Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 6 (1802).djvu/123



HE genus of Pæderota was first constituted by Linnæus in his Academical Dissertation entitled Plantæ rariores Africanæ, published at Upsal in 1760, and reprinted in the 6th volume of the Amænitates Academicæ in 1763. In the former edition the genus was called Hemimeris, in the latter Pæderota, and the only species there mentioned bears the trivial name of bonæ spei. This plant has never been well known to botanists in general. The original specimen probably remained in Professor Burmann's hands, along with the other plants described in the above-mentioned dissertation; but Linnæus, I know not at what period, obtained another, which is preserved in his herbarium with the name b. spei in his own hand, and which he afterwards described in the Supplementum as Hemimeris diffusa. Unfortunately he neglected to quote Pæderota bonæ spei as a synonym in that work, and his son, with all the materials before him, totally overlooked it; so that Professor Murray, and other compilers, give us the same plant under both names. Even M. De Jussieu seems not to have known this original species of Pæderota. His ideas of the genus are taken from the Buonarotta of Micheli, and the Pæderota lutea of Scopoli, the former of which is referred to Pæderota by Linnæus in the 2d edition of ''Sp. Plant, by the name of P. Biuonarota, and the latter is called in his 2d Mantissa, P. Ageria''. These plants appear again in the Supplementum, with new and Improved specific characters, under the names of P. cærulea and P. lutea,. and their Rh