58 RUDIiECKIA FULGIDA. ^BRILLIANT CONE-FLOWER. 



are now genera not far removed from Rudbcckia, which have the 

 receptacle as much and in some cases more conical than these. 



The conical receptacle must have attracted considerable atten- 

 tion from the first, for before the genus was named Riidbeckia 

 by Linnaeus it was described as Obeliscotheca by Sebastian Var- 

 iant, a French botanist, the name being from the Greek obelisk, 

 and thcca, a cell — the litde cell-like florets being arranged on the 

 obelisk or cone-like receptacle. But Linnaeus when he reformed 

 botanical nomenclature ruled that generic names, composed of 

 two distinct nouns, or of two words one of which is entire, if 

 ever allowed, were not to be imitated; and we can readily 

 understand why ObcliscotJieca s\\o\\\A be replaced; so in 1737 in 

 the "Genera Plantarum " of Linnaeus we find the genus dedi- 

 cated to the Rudbecks •' Olao patri, et olao filio " — Olaus the 

 father and Olaus the son — and not merely " from ^L Rudbeck, 

 a Swede, author of a Botanical work entitled 'Campos Elysius,'" 

 as one of our text-books tells us. These Rudbecks were the 

 predecessors in the Chair of Botany at Upsal in Sweden, and 

 there seems to be no special reason why their names should be 

 connected with these plants beyond the fact that Linnaeus had a 

 high regard for them. It is a distinctively American genus, 

 having no representatives in the Old World, and to us in these 

 days it may be allowable to regret that all plants of this charac- 

 ter did not commemorate the names of those in immediate con- 

 nection with the knowledge of American plants. 



Rudbcckia has many points of interest worthy of the student's 

 attention, which, though they can be observed more or less in 

 many other genera, are striking here. We may remember that 

 a flower head in Composites is as if a piece of wire were drawn 

 round in many coils ; and that if we could draw out this wire- 

 like coil, it would appear as any ordinary stem growth — say a 

 long willow branch, with a single flower in the axil of each leaf. 

 As we know in some plants the leaves remain almost unchanged 

 as bracts, and in other cases they arc wholly wanting, as is 

 generally the case in the cabbage tribe ; so in Composites the 



