SAFFORD: SO-CALLED UNONAS OF THE OLD WorLp 503 
Hooker and Thomson, in their Flora Indica (1853), described 
a genus of Annonaceae which they called Unona, taking Linnaeus’s 
name and ascribing the genus to him. Their genus, however, 
did not include his type, nor indeed any American species. In 
their revision of the Annonaceae they did most admirable work, 
arranging the genera according to the natural affinities of the 
plants and grouping them into tribes in the most logical manner. 
In their choice of generic names, however, they were most arbi- 
tary. The genus which they called Melodorum, for instance, 
excludes the previously established type of Loureiro’s genus 
Melodorwm (1790). Their genus was based upon a section of 
plants which Dunal had called Melodorum and in which he 
erroneously had included Loureiro’s Melodorum, together with 
Blume’s division Melodorae of the genus Uvaria (Fl. Jav. 1828). 
They had seen Melodorum fruticosum, the type of Loureiro’s 
genus, in the British Museum, and purposely excluded it from 
their genus of the same name. They had not ascertained its 
generic affinities, since they did not examine its flower; but they 
gave the comforting assurance that Loureiro’s two species of 
Melodorum “will probably both be found to belong to well-known 
genera”; and they explain their use of the name Melodorum for a 
distinct genus by saying: ‘At all events his [Loureiro’s] descrip- 
tions are not sufficient to identify the species nor to distinguish the 
genus; * it would therefore, we think, be manifestly unjust to Dunal 
and Blume not to retain their name.” 
In the same way the genus which they called Unona excludes all 
erican species, even the type of the younger Linnaeus’s genus 
Unona, though they cite Linnaeus as the author of the genus 
Which they call Unona. This they state is “entirely an Asiatic 
snus” (Hook, f. & Thoms. Fl. Ind. 131. 1855), and it has 
Continued to be regarded as such by subsequent writers, all of 
Whom cite Linnaeus f. as authority, and the type of the genus as 
Unona discreta, an American tree. This tree we know to be endemic 
the Dutch colony of Surinam, and we further know that it has 
slender, Virgate branches, privetlike, or willowlike, two-ranked, 
‘hort-petioled leaves, Annonaceous flowers, and aromatic purplish 
Sbitate carpels radiating from the receptacles. It is not difficult 
* . 
This Statement applies also to some of Linnaeus’s types. 
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