53 kKUDBECKIA FULGIDA,— BRILLIANT CONE-FLOWER. 
are now genera not far removed from Rudbeckia, which have the 
receptacle as much and in some cases more conical than these. 
The conical receptacle must have attracted considerable atten- 
tion from the first, for before the genus was named Rudbeckia 
by Linnzus it was described as Oleliscotheca by Sebastian Vail- 
lant, a French botanist, the name being from the Greek odclish, 
and ¢heca, a cell—the little cell-like florets being arranged on the 
obelisk or cone-like receptacle. But Linnaeus when he reformed 
botanical nomenclature ruled that generic names, composed of 
two distinct nouns, or of two words one of which is entire, if 
ever allowed, were not to be imitated; and we can readily 
understand why Odelscotheca should be replaced; so in 1737 in 
the “Genera Plantarum” of Linnzus we find the genus dedi- 
cated to the Rudbecks “Olao patri, et olao filio”—Olaus the 
father and Olaus the son—and not merely “frem M. Rudbeck, 
a Swede, author of a Botanical work entitled ‘Campos Elysius,’” 
as one of our text-books tells us. These Rudbecks were the 
predecessors in the Chair of Botany at Upsal in Sweden, and 
there seems to be no special reason why their names should be 
connected with these plants beyond the fact that Linnzeus had a 
high regard for them. It is a distinctively American genus, 
having no representatives in the Old World, and to us in these 
days it may be allowable to regret that all plants of this charac- 
ter did not commemorate the names of those in immediate con- 
nection with the knowledge of American plants. 
Rudbeckia has many points of interest worthy of the student’s 
attention, which, though they can be observed more or less in 
many other genera, are striking here. \We may remember that 
a flower head in Compostte is as if a piece of wire were drawn 
round in many coils; and that if we could draw out this wire- 
like coil, it would appear as any ordinary stem growth—say a 
long willow branch, with a single flower in the axil of each leaf. 
As we know in some plants the leaves remain almost unchanged 
as bracts, and in other cases they are wholly wanting, as is 
generally the case in the cabbage tribe; so in Composites the 
