A DISCUSSION OF POGONIA AND ITS ALLIES 

 IN THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 



WITH REFERENCES TO 

 EXTRA-LIMITAL GENERA AND SPECIES 



POGONIA taken in the broad sense is a group of rather 

 sharply defined subgenera. That these subgenera should be 

 raised to generic rank is, in the opinion of several authorities, 

 very desirable. Consequently a diversity of treatment of Pogonia 

 and its allies has resulted, not only in our local floras, but in more 

 comprehensive works that deal with the flora of the world. 



The present tendency is to make genera on rather narrower 

 lines than prevailed when Bentham and Hooker published their 

 Genera Plantarum, and to disregard the advantages that are of- 

 fered by the maintenance of that very conservative though ad- 

 mirable category known as the subgenus. The advocates of this 

 tendency use a variety of arguments to defend their practice, 

 one argument being that large genera are unwieldy and difficult 

 to monograph, and that careful cleavage along subgeneric lines 

 results in opportunities for comprehensive investigations that 

 will hasten the arrival of that taxonomic stability which, in the 

 final analysis, must rest on conscientious monographic work. 



Conservative systematists view with justifiable horror and dis- 

 tress the multiplication of synonyms that has attended recent 

 activities in species making, and in their opinion the likelihood 

 of an increase in this real evil is intensified by the difficulties that 

 usually arise when critical species, owing to uncertainties as to 

 their final resting-place, are passed from one genus to another. It 

 is admitted by the conservatives that synonyms are unavoidable, 

 but as they must always be with us it is argued that surely there 



is an advantage in the avoidance of generic synonyms by the 



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