THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES OF AGRIMONIA.
Perhaps no one of our long-known plants has more effectually escaped a right understanding by botanists than the familiar Agrimony of the Eastern States, long current in local floras and text-books as Agli1ee0eua EllPatOria L. This name, it seems, has been doing duty since the beginning of American botany for a considerable group of related species, of which at least five may now be clearly recognized. Nor is this all ; for, as first shown by Dr. Britton (Bull. Torr. Club, 18 : 366, 1891), the true Eit patoria is not known at all as an American plant and is very dis tinct from that particular one of our native species which has been more especially referred to it.
For the initial fault in this misunderstanding we must go back to " Species Plantarum," wherein, under A. Eitpatolia, we find the citation " Gron. Virg.," although the inconsistency follows that the species is attributed to Europe only. Walter seems to have been the first of our writers to adopt the name definitively into the American flora (Fl. Car. 1788), though it is not now possible to
determine the exact sense in which he used it. And so with most subsequent authors the name as used has doubtless a composite significance, though mainly intended to designate our most com mon and generally distributed species.
Muhlenberg appears to have been the first to perceive that this plant was not identical with the European and he gave it its first distinctive appellation—kirsitta (Cat. 47, 1813). Muhlenberg, in deed, seems to have better understood our group of species than any subsequent writer except Wallroth, although he has been quite overlooked, and his name hirsider, for our representative spe cies, which it now becomes necessary to adopt, was afterwards in dependently used by Torrey for a more hairy form of the same plant.
The genus Agrimonia, with especial reference to the North American species, may be characterized as follows :