THE FERN BULLETIN 



05 



new ways of distinguishing tweedledee form tweedle- 

 dum. For instance, when Linnaeus made the name 

 Asplenia m rhizophyllum he seems to have had three 

 plants in mind, the American walking fern, the Siber- 

 ian species and the very characteristic Jamaican fern 

 which has since been known as Fadyenia prolifcra. The 

 connecting of the specific name rhizophyllum with our 

 species of Camptosorus of course left the Jamaican 

 plant without a name, and in 1840 Hooker called it 

 Fadyenia prolifcra, taking as the specific name the 

 name given by Swartz to this plant 120 years ago. 

 Unfortunately, Lamark, two years earlier, gave the 

 same specific name to an Asplcnium but although his 

 name never gained currency, we are now asked to sub- 

 stitute Hookeri for the long-used specific name. But 

 doctors disagree in this case, as usual, and Christian- 

 sen's recent "Index" uses the specific name Fadycnii! 

 A similar complication gives occasion for a new name 

 for Poly podium crassifolium. When it could no longer 

 rest easy as a Polypodium Schott called it Anaxetum. 

 Fee declined to accept this because the name had once 

 been applied to a genus of Composites, and called it 

 Plcuridium. Maxon now objects because this latter 

 name has been given to a genus of mosses and suggests 

 Pcssoptcris. To make ourselves understood we must 

 still use Polypodium. For similar reasons Anathacorus 

 is a new generic name suggested for certain species us- 

 ually regarded as belonging to J z ittaria. Fourteen 

 ferns in various genera are described as new and no 

 less than fifteen names given to ferns by older botanists 

 have been so re-arranged as to have Maxon's name in 

 the author citation. Mr. Maxon's knowledge of the 

 plants in the field and his situation in a great herbar- 

 ium gives him unusual facilities for an exact account 



