ABSTRACT
For decades the name Triodanis was largely ignored with preference given instead to Specularia (from Latin specula, looking-glass). Specularia, for example, was used by Fernald (1950). There was good precedent in using that name because of the European Venus’s looking-glass, Legousia speculum-veneris, that has been put in synonymy with Specularia. Geoffrey Grigson wrote in 1955, “When the long capsule opens, the lookingglasses of the Virgin or Venus are revealed, the seeds of which are oval or elliptical, pale brown, exquisitely polished, and pellucid like a speculum” (Coffey 1993). That description really does not apply to the American plants, and it is odd that it was applied.
