.^EW V, , _, 



TORREYA 



Vol. 27 No. 5 



September-October 



A BOTANICAL RIDDLE 

 I 



Kenneth K. Mackenzie 



We are all familiar with that peculiarly exasperating form of 

 riddle which consists in asking a victim to guess what an object 

 with certain given characteristics is; then when the victim has 

 given up and on being told the answer protests that the object 

 named does not possess one of the given characteristics, he is 

 told that this characteristic was added to make the riddle hard. 



To suspect that any botanist ever knowingly did a' similar 

 thing in describing a species is not in my thoughts. But that 

 it has been unwittingly done I believe cane be made evident. 



In 1768 Miller (Card. Diet. Ed. 8 Viburnum No. 8) gave a 

 binomial name to a species of Viburnum which previously he had 

 treated under the old polynomial system of nomenclature. The 

 identity of this species, which he called Viburnum americanum, 

 long was a source of trouble to American botanists. A few 

 years ago Dr. S. F. Blake (Rhodora 20: 14-15. 1918) noted 

 that he had seen a specimen of Viburnum americanum Miller in 

 the British Museum and that it was Hydrangea arborescens L. 



Blake can not however have consulted Miller's description or 

 he would at once have noted that while the description does 

 fully answer Hydrangea arborescens until near the end, yet near 

 the end Miller added that the plant has red oval berries! How 

 Miller came to do this is not possible to say. He placed his 

 Viburnum americanum immediately after his description of the 

 European Viburnum opulus L. (which has red berries) and 

 probably either assumed that his plant must have red berries 

 (instead of the capsule which it has), or he got some fruit of 

 Viburnum opulus mixed up with it. Miller's material came from 

 Thomas Dale of Charleston, South Carolina, the author of an 

 unpublished manuscript listed by Miller in the list of works 



