﻿LINNAEA OR OBOLARIA? 



By Otto Kuntze. 



In that Journal of Botany 1894 p. 25-29 Mr. Daydon Jackson 

 gives a review of my Revisio generum plantarum III 1 . I made in my 

 Kev. g. pi. Ill so heavy reproaches in regard to his treatment of 

 his nomenclature that this report by no means can claim im- 

 partiality. Indeed his opinion is often one-sided, as every body 

 may convince himself who reads my book partly written in English. 

 In particular I wish to raise protest against Mr. Jackson's insinua- 

 tions, that I desired to minimise my indebtness to Kew and to its 

 Msc. Index, and that all my bibliographical help obtained were 

 derived from the British Museum at Bloomsbury. I have shown 

 in the preface of my Bev. g. pi. I. p. vi-vii according to truth, how 

 much I am indebted to Kew and the Msc. Index, but I have also 

 shown that I used that Index only for the determination of my 

 plants and only as long (spring of 1889) as Mr. Jackson commenced 

 to add the dates of the genera-names in that Index ; for my Eev. 

 gen. pi. proper, except the determination of plants, I have neither 

 used nor required help from the Kew staff and the Kew Index Msc. 

 On the contrary I gave some times to Mr. Jackson information as 

 desired by him since I was far ahead of his revision of genera- 

 names. See also my Bev. gen. pi. p. 97, in which it appears that 

 a copy of Tropaeolum out of the Msc. Index applied by Mr. Jackson 

 and obtained for Professor Buchenau in October 1889 contains a 

 great lack m genera-synonyms. — I used only as auxiliary the 

 bntish Museum libraries ; Mr. Jackson's inferring as to this point 

 is merely arbitrary. 



2 D - I have to protest against what he writes as follows : Br. 

 Kuntze's " statement that Linnaeus was ' contemptuous ' enough to 

 change Siegesbeck's Oboiaria into his Linnaea is utterly wrong; the 

 genus Linnaea was founded by Gronovius in the first edition of the 

 Genera, which came out early in 1737, whilst in October of the 

 same year Linnaeus was writing to Haller about the rumour that 

 Siegesbeck's Hortus Petropolitanus was published, but was sorry to 

 say that he had not yet seen it ; Amman sent the book itself to 

 Unmt.u* in January 1738. The latest charge against Linnaeus 

 is therefore clumsy, as well as false." This refers to my note 

 No. 25* at the foot of p. clxxxix in Eev. gen. pi. Ill ; I wrote: 



" Why shall be Oboiaria Sieg. an apparently contemptuous 

 name against Linnaea ? Mr. D. Jackson had apparently forgotten 

 that Siegesbeck's Oboiaria was published in 1736 before the Linnaea 

 of Linnaeus in 1737 was established. On the contrary Linnaeus 

 was 'contemptuous' by changing Siegesbeck's Oboiaria into Linnaea 

 and naming another genus Oboiaria. In 1736 Siegesbeck was not 

 yet an opponent to Linnaeus, as Mr. Jackson wrote wrongly on the 

 other page." 



I wish now clearly to state ; 



I. That Gronovius is not responsible for the establishment of 

 the genus Linnaea ; for only Linnaeus established in his works the 



