337 



A TRIO OF BRITISH AND ALIEN PLANT-LISTS. 



F. ARNOLD LEES, M.R.C.S., Etc. 



{Contimied from page Jig)- 



I will not expertise upon the various new f aires whose names 

 follow the specific titles : they follow accredited procedure, 

 although it does seem strange to see * Centaurium pulchellum^ 

 Druce ' or ' C. capitatum, Rendle and Britten,' put out of remem- 

 brance Fries and Willdenow — the ' Fathers ' — because the 

 earlier genus of Hill (1756) in place of the much more familiar 

 Erythrcea, Borck (1796) has to be adopted. One does not 

 mourn the loss of Epipactis, ' inchoate ' (Druce) albeit Helle- 

 borine in its stead has a sort of un-genetic euphony about its 

 termination. But I am not a sufficiently adept nomenclator 

 to venture upon a critical analysis of the names — in time 

 students will get used to them. It is really of but trifling 

 moment that my own name has dropped out through the 

 incidence of some rule, in one case : my differentiated and 

 dubbed ' uncinata,' of 1887 (Bot. Rec. Club Rep. for 1884-6, 

 p. 123), a variety of Rosa mollissima, Willd. (tomentosa, Sm.) is 

 duly entered as such in the Oxford List, but in London Cata- 

 logue, loth Edn. it appears as a species — ' 586 uncinata, Ley. 

 18.' Per contra, I am naturally pleased to see that ' view ' 

 as to distinctiveness has permitted my commemoration of 

 J. G. Baker, doyen and best beloved of Yorkshire botanists, 

 to stand as another memento — if one were needed — of con- 

 nexions, unbroken through half a century, with the county of 

 broad acres. Carex Leesii, Ridley (1696 b.) of London Cata- 

 logue, 9th Edn., my ' saxumbra ' of the Yorkshire Naturalists' 

 Union Transactions of 1880, from the tree-shaded rocks at 

 Plumpton, has had to hide its bracteate folly — and properly 

 so, under an earlier designation longebracteata, Lange (1805 b.) 

 in the new loth Edn. The Oxford List concurs, so it is all 

 right — two simultaneous burials cannot but satisfy by their 

 unanimity those left to tell the tale ! Why Eriophonini laii- 

 jolium, Hoppe, has become Eriophorum panicidatnm, Druce, 

 I do not know, if upon no luciis a non lucendo ground ; this 

 Cottongrass being no more panicled than broadleaved, save 

 in a relative sense. There are many other interments, shewing 

 how fiercely the field has been contested, how many the ' tries ' 



1908 September i. 



