synonymous, 

 Elliott restoring Walter's specific name, which had been suppressed 

 by Pursh for one of his own coining. 



It seems scarcely possible by the widest stretch of the imagina- 

 tion to include, under the above description of Walter, the pubes- 

 cent-leaved plants with small greenish or greenish white flowers, 

 yet that is not only what Gray and subsequent authors have done 

 but they have finally come to make the latter form the principal 

 element of the species to which Walter's name has been applied 

 or rather misapplied. The confusion of these species was started 

 by Dr. Hooker, continued by Dr. Torrey, and finally completed 

 by Dr. Gray, when he ultimately and inexcusably transferred the 

 name of Walter from the species described by that author to an 

 entirely dififerent one and not of very close relationship. And this 

 interpretation has been blindly followed by subsequent authors 

 for nearly half a century. 



