COPAIBA 115 



Linnaeus (385), in 1762, gave Jacquin's plant the 

 name Copaifera officinalis. 



Until 1821 it was generally believed that Copaifera 

 officinalis was the only tree yielding copaiba; in this 

 year, however, Desfontaines, (189a), added two new 

 species, C. guianensis and C. Langsdorffii. At the same 

 time, Desfontaines changed the name of C. officinalis 

 to C. Jacquini, in honor of its discoverer. The fact 

 that Jacquin's plant was foreign to Brazil and yielded 

 a balsam of inferior quality would indicate that it could 

 not well have been the official balsam tree, while by 

 reason of the publication of Piso's account, Brazil had 

 been generally considered the geographical source of 

 the official balsam. However, the name C. officinalis, 

 L., has subsequently been upheld, although the official 

 copaiba balsam is now considered as being mainly de- 

 rived from C. Langsdorffii, the species named by Des- 

 fontaines in 1821 in honor of Mr. Langsdorff, the 

 Russian consul general at Rio Janeiro, from whom the 

 specimens were ob tamed. This name was erroneously 

 spelled "Lansdorffii" by Bentley and Trimen (57), who 

 thus perpetrated what was undoubtedly an error of 

 print in Desfontaines' original memoir. Soon there- 

 after the recorded species of copaiba increased rapidly. 

 In 1826 Hayne (305a) (Arzney Gewaechse), published 

 and described sixteen different species, which, however, 

 all bear resemblances, their distinctive features residing 

 mainly in the form and the arrangement of the leaves. 

 Hayne especially endeavors to place the species made 

 known by Piso, the difficulty being that this ancient 

 work stated that the wood is colored as if with minium. 

 The only species that, in the opinion of Hayne, would 



