VERNONIA NOVEBORACENSIS. IRON-WEED; FLAT-TOP. I 23 



zontal tendency, in which case a wliole strin;^ of flowers is 

 formed on the upper surface of each. It was this formation, 

 probably, which suggested the name of Flat-Toj). Iron-Weed, 

 however, is much more common, and will ])robably in-cvail in 

 the end. 



Botanically, our Vcrnonia Novcdoracaisis offers a good deal 

 of interest. Although the plant has been long known to bota- 

 nists, its name Vcrnouia is neverthelesG of comparatively modern 

 origin, having been given to the genus (in 1791) by Schrcbcr, 

 who was the editor of one of the editions of the works of Linnaeus. 

 It commemorates the labors of William Vernon, an English 

 botanist, who came to America in company with Krieg, a Ger- 

 man, and made collections, chiefly in Maryland, towards the end 

 of the seventeenth century. Vernon, however, is not specially 

 connected with this genus, so far as we know, and the honor 

 conferred on him by Schreber was simply intended as an ac- 

 knowledgment of the general services he had rendered to botany 

 in makino: his American collections. 



Linnaeus regarded our plant as a species of Serratula. Refer- 

 ring to this supposed relationship, Nuttall writes in 1827: " Re- 

 lated to the thistle, through the medium of the very proximate 

 genus Serratula, is that of Vcrnonia, peculiarly American. . . . 

 Besides the generic character derived from the calyx, which is 

 that of Serratula, the stigma, as in Liatris, is bifid; but the 

 most decided trait of Vernonia is in the existence of a double 

 pappus, the exterior short and chaffy in some degree, and the 

 interior capillary." The genus remarkably illustrates the prog- 

 ress which has been made in our knowledge of plants. When 

 Nuttall published his " Genera of North American Plants," 

 he took occasion to say that there were then ab(nit twenty spe- 

 cies of JWnonia known, and we have just seen that he looked 

 upon the genus as "peculiarly American." But only ten years 

 later, in 1836, when the genus was worked up for I)e Candolle's 

 " Prodromus," no less than two hundred and ninety species were 

 named and described, many of them being natives of all parts of 



