NOMENCLATURE OF THE FULLERS’ TEASEL. 
The Latin names extant and in use for the Fullers’ Teasel 
furnish illustration of the difficulty sometimes confronting 
the botanist who attempts to apply any arbitrary rule, or 
set of rules, for determining what binary name ought to be 
adopted as the right one for a given plant, and also to what 
author such name, when once settled upon, should be cred- 
ited. In most of the recent books, including the Index Ke- 
wensis, the new Check List of the plants of the eastern United 
States, the name of the plant in question is written Dipsacus 
fullonum, L., a name which finds no warrant upon any page 
of Linnzeus save as applied to a plant quite different from 
the Fullers’ Teasel. The type which that author called D. 
fullonum, almost every one since his day has called D. sil- 
vestris, at least until somewhat recently. 
Dipsacus fullonum, not of Linneus, but of most other 
authors, is rank and copious as a weed in waste lands about 
San Francisco Bay; and it was while endeavoring to give 
it a correct citation under that name in my Bay-Region 
Manual that I obiained some notion of the intricacy of its 
nomenclatorial history. It will be seen by reference to that 
work, that I found it necessary to attribute the name D. 
fullonum to Miller. In this I was following the usage of the 
most approved botanical authors of the last hundred years 
or more. And, inasmuch as Linneus applied the name D. 
fullonum primarily to what both before his day and since 
has been called D. silvestris, it is a falsification of the Lin- 
næan page to write * D. fullonum, L.," when the Fullers’ 
Teasel is meant. At the bottom of the difficulty lies the fact 
Prrronta, Vol. III, Part 13. Issued 1 May, 1896. 
o9 
T 
E 
d 
xe 
Ai 
h 
ion 
^X 
