134: pTTraNiA. 



HosacJi 



are not of that genus, but true Loti; and even that best type 



HosacJi 



" II. hicolor^'^ was first published, by Sir W. J. Hooker, as a 

 Lotus, 



The chief authority by virtue of whose opinion the genus 

 HosacJxia, first suggested by the collector Douglas, obtained 

 recognition and continuance, was Mr. Bentham. On what 



grounds the opinion was based we shall • notice presently. 

 Bat Amex'ican authority, receiving Hosackia as a genus, did 

 not follow Mr. Bentham's judgment of its proper limits, but 

 placed all which he had called American Lotus also under 

 Hosaclda' To any one knowing these plants as well as Br. 

 Gray knew them — and they are to-day much better known 

 than he knew them — there is but one alternative course to 

 pursue, and this is to remand the whole series of species to 

 the genus Lotus. Genera are not to be limited by geo- 

 graphical considerations alone; but ''Hosackia^^ as now 

 known is not otherwise distinguished from Lotus than as 

 being American. 



The American species, now numerous, are of four natural 

 groups. Lotus sericeus of Pursh is the type of the first of 

 these. It differs, as a group, from the Old World Loti in 

 general by having its stipules reduced to small blackish 

 gland-like organs. This is Rafinesque's genus Acmispon; 

 and Nuttall had it in manuscript as a genus to be called 

 Psychojjsis. Mr. Bentham, on first defining Hosackia trans- 

 ferred this Lotus to it ; but afterwards he restored it to the 



old genus in which Pursh had placed it at the beginning of 

 its history. 



With L, siibpinnatits, Lagasca, and its North American 

 allies, L. Wrangelianus F. & M. and Hosackia hrnchycarpa, 

 Benth, begins a series of species which have a dilated leaf- 

 rachis upon which the leaflets are somewhat unilaterally dis- 

 tributed, that is to say, they range themselves one or two on 

 one margin, two or three on the opposite, so that counting 

 all— the terminal with the rest, there is an even number of 



