Notes and News: Quercus Capesii and Professor Bethany
Notes and News: Quercus Capesii and Professor Bethany
Ten years ago the writer was sitting with a friend in the office of the herbarium of West Virginia University preparing a list of acquaintances whose interest in southeastern botany might lead them to underwrite the publication of a journal to be devoted to recording advances in our knowledge of that field. The launching of a new botanical periodical at that time, to join the hosts of others already being issued, was necessarily accompanied by considerable uncertainty and the definitely abnormal period of world history in which were passed its initiation and early life was likewise unfavorable.
The first International Botanical Congress was held in Paris in 1867, the avowed purpose being to secure fixity of nomenclature and to avoid the use of names “which may cause error or ambiguity or throw science into confusion.” The Paris Code involved a strict application of the laws of priority, since it was believed that, while the application of such a system would necessitate a considerable number of changes of names at the time, the nomenclature would eventually become more stable.
During a recent trip in late July and early August, 1945, into the Canaan Valley region of Tucker County, West Virginia, I spent most of my time, as usual, in the field collecting herbarium material. During this period, I had the genuine pleasure of meeting Mr. H. P. Sturm of Clarksburg, West Virginia, who is deeply interested in our native plants and their conservation. As an outgrowth of this interest, Mr. Sturm has depicted many of them in their natural habitat by means of color photography.
The widespread use of the *word ramps by the southern mountaineers for the common and well-known Allium tricoccum is another instance of the survival of English dialect words in the more or less isolated communities of the Southern Appalachians. Dr. Roland M. Harper has just called to my attention the fact that this name is quite rare in North American botanical literature, which is somewhat surprising to one who has been accustomed to the popular use of the name since childhood. The name is not found in the first edition of Britton and Brown’s Illustrated Flora, (1896), Small’s Flora (1903), or Gray’s Manual, 7th edition (1908). One of the earliest references to it in botanical literature is in Millspaugh’s Flora of West Virginia (1913), but it also appears in the 2nd edition of the Illustrated Flora (1913) and in Small’s Mutual (1933), which indicates that those authors had later received some information concerning it.
Gaylussacia baccata (Wang.) C. Koch. Dendr. 2: 93. 1869-72. Black Huckleberry. A much-branched rigid shrub 0.3-1 m. high; leaves oval or oblong, entire, very resinous; flowers pink or red, in one-sided racemes; fruit black, about 6 mm. in diameter, sweet but seedy. Dry sandy or rocky acid soil, common. in all parts of the State, especially so in the miountains. Often gathered and mixed with blueberries, but inferior to these because of the seedy fruits; furthermore, harvesting is more difficult because the fruits are fewer and more scattered. Forma GLAUCOCARPA (Robinson) Mackenzie, Torreya 7: 60., 1907, having larger, juicier blue fruits, with a bloom, has been found in Jefferson and Hampshire Counties.
In May of 1944, Professor S. A. Ives published a list of the vascular plants of Greenville County in the Bulletin of Furman University. One thousand and fifty-three names appear in this list. They are entirely without comment, and with but a generalized statement regarding local distribution. Specimens of these plants have been deposited in the herbarium of Furman University. These specimens represent the labor and accumulations of fifteen years in the field by Dr. Ives.