| 44 | Mr. Brown, on the Proteaceae of Jussieu. |
To determine how far this is the case, I have examined the figures published by Plukenet under the name of Leucadendros, and also his Herbarium, which forms part of the Sloanean collection in the British Museum. Of his three species so named the first is Protea argentea, his "Leucadendros africana arbor tota argentea sericea foliis integric, Atlas Tree, D. Herman." of which the figure represents a branch without fructification, and a separate fruit possibly of the same plant, but rather, as I suspect, belonging to a different species of the same genus.
On the same plate is figured a single leaf, in all probability belonging to P. conocarpa, with the following name, "Leucadendro similis africana arbor argentea folio summo crenaturis florida, an Leucadendros africana foliis serratis D. Herman.?" The separate fruit accompanying this probably does not belong to it, but to some species of that division of Leucadendron which Mr. Salisbury has called Euryspermum.
The third species, his "Leucadendros africana, seu Scolymocephalus angustiori folio apicibus tridentatis," is a good figure of a flowering branch of Protea cucullata.
It could not certainly from his publications alone be understood why the name Leucadentros is applied to these three plants so little alike, while different names are given to species much more nearly related to some of them that they are to each other: of this however the solution is to be found in his Herbarium; on consulting which I find, that after the publication of Protea argentea, with whose flowers he was unacquainted, he had acquired flowering specimens of Protea hirta, and had supposed these two species to be the same, pasting between two leaves of argentea four loose head of hirta, and under the whole copying in his own hand the name Leucadendros, &c. at full length from his Phytographia. This satisfactorily explains where he referred
| P. cucullata |
