Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Datura innoxia? stramonium? metel? meteloides?, 1 by

wrote:

Here are the source of the confusion between D. metel and D. meteloides:

I think, that after Miller described D. inoxia a specimen was later send to Linnč, that described it as D. metel. In one of Linnč s first works he describes D. metel as a smooth plant with single or double flowers, that could be colored or white. After receiving D. inoxia Linnč put his description onder D. metel and ad, that the plant is pubescent.

Somewhat later Dunal find a plant in Mexico, that looks like D. inoxia, but its also different enought to be a new species. However since Linnč describes D. inoxia not as inoxia, but as D. metel, Dunal and De Candolle name the plant D. meteloides. Meteloides consist of "metel" and "-oides" and iodes is the same as the phrase "looking like"

If Linnč had not made the first error Dunals plant would have been innoxiaoides. *LOL*

Several plants was also on that time found at the Texas Panhandle, thatlooked like D. meteloides more than any other species, but they was also very different from D. meteloides in some aspects. Gray was the one, that made these differences clear by adding to the description of these Panhandle meteloides, that Dunals description was wrong about D. meteloides having a flower with 10 tendrils and that the right number was 5. Gray did not know, that the plants he had at hand was described in Germany by Eduard Regel as D. wrightii. Regel has got in seeds from the US of a plant named D. meteloides, but when he saw the plant in bloom and with fruits, he became sceptical of its name. He made a list of differences between his plant and Dunals D. meteloides and described the German specimen as a new species D. wrightii.

This is confusing? Well, it ges worse. *LOL* After WW2 botanists tried to find a live plant, that looked like Dunals D. meteloides. The trumpet shaped flowers was very slender and the fruit missed the backwards curled manchet under the fruits. As there was no herbarium specimen the species name rested on a drawing made by an un-professional painter. Since the botanists didn`t find a plant, that could produce the type of fruits found on the drawing, they draw the conclusion, that the drawing was uncorrect and with it the species. A proposal was made - i think - in the fifties, that the species D. meteloides should be considered an illegal synonym for D. wrightii and this was voted for.

When I use these four species names I always refer D. metel to Linnč s description, D. meteloides to Dunals description, D. wrightii to Regels description and D. inoxia to Millers description. However, Timmerman she uses D. inoxia about Regels plant and D. meteloides for D. inoxia and D. meteloides. Robert Bye uses D. wrightii for all three and also use D. inoxia and D. lanosa. D. lanosa was described by him and its hallmark is, that it would normally would be mistaken for D. wrightii (here he describes a plant, that Miller called D. inoxia) that the calyx continues to be fresh and cover the fruits.