120 



primesautiers qui troiu'ent infailliblement le juste au premier 



essai ; mcme en Amerique ils sont rares. La science fait done 



bien de se contenter aussi d'ouvriers modestes qui arrivent au 



resultat avec plus de peine, en tatonnant. 



Bai.k, Suisse, 



i6 Juin, 1905. 



DERIVATION OF THE NAME CHAMAECRISTA 



By Edward I>. Greene 



Called on not long since in pn\^ate for an explanation of the 

 meaning of the generic name Chamaccrista, I think it may be 

 well to offer here in detail the answer which I then gave in brief, 

 and orally to the enquirer ; for the name has never been ex- 

 plained in any book, the genus itself dating, practically, from my 

 own defense of its validity made publicly only a few years ago.* 



The derivation of Cliamaccrista is so inseparably connected 

 with the history and nomenclature of an older and nearly related 

 genus that one must go back to the botany of more than two 

 centuries ago for the real origin of the name in question. 



One of the most graceful and elegant, if not the most show}-, 

 among many ornamental trees and shrubs of the family of the 

 Caesalpiniaceae is that to which Linnaeus gave the name Poinci- 

 ana piilcJicrrinia, a shrub now common in parks and gardens in 

 all tropic and subtropic lands and often to be seen in conserva- 

 tories far northward. In its large clusters of few and large flow- 

 ers, the bright red stamens are more conspicuously beautiful than 

 the yellow corollas. There ai'c ten of these to each flower, the 

 greatly elongated glossy filaments each surmounted by its anther, 

 and all standing out away beyond the corolla ; and this cluster 

 of stamens evidently suggested to the first botanical observer 

 and investigator of the shrub, that crest of slender graceful 

 round-topped feathers that adorns the head of a peacock ; and, 

 as this superbly flowering shrub was then new and in need of a 

 name, the botanist, whom I shall jircsentl)' mention, called it 

 Crista Pavonis. 



* I'illonia, 3 : 238. 



