Feedback request: Veronica polita (34217)

[kenbalkow]

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Specimen #357807

Taxon:	Scrophulariaceae: Veronica polita Fr. ("Grey Field-speedwell")
Filed in taxon folder:	Scrophulariaceae: Veronica polita Fr. ("Grey Field-speedwell")
Collected by:	Mr Frederick Townsend
Collection date:	7/1847
Locality:	Germany, Th, Thissingen??
ex herb:	Mr Frederick Townsend Mr Allan Octavian Hume
Institution:	South London Botanical Institute (SLBI)
Image:
collector's number:	23306
fruits/flowers:	seeds/fruits

Documented by kenbalkow on 11^th February 2013.

Edit history

date	user	change
08/01/2015	oldnick	Deleted locality:
08/01/2015	oldnick	Added locality: DE TH, Thissingen??
08/01/2015	oldnick	Added attribute collector's number: 23306

N.B. reporting of the edit history is currently fairly unclear and misleading. Most edits made to specimens appear as a pair of 'add' and 'delete' entries, which may not be together in the list. There are also often 'minor' edits, which are made automatically (rather than due to user activity), for example to merge synonym names.

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User comments about this sheet

kenbalkow wrote

Could be Thuringen Germany but not clear

[oldnick]

I read this label as Germany, Thissingen, and am stumped because Thissingen sounds familiar to me but I can't find any reference to it. http://herbariaunited.org/specimen/350656/ appears to read 'Mushelkalk Hills' and Roger Horton has posted that these are found in Thuringia, but this may be a circular logic from first looking at this sheet; and apparently, nowadays at least, 'Mushelkalk' is applied to deposits anywhere in the world that were on the 'Mushelkalk Sea'. Germany seems definite anyway. Townsend has no other European collections that summer though received one from the Bavarian Alps in June

[David Price]

Is it Kissingen? cf. http://herbariaunited.org/specimen/365307/

[Roger Horton]

Interestingly a search for "Kissingen Muschelkalk" finds an article by a Professor Forbes in The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1839) "Account of an Intermitting Brine Spring, discharging Carbonic Acid Gas near Kissingen in Bavaria" which, when referring to the local geology, says "the hills are invariably capped with muschelkalk". Perhaps Townsend's visit was to Bavaria rather than Thuringia.

[oldnick]

Yes, Kissingen is written identically on both sheets, and the Salt Works is specified. If a spa town, then just right for an English visitor - do we know anything of Townsend's health?

[John Hewitt]

Townsend would have been in his 25th year and possibly still at Cambridge in 1847 (under influence of Henslow). Perhaps this was an early expedition to the continent? Further study of his specimens (e.g at SLBI in both British and Continental Collections) might clarify his travels. J.H. SLBI.

[Chris Liffen]

some details of his life here
http://www.meiosis.org.uk/botanists/townsend-frederick-1822-1905/