A FASCICLE OF NEW VIOLETS. 9 
V. RAFINESQUII. V. bicolor, Pursh, Fl. i. 175 (1814), and 
Nutt. Gen. 151 (1818), not of Gilibert (1781). V. arvensis, 
Mubl. Cat. 25 (1818), also Ell. Sk. 302, not of Murray (1770). 
V. tenella, Raf. Am. M. Mag. iv. 191 (1819), probably also of 
Muhl. 1. c. 26 (1818), but not of Poiret (1810). 
This is our only American representative of the Old World 
pansy group of violets; and it is not strange that the earlier 
generations of American botanists referred it to one or an- 
other of the segregates, in their day recently made, of the 
V. tricolor of Linnzeus. Rafinesque was probably the first 
to name our plant as a species distinct from all European 
violets. But of this we cannot be positive; for his V. tenella 
of 1808 is a name only, and cannot now be brought into use 
for any species. 
It is quite likely that Muhlenberg—who seems to have 
had for his V. arvensis a well-matured plant of the present 
species, and to have founded his V. tenella on the early ver- 
nal state of it—adopted the latter name from Rafinesque. 
Yet this author's V. tenella is also a nomen nudum. 
The first presentation of the plant to the publie under a 
new name and with a cited means of identification, was made 
by Rafinesque, as above indicated ; but inasmuch as the name 
tenella had then been in use for nine or ten. years to desig- 
nate a Syrian violet, I here dedicate the American species to 
him who was first to really publish it as new. 
V. vicrNALIS. V. insignis, Pollard in Bot. Gaz. xxvi. 334. 
An Austrian V. insignis, published by Richter in 1888, pre- 
cludes the acceptance of Mr. Pollard’s appellation for the 
plant of the Southern U.S. The figure on page 335 of the 
Gazette represents the type of the species; but a considerable 
part of the herbarium material which Mr. Pollard refers to 
it, I have long taken to be very fair V. septemloba; and the 
name vicinalis is doubly appropriate to a violet which is not 
only manifestly related to V. septemloba, but is of the same 
general habitat. 
Prrroxia, Vol. IV. Pages 9-16. 31 Jan., 1899. 
