Rial MERE Ei tea SATE NT Aa a, Ip ul lca er a A a ER a ea mr es A Ee yk a a 
RYDBERG: NOTES ON ROSACEAE 325 
collected in Chili and Peru, might have mislabeled the specimens. 
On the strength of this claim of Bitter’s, I have reluctantly adopted 
his name A. californica. Bitter distinguishes not less than five 
varieties of this species. Anyone who knows the variability of 
the plant can see only individual variation in these varieties. 
AGRIMONIA 
Mr. Bicknell* in his paper on Agrimonia states: Perhaps no 
one of our long-known plants has more effectually escaped a right 
understanding by botanists than the familiar Agrimony of the 
Eastern States, current in local floras and text-books as A grimonia 
Eupatoria L.”’ In fact, the genus as a whole was poorly understood 
here in America, before Mr. Bicknell took up the work on the 
same, and from the publication of his paper dates really our true 
conception of the species. It is strange, however, that this should 
have been the case, when Dr. Wallroth had presented a very good 
paper on the genus in 1842. It is true that most monographic 
work done in Europe on North American plants is rather poor 
and unreliable, and therefore we are liable to ignore such work 
done abroad. This might have been the reason why Wallroth’s 
species have not been adopted. The writer took up most of 
Wallroth’s names in the North American Flora. That Mr. 
Bicknell did not do so was unfortunate, as he will now not 
get the full credit for what his paper really was worth to us. 
The main reasons for his not taking up Wallroth’s names were 
the following: (1) at that time the unfortunate Madison 
amendments to the Rochester Code were in force making older 
varietal names supplant specific names; (2) at that time the 
Names proposed in Muhlenberg’s Catalogue were generally re- 
garded as properly published. Infact, most of them should be 
regarded as nomina nuda, for the adjectives added to these names 
evidently were not intended as descriptions, but as a part of the 
trivial or common name. If these two causes had not influenced 
Mr. Bicknell, I should not have had occasion to change his 
nomenclature except in one case, viz. Agrimonia striata Michx., 
which he had misunderstood. Even in this case, he was really not 
to blame. See below under that species. 
* Bull. Torrey Club 23: 508. 1896. 
