SISYRINCHIUM BERMUDIANA 
By OLIVER ATKINS FARWELL 
Parke, Davis and Company, Detroit, Michigan 
Many botanists have in the past considered the pale-blue- 
flowered Sisyrinchium Bermudiana L., of the Atlantic coast, and 
the violet-blue S. iridioides Curtis, of Bermuda, to be conspecific 
and have united them under the Linnaean name. Philip Miller, 
who cultivated both, side by side, considered them to be amply 
distinct and described them separately in the Gardeners Dictionary 
in 1768 but applied the Linnaean name to the Bermuda plant and 
renamed the Atlantic coast species as S. angustifolium. William 
Curtis, who, like Miller, knew both plants, also considered them 
to be distinct and in the Botanical Magazine, plate 94, named the 
Bermuda plant 5. iridioides; the date of the title page of volume 3 
of the Botanical Magazine is 1790 but the printed date on the 
plate itself is September 1, 1789; the publication of the binomial 
must, therefore, date from that of the plate, 1789. Modern 
botanists follow the interpretation of Philip Miller by applying 
the name Sisyrinchium Bermudiana L. to the plant that is endemic 
in the Bermudas but this is contrary to the laws of priority as 
expressed in both the Vienna and American codes. Both of these 
species were described and illustrated by Plukenet in the Alma- 
gestum under his genus Sisyrinchium; likewise by Dillenius in 
Hortus Elthamensis under the Tournefortian genus Bermudiana. 
Linnaeus in the Species Plantarum, page 954, 1753, combined both 
species under the binomial Sisyrinchium Bermudiana, thus pre- 
serving to science both of the old generic names under each of 
which the species had previously been known. The specific name 
Bermudiana perpetuates an old generic name and cannot be con- 
sidered as having been given to the species as a geographical name 
to indicate the nativity of the species; had that been the idea 
actuating Linnaeus he in all probability would have given it the 
name bermudiense adopting it from Plukenet providing he had 
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