SOME LOCAL NAMES OF PLANTS— IV.* 



W. L. McAtee 



Until some very favorably circumstanced individual or in- 

 stitution undertakes the task, the compilation of vernacular 

 names of American plants will continue to be woefully incomplete 

 and correspondingly unsatisfactory. The project is dual, in- 

 volving the compilation of published, and the collection of un- 

 published names. Publications that must be searched include 

 those of the early writers who customarily devoted some space 

 to plants, general works on natural history, sporting books, 

 plant manuals, local lists, works on medical botany, ethnobotany, 

 and pharmacology, botanical journals, and special articles on 

 plants in other periodicals. Other special sources of local plant 

 names are lists of honey plants and of food plants of insects 

 other than bees, and publications on range and poisonous plants. 



The sources of unpublished plant names are even more nu- 

 merous and inaccessible and the exploring of them still more time- 

 consuming. Unhurried travel and careful inquiry in character- 

 istic areas, especially isolated ones, is necessary to achievement 

 of a reasonable degree of completion. Labels in herbaria are a 

 profitable hunting ground for the searcher for unusual appella- 

 tions and no doubt botanical diaries and correspondence of 

 historical value could be examined to advantage. The supply 

 of names is inexhaustible and the ways in which they reach the 

 compiler surprisingly diverse. 



The task of collating them is a tremendous one which the 

 present writer can not undertake because he is engaged on a 

 similar compilation of the names of American birds. He enjoys 

 contributing to the subject, however, and hopes his contributions 

 will interest others, among them, possibly one or more who will 

 compile a real dictionary of these terms. 



The present contribution consists of a small collection of 

 names not found in current glossaries, and a short bibliography 

 restricted to publications, dealing specifically with American 

 plant names. 



*No. I of this series was published in Torreya, 13: 225-236, 19 13, No. 2 in 

 Torreya, 16: 235-242, 1916, and No. 3 in Torreya, 20: 17-27, 1920. 



