UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

 BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY 

 WASHINGTON 



ECONOMIC AND SYSTEMATIC BOTANY 



October 18, 1926. 



Mr. Walter Deane, 



29 Brewster St., 



Cambridge, Mass. 



Dear Mr. Deane: 



Your letter with inclosure has just been received. The 

 grass is Festuca rubra v. subvillosa Mert. & Koch, as you named 

 it. How to handle such groups as Festuca rubra and ovina, Ag ropy ran 

 teneium, Slymus canadensis and B. virginicus and numerous other 

 "polymorphic" species is a puzzle. The Europeans tend to unite 

 allied species under one grand Gesammtart", • each* species (in our 

 sense) a subspecies, each divided and subdivided into varieties, 

 subvarieties, forms, and subforms till it makes one's head whirl. 

 St. Ives has recently revised Festuca ovina subspecies duriuscula, 

 making nearly as big a work out of it as Professor Piper did of North 

 American Species of Festuca. V^tter in Vienna has also published 

 on this group with the result that their various new names and 

 rearrangements of old ones makes a stack of cards more than an inch 

 thick in the index to sjecies etc. Pease and Moore on Agropyron 

 caninum followed this method. I do not see the value of it. "A name 

 is an expression of a ta,.onomic idea, "as Dr. Greene said, but a name 

 can not express the who la relationship of a given plant or it would be 

 longer than the old phrase names. It amused me to find how Professor 

 Hackel (whose names in his excellent Monograph of Andropogoneae are 

 exceedingly complex) himself evaded the burden of these names. The 

 name published as Andropogon sorghum subsp. halepensis var. aethiopicus 

 subvar. longeari status , for example, would appear in his writing on a 

 label as "Andropogon halepensis v. longearistatus." I surmise Drs. 

 Clements and Hall, if they have to write labels, will do the same. 

 Here is the name in Hacicel's Monographia Festucarum europaearum for 

 your P. rubra v. villosa: Pestuca rubra subsp. eu-rubra var. genuina 

 subvar. barbata (Schrank) Hackel. 



Professor Hitchcock joins in best wishes to you and to Judge Churchill 

 when next you see him. We enjoyed a short visit from him and Mrs. 

 Churchill two or three years ago. 



fa - — ■ -T7T j / Sincerely yours, 



Agnes Chase, Associate Agrostologist. 

 ^^/U 0ffl " Smithsonian Institution. 



