50 OUR NATIVE FERNS AND THEIR ALLIES. 



nodulosa, the earliest name; Willdenow in establishing the 

 genus Struthiopteris in 1809 incorrectly stating as a fact that the 

 American plant was " eine noch nicht beschriebene aus Penn- 

 sylvanien," and not assigning it a name until 1810. 



127. Having thus fixed the specific name, what of the 

 generic ? The name Struthiopteris cannot be used for this plant, 

 for when Willdenow assigned it to this use it had been used 

 already twice before. In 1760 Scopoli used it for a genus of 

 which Osmunda spic ant was the type; Bernhardi used it again 

 in 1799* to include the species of the genus we now know as 

 Osmunda to separate them from the ill-assorted aggregate which 

 Linnaeus had brought together under this name. 



Struthiopteris must then stand for a genus which hitherto 

 has commonly been called Lomaria, and our ostrich-fern must 

 look farther for a name. Matteuccia, proposed by a Sicilian 

 botanist in 1866, appears to be the first tenable generic name, and 

 is here used in that sense. 



It will thus be seen that the question of the proper use 

 of botanical names is by no means a simple one. The botanical 

 literature of the world must be ransacked before stability can be 

 reached. An obscure local publication in the Italian language 

 on the plants of Sicily in this case furnishes the generic name 

 for a plant which grows in the northeastern United States ! 



1 28. After specific stability is settled comes the equally 

 interesting problem of generic stability which is still more diffi- 

 cult. This, however, involves principles that have never been 

 thoroughly discussed, and this subject will not be considered 

 here,t except to give a single illustration. 



In 1799 Bernhardi established a genus of plants under the 

 name Gymnopteris based on a single West Indian species which 

 Linnaeus first described as Pteris ritjfa, but afterwards referred 



* Bernhardi's orthography was Strut/iopteris, a fact that has led an over- 

 ardent nomenclaturist to abolish the genus Osmunda. 



t Those interested in this phase of the nomenclature question will find a 

 paper by the writer on " The Genera of Ferns established prior to 1832," in the 

 Memoirs of the Torrey Botanical Club, vi, 247-283, 1899. On the general 

 question of botanical nomenclature one of the best discussions of the subject 

 will be found in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, xxii, 308-329, 



