Early species descriptions of two native Virginian plants in the <i>Histoire des plantes, nouvellement trouvées en l’isle Virgine, &amp; autres lieux</i> (Paris, 1620)

Histoire des plantes, nouvellement trouvées en l’isle Virgine, &amp; autres lieux is a 16-page pamphlet printed by Guillaume Macé in Paris and dated 1620. The work purports to describe newly-encountered native flora from the British colony of Virginia. Yet the status of the work in the early botany of North America remains unsettled. Some descriptions regard the pamphlet as the first to treat Virginian flora, while others dismiss it as derivative. This paper clarifies these points of bibliographical and botanical confusion: it assigns modern taxonomic names to the 14 species described in the pamphlet; identifies two of these species as Virginia natives ( Zephyranthes atamasco, Passiflora incarnata); and traces the historical nomenclature of both species to the Powhatan language and the Algonquian people of the Virginia tidewater. The paper also demonstrates from bibliographical evidence that the work was issued as a component part of the second edition of Geoffroi Linocier's L’histoire des plantes (Paris, 1620).