128 tEAPLETS. 



No shrubs that have been referred to Rhus are more foreign 

 to that type than those that have been called the Sweet Sumach. 

 They have a watery Juice and their twigs and foliage are aro- 

 matic and wholly innocuous to the touch. Their flowers appear 

 before the leaves, and from ament-like spiciform clusters imbri- 

 cate like those of a birch, alder or haz.el, and like those they are 

 formed in late summer to remain dormant until spring. Their 

 floral structure is as unlike that of Rhus or of Toxicodendron. 



The first species to be seen in Europe was published by Philip 

 Miller, under whose nurture the bush had grown in the Chelsea 

 garden, as a species of Toxicodendron. The same was after- 

 wards named as Betula by Thunberg. Bafinesque in 1808 made 

 it the type of a new genus to be called Turpinia ; this at just 

 about the time when several other botanists were dedicating 

 each a genus Turpinia. Eafinesque's genus of that name proved 

 to be other than the first ; and, before he found this out, and, 

 before he had published the genus with good character and the 

 well formed and euphonious name Lobadium, Desvaux had got 

 into print the wretched barbarism, Schmaltzia, supposed to be 

 dedicated to Bafinesque, who sometimes wrote his name 

 Bafinesque- Schmaltz. That this name was not only ill sound- 

 . ing and barbaric, but also on the whole untrue to Bafinesque, 

 and published obscurely, without a character, are three circum- 

 stances which must have availed with De Candolle, Asa Gi'ay, 

 and others for the recognition of Lobadium rather than Schmalt- 

 zia as the name to be perpetuated. 



To the specific characters in Schmaltzia no attention seems 

 to have been given since Nuttall's time, and our herbaria are 

 replete, with specific types not hitherto characterized. A consid- 

 erable number of such are herein briefly defined, while others 

 remain to await further study. 



S. CKBKATA. Toxicodendron crenatum. Mill. Diet. n. 5. 

 Rhus suaveoleus, Ait. Kew. i. 368. All stems and twigs, even 

 the growing ones perfectly glabrous, smooth, reddish brown : 

 foliage large, thin, vivid green and almost shining above, paler 

 beneath and to the unaided eye glabrous throughout, a lens dis- 

 closing minute hair-tufts in axils of veins beneath, as also at 

 some of the marginal sinuses, and a few scattered hairs along the 



