Solidago nemoralis var. nemoralis
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Filed As
Asteraceae
Solidago nemoralis var. nemoralis -
Collection Notes
[GLI review needed]
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Identifiers
NY Barcode: 2355332
Occurrence ID: 7d03de02-a0d1-458d-aff1-398e2fcf60db
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Feedback
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Kingdom
Plantae
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Division
Magnoliophyta
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Order
Asterales
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Family
Asteraceae
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All Determinations
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Location Notes
[US & Canada]
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Distribution
Vol.SX Pi,ATE N: 4. SOLI DAGO NEMORALIS. GROVE GOLDEN-ROD. NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSITE. Solidago nemoralis, Aitou.—Stem often corymbose at the summit; leaves spathulate-oblong and obVanceolate, renate serrate, or entire, roughish-pubescent. Darlington’s Flora Cestrica. See also Gray’s Synoptical Flora, Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United Stales, Wood’s Class-Book of Botany, and Britton and Brown’s Illustrated Flora. The plan of this work is to give in the first place pictures of our native flowers, botanical - ly accurate, and as nearly perfect artistically as the drawings can be made,—and in the next place to take them as object lessons in the broad field of human interest wherein the plant illustrated may have a share. • In this instance, the description of the pretty golden-rod illus- trated is taken from the local Flora of Chester Count}-, Pennsylvania, by Dr. Darlington, because the specimen chosen for the drawing grew in the adjoining county,—and, mainlv to draw attention to the different methods em- ployed by botanists in describing plants. The one botanist, above all, who has studied the family of the golden-rods, is Professor Asa Gray. In his ' ‘ Synoptical Flora of North America,” he describes seventy-four species, besides a large number of varieties so marked- ly distinct from their parent species, as to be worth}’ of distinctive botanical names. His description of the species under consideration is as follows: — “ Mostly low, with a fine and uniform clos“ pubescence either soft or (in age and in dried specimens) minutely scabrous : leaves from spatulate-obovate to oblanceolate or somewhat linear; upper entire and small (half- inch or more long) ; radical and lower cauline sparingly serrate: thyrsus and its compact racemiform clusters secund, commonly re- curved-spreading: heads two or three lines long: bracts of the involucre oblong-linear or narrower, obtuse, smooth and glabrous: flowers (appearing rather early) deep yellow: rays 5 to 9, usually more numerous than the disk- flowers: akenes closely pubescent.” The dif- ference in the length of the two descriptions for the same species is striking, lint the larger number of species in Dr. Gray’s work, makes a different method of treatment necessary. Dr. Darlington has but sixteen species to describe to us, while Dr. Gray has seventy-four. We speak of artificial systems of botany, and of natural systems. But all systems are made up of both classes. Thoug^i we can arrange plants so that there are groups with so close affinities that we can place them in orders, genera, and species, we have to use artificial lines in dividing them. This is particularly true of species. No one can positively define a spe- cies. The descriptions are merely compara- tive. For all the elaborate detail of Dr. Gray, no one could positively identify the Solidago here outlined if he had never seen one of the seventy-four species described. He would have to see others, or compare the plant with her- barium specimens before absolute certainty could be reached. If there were but two species of golden-rod, “ flowers few, spieate,” and "flowers numerous, eorymbosely panicled” would be considered a valid description for either. But such a brief description would not entitle an author to a name for a seventy-fifth species, where seventy-four had already been described. We learn from this that the methods of description are in the main artifi- cial; are dependent 011 the number of species in the genus to be described; and that there is nothing definite that will cover the idea of a species in nature. A large genus, like Solidago, has to be divided into artificial sections, in order to make des- criptions intelligible. In the limited list of Darlington’s Flora Ccslrica, he would first make a section with the racemes secund, —that is, the (lowers all turned to one side, and spread- ing* out from the rachis or common peduncle or even recurved. Then there would be sub-sec - (49) 'I - ? Ty WU) J 01 ''Y IN 1987 NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN 02355332 ÜLrA'.JlV i > i V. HeT-; HARiUM.
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Solidago nemoralis var. nemoralis