


Igor] NOMENCLATORIAL PRINCIPLES 185 
the author conceives that his #me, the ‘‘lack”’ of which alone per- 
mits him to launch so many waconsidered species, is of far greater 
importance than that of the scores of other botanists who must now 
spend weary hours trying to unravel the snarls he has produced ? 
An example or two may make our point more clear. The names 
Prenanthes Serpentaria and Nabalus Serpentarius have been essen- 
tially interchangeable in American floras,’ and the name in either 
case has been made to cover until recently two very different 
species. Inthe //ustrated Flora, however, Dr. Britton has revived 
Cassini’s Nadbalus trifoliolatus for a well-marked northern plant, and 
has left the name WV. Serpentarius to cover (as it should) the thick- 
leaved species of more southern range with the ‘‘involucre more or 
less bristly-hispid.” Torrey and Gray described Nadalus Fraseri, 
var. darbatus, with the ‘“involucre (12—15-flowered) hirsute when 
young with long purplish hairs,”’ and in the Synoptical Flora, Dr. 
Gray, writing at a time when the name Prenanthes Serpentaria 
covered the northern plant with usually glabrous involucre, pub- 
lished P. Serpentaria, var. barbata, with the remark that ‘occa- 
sionally a few of these setose hairs are found on the involucre 
of ordinary P. Serpentaria, and in this variety [darbata] some 
heads are almost destitute of them.’’ Now the original Torrey 
and Gray specimen of this variety is in no way different from 
the species, Mabalus Serpentarius, as correctly interpreted by Dr. 
Britton. Nevertheless, we have in Muhlenbergia (1:8) the 
new combination Mabulus barbatus (T. & G.) Heller, although in 
the Catalogue both N. Serpentarius and J. ¢rifoliolatus are listed. 
Again, Zlex verticillata, forma chrysocarpa, noted by Dr. Robin- 
son in Rhodora (2:106), appears in the new Catalogue as 
“(var.] chrysocarpa Robinson.” The original specimen in the 
Gray Herbarium has never been borrowed by the author of the 
Catalogue, and it is perhaps elevated by him to varietal rank 
through carelessness; but now that it is listed as a variety it will 
be interesting to see how soon it will be erected to a species by 
one who believes in calling ‘‘all plants species which have 
SIn this paper these names may be thus accepted without discussion as to 
their status. 
