Notes on Leontopodium catipes

Abstract

In instituting recently a census of the genera of the whole Australian vegetation, I had to give to the remarkable alpine plant, first described by De Candolle as Gnaphalium catipes, a generic place also, its position thus far having never yet been firmly settled. Examining the plant first from localities in the Victorian Alps, I placed it in Antennaria, and described it as A. nubigena already in 1854 (Transact. Phil. Soc. of Victoria, i., 45), alluding already to the likelihood of its identity with Gunn's plant, sent by Lindley to the elder De Candolle; but I had no Tasmanian specimens at that time to establish its sameness with the one of the Australian Alps. In assigning to it a position among the species of Antennaria, I was careful to point out at once that it did not altogether accord with the characteristics of the legitimate congeners, our plant not being strictly dioecious. Indeed I was then already considering whether it ought not to find its most appropriate place in Leontopodium, notwithstanding the generally solitary capitula, and the biformity of the flower heads.