NOMENCLATURE OF FUNGI. 
75 
be restricted to such parts of the plant as the author had in hand, 
or which he covered by his description. Let us illustrate: sup¬ 
pose a botanist in his travels should come across a rare tree with 
very characteristic foliage, but no flowers or fruit, and should 
name and describe it. Subsequently, another botanist finds a tree 
with most peculiar fruit but at a season of the year when foliage 
is absent, and this he describes and names. After a time it is 
ascertained that the two names have been applied to the same 
species of plant. Now must the plant receive a new name, as 
neither of those already applied adequately described the plant, 
or in case one of them is selected can it be held that the other is 
not an admissible name because it did not cover a sufficiently im¬ 
portant part of the plant? 
Let us illustrate in another way: Michaux named a much- 
branched, spreading, rough plant, with solitary, inconspicuous 
flowers, Lithospermum cmgustifolium. Pursh subsequently named 
a soft-leaved plant with simple, upright stems and clusters of 
showy flowers twenty-five to thirty-five millimeters long, Batschia 
longidora. Although the two plants were exceedingly unlike, 
it finally became known that the latter was the perfect, spring 
form, and the other the cleistogamous, summer form of the same 
species of plant. Now is the earlier name ineligible because ap¬ 
plied to an imperfect state of the plant? Saccardo* says that 
“ when the name of an earlier stage of any species is found to 
have been published before the name of the correlated perfect 
stage, it is not permissible to transfer the name of the imperfect 
stage to the perfect one upon the plea of priority.” But phaner¬ 
ogamic botanists do not follow such a rule, and the earlier specific 
name in the case just cited is now used, although Michaux knew 
nothing of the perfect stage when he bestowed it. 
In proceeding to strengthen his position Magnus states that 
the characters of the genus Puccinia are derived from the teleuto- 
sporic stage, and that specific names should only be employed 
which were first applied to this stage. But in some other genera 
he finds that the teleutosporic stage is relatively far less promi¬ 
nent, as in Uredinopsis, and here he would permit the use of 
* Rule X, 1. c. 
