NAMES NOMENCLATURE 



NAMES NOMENCLATURE 2101 



as early as 1753, Linnaeus, the great Swede, had 

 described a blackberry, which the traveler Kalm had 

 discovered in Canada, as Rubus canadensis, the "Cana- 

 dian rubus." In 1809, Willdenow, a Prussian systema- 

 tist, described Rubus inermis, from specimens growing 

 in the Botanic Garden at Berlin, said to have come 

 from America; and in 1822, Lank, also of Berlin, 

 described, under similar circumstances, a plant that he 

 called Rubus argutus. When American botanists began 

 to write books, in the early part of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, two well-marked species of blackberries were made 

 out, one a trailing plant or dewberry, and the other 

 an upright plant or high-bush blackberry. The descrip- 

 tions given by Linnaeus and Aiton were looked up and 

 compared: the Rubus canadensis of Linnaeus was 

 thought to designate the 

 dewberry, and the Rubus 

 villosus of Aiton the high- 

 bush blackberry. Since 

 there were only two wild 

 blackberries, the names 

 made by Willdenow and 

 Link must be mere dupli- 

 cates; and they were re- 

 garded as synonyms of 

 Rubus villosus, having no 

 standing in the manuals. 



Years passed. Botanists 

 found that the rubuses did 

 not match the descriptions 

 in the books and they 

 seemed to "run into each 

 other," so that they could 

 not be clearly separated or 

 told apart. Therefore they 

 were not carefully studied, 

 for it has been the history 

 of botany that the "best 

 defined" species have usu- 

 ally been collected most 

 freely, so completely have 

 we been dominated by the 

 old idea of the original en- 

 tity of species. But gradu- 

 ally the dried specimens 

 accumulated in the her- 

 baria. One by one the 

 puzzling genera were taken 

 up for study. Finally 

 Rubus had its turn. 



It was found that there 

 are several species of black- 

 berry-like plants growing 

 wild in the eastern states, 

 rather than two. Amongst 

 the rest was found a thorn- 

 less blackberry in the mountains of West Virginia, and 

 in 1891 it was named Rubus Millspaughii, in honor of 

 C. F. Millspaugh, its discoverer. Thereupon botanists 

 searched their herbaria, and sprigs of the plant were 

 found, under various names, representing collections 

 from Canada to Carolina. But there were still other 

 species than this, and it began to be seen that the bot- 

 any of American rubi is complex. This fact should 

 have been no surprise, for the European species of rubi 

 have long been known to be amongst the most puz- 

 zling of plants. What should be the names of these newly 

 understood species? Linnaeus and Aiton were con- 

 sulted, but their descriptions did not distinguish. The 

 type specimens must be seen. 



It seemed to fall to the writer to undertake the 

 inquiry. To see the two dried plants of Linnaeus and 

 Aiton did not seem worth a trip to Europe. Therefore 

 an artist near London was engaged to make a drawing 

 of Linnaeus' specimen in the rooms of the Linnsean 

 Society, in Picadilly, and of Alton's in the Natural 



2433. An herbarium sheet of a form (var. roribaccus) of 

 Rubus villosus. 



History Museum at South Kensington, London. These 

 pictures gave such unmistakable evidence that we had 

 misunderstood these old botanists, that it seemed 

 desirable not to publish the results until the specimens 

 had been examined. The picture of Linnaeus' plant 

 left little doubt as to the identity of the species that he 

 had, but that of Alton's was a puzzle, for it seemed to 

 represent clearly no American blackberry. 



In the Linnaean herbarium is the sheet of Rubus 

 canadensis (Fig. 2431), supposed for nearly a century 

 and a half to represent the common running dewberries 

 of the fields, but which was identified to be in reality the 

 Rubus Millspaughii of recent years. From the time that 

 Peter Kalm collected the plant in Canada before the 

 middle of the eighteenth century until 1891, this plant 

 had been overlooked. Now, 

 therefore, this thornless 

 blackberry must be known 

 as Rubus canadensis, and 

 the name Rubus Mill- 

 spaughii becomes a dupli- 

 cate or synonym having 

 historic and literary value, 

 but no longer to be used, 

 if the determination is cor- 

 rect, as the name of the 

 plant. In the meantime, 

 the common d ewberry , 

 erroneously known as 

 Rubus canadensis, is left 

 without a name. 



In the collections of 

 Aiton is his specimen of 

 Rubus villosus (Fig. 2432). 

 It is difficult to determine 

 just what this plant is, 

 because the specimen was 

 taken from the tip of a 

 strong verdurous shoot, and 

 therefore does not repre- 

 sent the usual form of any 

 blackberry as seen in her- 

 baria. It is, in fact, the tip 

 of a prostrate shoot of the 

 common dewberry, the 

 very plant to which we had 

 supposed Linnaeus gave the 

 name Rubus canadensis. 

 The dewberry (Fig. 2433), 

 therefore, must be called 

 Rubus villosus, notwith- 

 standing the fact that the 

 name itself is not specially 

 appropriate; but the tips of 

 strong shoots rarely men- 

 tioned in descriptions are 

 somewhat hairy. But a name is a name, not a descrip- 

 tion; and even though it is inappropriate as to the 

 attribute it seems to ascribe to a plant, it still serves 

 all the purposes of a designation. This unrepresenta- 

 tive specimen proved to be very puzzling; and a year 

 later it was re-examined; and in the collection at South 

 Kensington specimens were deposited of the tip growths 

 of the dewberry which are good counterparts of Aiton's 

 old type. 



The thornless blackberry and the dewberry were now 

 provided with names; but the common high-bush 

 blackberry of east-American fields, which we had been 

 accustomed to call Rubus villosus, was left nameless. 

 In the effort to find a name for the high-bush black- 

 berry, the Rubus names given by Willdenow and Link 

 must be accounted for. The descriptions made by 

 these authors are not sufficient positively to determine 

 the plants. The dried specimens themselves must be 

 seen in Berlin. Willdenow's name, Rubus inermis, sug- 

 gests that it may have been applied to the thornless 



