Synoptical Flora of North America

Abstract

THE first feeling which the sight of this book reawakens in the mind is one of deep regret that Prof. Asa Gray did not live to carry out the plans he had entertained so long for an elaboration of a complete flora of Temperate North America upon one uniform plan. A work of this scope was planned by Dr. Torrey and himself when he was quite a young man, and the first part appeared as long ago as 1838. It was soon found by the anthers that it was impossible to identify satisfactorily the plants which had been named by their predecessors without studying the European Herbaria; and in order to do this Dr. Gray spent a year in Europe in 1838–39. Another instalment, which extended to the end of Polypetalæ, was published in 1840, and the remainder of the first volume, extending to the end of Compositæ, in 1842. Then Dr. Gray accepted the post of Fisher Professor of Natural History in the University of Harvard, and what with teaching and herbarium work, and the preparation of the successive five editions of his “Flora of the Northern United States,” and the elaboration-of the new collections that poured in as fresh territories were explored and settled, his time was fully occupied for thirty-five years. In 1878 he returned to the more comprehensive work, and in that year published the first part of the second volume, which includes the remaining orders of Gamopetalæ, from Goodeniaceæ to Plantaginaceæ. In 1884 he issued a revised edition of the part devoted to the Composites and small allied orders. The work we have now before us is a reprint of the whole of the Gamopetalæ, with two supplements, embodying additions and corrections up to the end of 1885. Although the title-page bears the date of 1888, it was really issued, as the secondary title-page indicates, in January 1886, and we have had it in use at Kew for a couple of years. The present volume, therefore, covers the central third, brought up to date, of the complete undertaking as planned; and at the beginning the Polypetalous Dicotyledons are still left as they stood in 1840, except for the most useful bibliographical index, brought up to date, which Dr. Sereno Watson issued in 1878; and the Incomplete and Monocotyledons, to which Dr. Watson has happily devoted special attention during many years, have still to be dealt with.

Synoptical Flora of North America: the Gamopetal"

A Second Edition of Vol. I. Part 2, and Vol. II. Part 1, collected. By Asa Gray Large 8vo. 480 + 494 pp. (Washington: Published by the Smithsonian Institution, 1888.)