498 RYDBERG: NOTES ON ROSACEAE 
subjuga. My placing it with that species was done simply because 
both show a tendency to combining digitate and pinnate characters 
in the leaves. Dr. Simmons in the Flora of Ellesmereland, has 
rightly criticized me for so doing. The species was based upon 
Potentilla nivea pentaphylla Lehm., as represented by some of the 
specimens cited in Hooker's Flora Boreali-Americana. Unfor- 
tunately Dr. Lehmann did not propose the name in the work 
just mentioned, although he gave a description. His publication 
of the variety did not appear until 1850.* In the meantime, the 
name had been taken up by Turczaninow,t but whether for the 
same plant or not I can not tell. As the name pentaphylla was 
not available I used another name, P. quinquefolia, and it 
matters little what plant Turczaninow had, as P. quinquefolia 
applies to the North American plant characterized in my descrip- 
tion. In 1900 Mr. Morten Pedersen Porsild sent me a collection 
of Potentillas from Greenland. J undertook to determine them 
and also published a paper upon them in the Bulletin of the 
Torrey Botanical Club for March, 1901. Some of the work was 
hastily done and several corrections to that paper must be made. 
One of the mistakes made was that I regarded P. nivea subquinata 
Lange as identical with P. quinquefolia. Following the Madison 
amendments to the Rochester Code, I substituted the name P. 
subquinata (Lange) Rydb. for P. quinquefolia. P. nivea, as well 
as other 3-foliolate species, has occasionally some of the lower 
leaves 5-foliolate, but P. quinquefolia has them nearly always so. 
On account of this confusion, I have been severely criticized both 
by Dr. Simmons and by Dr. Wolf for regarding P. quinquefolia 
Rydb. as a distinct species. The former made the following re- 
marks: “‘there being not the slightest cause to look upon it as a 
species as Rydberg has done, probably because he has had no 
opportunity of studying the plant from nature.”’ If Dr. Simmons 
had taken a little trouble, he could have found that this statement 
was not exactly true, for in my monograph, I cited a specimen 
collected by myself in Montana, viz., Rydberg & Bessey 4397, and 
I had had opportunity to study it in the field. I have since 
collected it at two other stations, one in Colorado and one in Utah. 
¥*Delect. Sem. Hort. Hamb. 1850: 12. 1850. 
7Bull. Soc. Nat. Mosc. 14: 607. 1843. 
