26 



upon the best possible choice of specific name for it introduces 

 the "association" factor. A characteristic plant name brings to 

 mind the singular features of habit or morphology of a species 

 and aids in its subsequent ready recognition. 



To Bentham species were characterful "individual plants" 

 in a sense. And, to the end of designating species by alluding to 

 a distinctive character, he commonly employed a name which 

 would recall a genus or species, perhaps nearly or as often quite 

 distantly related, distinctly simulating the plant in question. 

 This simulation between species is commonly one of habit. 

 "The habit of a plant," Bentham wrote, "consists of such 

 general characters as strike the eye at first sight." Thus the 

 distinctive habit of a newly described plant is emphasized by an 

 allusion to that of a previously described genus or species, to 

 be sure often not well known to the resident of the country in 

 which the novelty grows: accordingly the allusion fails. Bentham 

 described for example Uranthiis (now united with Eustonia) 

 chironioides (PI. Hartw. 47, 1840) from Chico, (?) Hidalgo, 

 Mexico, when Chirojiia (Gentianaceae), the genus alluded to, 

 is wholly of Africa and Madagascar in its distribution and un- 

 familiar to the Mexican botanist. Similarly he named Forestiera 

 phiUyreoides (Benth.) Torr. from a Guanajuato collection, "phil- 

 lyreoides" being reminiscent to Bentham of the wholly Old 

 \\ orld oleaceous genus Phillyrea, but the name perhaps carries 

 no intelligible meaning to the student of the Mexican flora. It 

 will be seen however that an examination of the materials of 

 these comparable genera shows, as will be seen in certain ex- 

 amples given beyond, striking resemblances and it is easy to 

 see how a phytographer familiar with several floras of the world, 

 as was Bentham, would draw such comparisons in his choice 

 of specific names. It will be noted that Karl Sigismund Kunth 

 (1788-1850) and the DeCandolles employed this device of spe- 

 cific naming perhaps even before Bentham, as indeed it goes 

 back to the time of Linnaeus in a somewhat different and less 

 pronounced way, but it is in the writings of Bentham that it 

 proves "characteristic." 



The amount of descriptive work accomplished by Bentham 

 was truly enormous. Thus his contributions to DeCandolle's 

 Prodromus alone involved, according to Hooker, the descrip- 

 tions of 4,730 species. And this, it will be remembered, embraced 



