PLATYSTEMON AND ITS ALLIES. 151 
Known to me only as figured and described in the Botan- 
ical Register, xxiii. t. 1954 as Platystigma lineare, the original 
of the plate having been grown in England in 1887, from 
seeds sent in the first instance from the Russian Colony, on 
what is now Russian River, in Sonoma Co., California. 
White-flowered and yellowish-flowered species occur; but 
none are yet known except this, the flowers of which are 
thus markedly two-colored; nor any with stamens making 
any approach to these in character. Yet, unless very local 
at first, and now become extinct, just this species will be 
found again, some day, at or near the original station; one 
which, I think, no botanist or collector has revisited during 
all the last sixty or seventy years. 
This species, here first defined, seems to have been the 
first of its genus ever cultivated and seen alive in Europe; 
for Douglas, the discoverer of the trae H. lineare, sent to his 
patrons no seeds of it, as Lindley informs us in the place 
ci 
Platystemon has hitherto been allowed to pass for a genus 
almost or altogether monotypical. The continued preva- 
lence of such a view, at least in recent years during which 
the known range of the genus has been vastly extended, 
and specimens in the herbaria have been multiplied twenty- 
fold, has been owing entirely to negligence on the part of 
botanists; negligence fostered by the old prejudice engen- 
dered by the dogmatism of two or three generations of tax- 
onomic “ authorities” who have said that there was but one 
Platystemon. 
Bentham, who founded the genus on plants derived from 
Monterey, although there is evidence that he had two pretty 
clear species in hand, was yet so sure there was but one, 
that he did not vouchsafe a specific character ; assuming 
