94 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
BIGNONIACE. 
first noticed during the summer of 1846 by Dr. F. A. Wislizenus' near Sabina on the Rio Grande in 
New Mexico. 
The generic name, which is formed from yeiAog and éWus, is without special significance. 
The genus is represented by a single species. 
' Friedrich Adolph Wislizenus (1810-1889), the son of a Prot- 
estant minister, was born at Koenigsee in Schwarzburg-Rudol- 
stadt. He began the study of medicine in the University of Jena, 
and afterwards at Gottingen and Wiirzburg ; but having become 
interested in the visionary plans of the Burschenschaft, he joined in 
an unsuccessful attempt made at Hamburg to overthrow the mo- 
narchical government of Germany, and was obliged to escape to 
Switzerland. Wislizenus was graduated from the University of 
Zurich in 1834, visited the hospitals in Paris, and the next year be- 
gan the practice of medicine in New York. Two years later he 
settled in the small town of Mascoutah in Illinois, but soon tiring 
of the quiet life he went to St. Louis, and attached himself to one 
of the parties of the St. Louis Fur Company, with which he visited 
the Wind River Mountains. 
home, he joined a wandering band of Flat Head and Nez Percés 
Indians, and with them crossed the Rocky Mountains into the 
country of the Utes, returning to the east by the way of the Arkan- 
His companions being about to return 
sas. In 1846 Wislizenus joined a trading expedition to Mexico. 
News of the breaking out of hostilities between the United States 
and Mexico reached him at Santa Fé, but he continued his journey 
to Chihuahua, where he was imprisoned, and did not finally return 
to St. Louis until the end of the next year. An account of his 
Mexican journey was published by order of the Senate of the 
United States in 1844, with a botanical appendix by Dr. George 
Engelmann, in which are described the plants discovered by Wis- 
lizenus, including Pinus Chihuahuana, Pinus edulis, and several 
species of Opuntia and Cereus. The remainder of Dr. Wislizenus’s 
life was passed in St. Louis engaged in the practice of medicine, 
and active in the affairs of the St. Louis Academy of Science, of 
which he was one of the founders, of the St. Louis Medical Society, 
and of the German Medical Society, which for many years he 
served as president. Wislizenia, a genus established by his friend 
Engelmann to receive a New-Mexican herb, commemorates the 
name of its discoverer. 
