george Clifford’s herbarium 
115 
from an ornamental vase, accompanied by a label in memorial tablet 
style, the writing on which is evidently contemporary, but not that 
of Linnaeus. By means of the citation on the labels, it is generally 
possible to coordinate the specimen with the description in the 
Hortus ; the number attached to the species in the book is also 
often written on the sheet. The binominal subsequently assigned to 
the plant by Linnaeus was also written on the sheet in a somewhat 
later hand before the herbarium came into Banks’s possession. 
Although there was thus evidently a close connexion between the 
specimens in Clifford’s herbarium and Linnaeus’s descriptions in the 
Hortus , there was nothing to prove that Linnaeus had any direct 
personal association with the specimens; but a sheet has just been 
found which definitely establishes this association. This is the 
specimen of Grislea (Hort. Cliff. 146) and the sheet bears the name 
in Linnaeus’s hand, written just below the specimen in the charac¬ 
teristic Linnean manner; the later writer has added “Grislea secunda.” 
The sheet also bears a note by Dryander : “ In the Great Herbarium 
under Combretum The sheet is therefore of great interest, for, as 
has been already said, it indicates a personal association between the 
specimens in Clifford’s herbarium and Linnseus as the author of the 
Hortus Cliff or tianus ; and the specimen is the type of the genus. 
It is unfortunate that a specimen of such historical interest should 
give rise to a difficulty in nomenclature. The note of Dryander 
quoted above indicates the source of the trouble, and explains why the 
specimen of Grislea has been so long overlooked. There is no doubt 
that it is a Combretum , and, if not actually C. farinosum, is a very 
closely allied Mexican species. 
In Sp. Plant, (ed. 1, 648) under Grislea, Linnaeus gives the trivial 
name secunda, with a reference to Hort. Cliff., but adds no diagnosis 
nor synonym. The description of the genus in Gen. Plant. 1737 is 
evidently from the same plant, and is copied word for word in the 
edition of 1754. Neither fruit nor seed is mentioned, and the speci¬ 
men possesses neither. The original of Grislea L. is a Combretum , 
and Grislea is thus the first name for that genus. 
In 1758 Linnaeus edited the Iter Hi span icum of his favourite 
pupil Pehr Loefling (fl756), which contains an account of the travels 
of the latter in Spain and America, and descriptions from Loefiing’s 
manuscript of some of the plants collected. On p. 245 is a full 
description of Grislea secunda, but this is not the original G. secunda, 
of which Linnaeus apparently retained no specimen (there is none in 
his herbarium), but of the plant to which the name has since been 
applied, found by Loefling in tropical South America in February 
1755. At the end of the volume, in an “ Appendix ultimus absoluto 
opere missus” (p. 308) Combretum is described. In Systema, ed. x. 
p. 999 (1759), Linnaeus includes the two genera, quoting both from 
Loefling with no reference to his own original description in Hort. 
Cliff, or in Sp. PI. ed. 1. 
The position raises an interesting point in nomenclature. It is 
evidently desirable that Combretum should be included in the list, of 
nomina conservanda ; but botanists may find difficulty in retaining 
the name Grislea for the plant to which it has been applied since 
I 2 
