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APIUM LEPTOPHYLLUM. 
By T. A. Sprague, B.Sc., E.L.S. 
The native country of an annual weed of cultivation is often 
difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain. The problem may be attacked 
in two ways—by study of the natural habitats (if any ) in which the 
species occurs, and by consideration of the geographical distribution 
of closely allied species. Both these criteria indicate that Apium 
leptophyllum is a native of America. It is common in woods and in 
sandy soil in Texas, and occurs in Florida in rich thickets and in dry 
ground containing shell. Tiirckheim found it in Santo Domingo in 
pine-woods at about 3900 ft. In Mexico it has been recorded from 
pastures and mountain bluffs, and was collected by Galeotti on Mt. 
Orizaba at an altitude of 10,500 ft. Pennell found it in gravel by 
riversides at 8500 ft. in Colombia, and according to Mandon it is 
common everywhere near Mt. Sorata, Bolivia, at 8500-9000 ft. 
Other more or less natural habitats in which A. leptophyllum has 
been recorded are dry bushy places, and moist places by the sea 
in Brazil; grassy campos in Uruguay ; and moist meadows in Para¬ 
guay. It occurs also as a weed of cultivated and waste ground and 
by roadsides in Bermuda, the West Indies, Mexico, Central America, 
the Andes, Brazil, and Paraguay. Two closely related species A.yra- 
cile and A. laciniatum are natives of Western South America. 
Apium leptophyllum is now widely distributed over the world as 
an alien. In some areas, such as middle and southern Europe, it 
appears to be a mere casual, but in eastern Australia and elsewhere it 
has become thoroughly established. Its fruits have been introduced 
with earth accompanying living plants (1), with ships’ ballast 
(2, 3), wool (4), and guano (5), and probably with agricultural 
seeds. By some means or other it appears to have been transported 
to Italy in the sixteenth century, for a specimen in the Herbarium 
“A” of Gfherardo Cibo, 1512-1000 (0), has been identified by 
Penzig (7) as A. leptophyllum . Possibly it may have been intro¬ 
duced intentionally from the West Indies or continental America in 
the erroneous belief that it was the true Ammi of Dioscorides ( Simon 
Ammi L.) a drug then held in high esteem. However this may be, 
the first printed record of A. leptophyllum was as a plant cultivated 
in the Vienna Botanic Garden and figured by Jacquin (8) in 1773 as 
Simon Ammi . Savi (9) discovered it in 1804 by roadsides near Pisa ; 
he identified it with Simon Ammi from Jacquin’s figure, and trans¬ 
ferred it to the genus Semeh. It was not until the following year 
that it was described as an independent species, Pimpinella lepto- 
phylla Pers. (10), from a specimen collected in Santo Domingo. 
Nuttall (1) recorded it in 1818 (as AEthuma lept ophylla). from 
the vicinity of New Orleans, whence it was accidentally imported to 
Philadelphia in a box of earth with other plants. In the early part 
of the nineteenth century A. leptophyllum appears to have been 
fairly common in European Botanic Gardens under various misapplied 
names, including Simon Ammi ; and in 1821 it was described by 
Link (11) from cultivated specimens as. a new . species, Pimpinella 
Journal oe Botany.—Vol. 61. [May, 1923.] k 
