E. Ii. EKMAN, WEST INDIAN VERNONI^. 7 



difficult, and that all, at last, will end in chaos. He would 

 be justified in describing liis forms as species, if he could 

 state that they are constant in the same manner as the micro- 

 -species of Alchemilla, Hieracium, and Taraxacum, where 

 apogamy is the basis of the Jordanismus. I do not mean, 

 of course, that all species described by Gleason are inferior 

 ones. On the contrar}', he has had the opportunity of de- 

 scribing some of the most striking of the West Indian species. 



What apogam\' is, for instance, for the parthenogenetic 

 species of Alchemilla, a geographical isolation may prove 

 to be for the West Indian Vernonise. I have myself distin- 

 guished V . anguiitisdma Wright mscr. from V. stenophylla 

 Less, in part owing to the fact that the former is a Cuban 

 plant, the latter a member of the flora of Hispaniola. And 

 another instance, V. sericea L. C. Rich., growing in Hispan- 

 iola, has been found to differ from the Porto Rico plant 

 in having invariantly larger anthers; it will consequently be 

 segregated hiu^e, yet only as a subspecies, the habits of the 

 two plants being nearly identical. As matters now stand, 

 the three larger Antilles, Cuba, Jamaica, and Hispaniola, 

 have no common species of Verno7iia, except the cosmo- 

 politan V. cinerea Less. 



I confess to have learnt one thing from the North Ame- 

 rican botanists — not to describe innumerable varieties under 

 each variable species, as do many European botanists. In 

 dealing with Vernonise, one should be satisfied to state to 

 w'hich species a certain plant belongs. In order to give an 

 idea of the variability of some species, I have, however, de- 

 scribed some of their most striking forms, though without 

 indicating any form b}' a proper name. 



As to the histor}^ etc. of the genus Vernonia in the West 

 Indies, I refer to the interesting exposition given by Gleason 

 in his »Revision». Several dates on the same object will 

 be found under the respective species in this paper. 



The name of each species accepted here is the earliest 

 valid one, as governed b}- the Vienna rules of Nomenclature, 

 adopted at the International Botanical Congress in Vienna 

 1905. 



