NOMENCLATURE. 353 



anist, in referring to this or any other plant, might cite any work 

 which describes it, or none at all. Ranunculus acris by itself, 

 as it happens, would lead to no ambiguity. Not so with many 

 names. For the accurate indication of the species, it is generally 

 needful, or highly convenient, to specify at least the name of 

 the author who first published the adopted appellation. So we 

 write Ranunculus acris, Linn., or L. , the abbreviated name of 

 Linnaeus. 1 Here we have the name of the plant, and the bibli- 

 ography reduced to its initial. To this, further citation and 

 other references may be added or not, as the particular case 

 requires. But, so far as citation or reference proceeds, it should 

 simply state the history correctly and clearly. 



721. When a species is said to be of Linnaeus or DeCandolle 

 or Bentham, it is simply meant that the adopted name of the 

 plant (consisting of the generic and specific parts together) was 

 first published by this author. Some other author ma}' have 

 named it differently, and even earlier. The earlier name may 

 have been discarded because the specific portion of it was un- 

 tenable, either on account of preoccupation or for other valid 

 reasons. Or the later author may have differed from the earlier 

 in his views, and have referred the plant to some other genus. 

 As instances of the first, Euphorbia nemoralis, DarL, is a good 

 species, first named by Darlington in his Flora Cestrica. But 

 the name of Euphorbia nemoralis had already been applied to 

 and was the recognized name of a different species of the south 

 of Europe. Whereupon, as the North American species had 

 no other trivial name, a new one had to be given to it ; and it 

 was named E. DarUngtonii, in honor of the discoverer and first 

 describer. The common Milkweed of Atlantic North America 

 was named by Linnaeus Asclepias Syriaca. As this plant is not 

 indigenous to 'any part of the Old World, and does not at all 

 inhabit S}Tia, this trivial name is not merely faulty but false ; 

 so it was changed by Decaisnc into A. Cornuti, in commemora- 

 tion of an ante-Linnaean botanist who collected it in Canada and 

 gave the first account and figure of it. As an instance of the 

 second, take the pretty little vernal plant Anemone thalictroides, 

 L., meaning an Anemone resembling a Thalictrum. When it 

 was seen that the essential characters were rather those of Tha- 

 lictrum, the plant was placed in the latter genus. This was first 

 done in Michaux's Flora ; and so the accepted name is Tlialictrum 



Candollc's Systcma Vegetabilium, and Sereno Watson's Bibliographical 

 Index to North American Botany, in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Col- 

 lections. 



1 For Abbreviations of Authors' Names, see 385. 



