THE PAMPAS GRASSES 
173 
after his return to Rio Janeiro, leaving 
no account of his travels. His collec- 
tions however reached Berlin in safety, 
and from them (in 1825) Sprengel de- 
scribed our plant under the name 
Arundo diceca , At that time the grasses 
were very badly defined, and A7^ti7ido 
in particular contained many species 
with nothing in common save a super- 
ficial resemblance. This first name was 
unfortunate, for Loureiro had already 
described another grass under the same 
name ; three years later therefore 
Schultes proposed the name Arimdo 
selloajta for Sprengel's Arundo diceca. 
This was hardly suggested beioreitalso 
was superseded, for in the following 
year Nees von Esenbeck removed the 
Pampas-grass from Arwido only to 
refer it to another genus equally distinct 
— that of Gy?ierm?n. In this genus it 
stood for nearly seventy years as Gy- 
iterium arge?iteum^ until (in 1897) I 
pointed out the wide differences of habit 
and structure existing between the Pam- 
pas-grass and the true Gynerium — G. 
saccharoides. It is however only fair to 
state that Lindley remarked, as early as 
1 8 5 1 , that these two plants were by no 
means of the same genus, and Lemaire, 
relying on this authority, proposed the 
name Moorea for Gy7ieriujn argenteiim 
(1855). However, no one followed the 
matter up, and buried in the "Miscellan- 
ees" of ahorticultural journal, Lemaire's 
name fell into oblivion and only came 
to my notice accidentally several years 
after I had established the genus Cor^ta- 
deria.^ and when the name Moorea had 
already been used for agroup of Orchids. 
Otherwise I would not have failed to 
take up Lemaire's name as a tribute to 
the great Irish horticulturalist. The 
name Cortaderia was suggested by the 
fact that Cortadcra\^ox\^ ol the common 
Cortaderia Quila at "Belgrove," Queenstown. 
Eni;rnved for Flora" from a photograph. 
names by which the Pampas-grass and 
some of its allies are known in South 
America, and as, among the specific 
names which the grass had received, 
ge7iteujn was the most generally known, 
N 2 
