Talk:Faurel s.n., Maison-Carrée (1930)
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Discussion
Evidentiary scope
Faurel's label places the plant on Terres incultes près des dunes de Maison-Carrée (uncultivated land near the dunes of Maison-Carrée), environs d'Alger (near Algiers), on 16 April 1930. The catalogue records the habitat as Terres incultes. The label says nothing about sowing, use or a local name and carries no altitude. It names a variety, var. Kif A. DC.: a determination of the plant, which says nothing about how it came to grow there. The plant grew outside cultivation. The accession is classified Feral, by inference from the label and the catalogue; the label does not say whether the plants descended from a crop. A single gathering does not establish a continuing population, and no conservation priority is assigned.
Label reading
Read from the museum's scan at full resolution (3299 × 5112 pixels).
- Field label. Printed HERBIER L. FAUREL; in manuscript, one hand: Cannabis sativa L. / var. Kif A. DC. / Terres incultes près des dunes de Maison-Carrée / environs d'Alger / 16-4-1930.
- Museum label. Printed strip HERBARIUM MUSEI PARISIENSIS.
- Barcode. Herbier Muséum Paris P06879996.
The varietal name is the one fact the catalogue leaves out. A. DC. is the standard abbreviation for Alphonse de Candolle, whose Prodromus (1869) gives the variety. The label does not say who made the determination; it stands on Faurel's own label and is left unattributed.
Georeferencing
Maison-Carrée is El Harrach, at the mouth of the Oued El Harrach, now a district of Algiers and within Algiers Province. The label names uncultivated ground near the dunes of Maison-Carrée and the surroundings of Algiers. The dunes are not mapped, and no source read places them more closely than the town. The point 36.72, 3.14 is El Harrach, OpenStreetMap node 288399489. The commune of El Harrach (relation 542583, about 9.8 km²) reaches 3.7 km from the point, the nearest shore is 2.4 km away, and 1 km is added for the rounding of the point. It places the gathering at Maison-Carrée and its shore, not at a spot among the dunes. No altitude is carried, so no elevation is asserted. An earlier version of this note gave no point because the locality names the dunes and the surroundings of Algiers, not a point. Basis: settlement point. Uncertainty: about 5 km.
Editorial treatment
The date is a full day and passes the lifespan test, but not by much. The International Plant Names Index gives Louis Faurel as 1907 to 1973, so he was twenty-two or twenty-three in April 1930. That is young for a collector but not impossible and it is the right way round: a date before birth is what moved the two Cowan sheets in the Indian batch off their catalogued year. If a source turns up placing Faurel's Algerian work later, the catalogued date should be re-examined and not assumed.
The pair of Maison-Carrée sheets is worth keeping linked. This one records the plant growing untended by the dunes in 1930; Pasquier s.n., Maison-Carrée (1942) records it raised under glass at the agricultural institute in the same town twelve years later, from Saharan seed. The two together document the same place in two different relations to the plant, which is more than either says alone. Neither says they are connected and the articles do not claim it. Both labels name the plant var. Kif.
Source citations remain in the article. Éloise 08:12, 18 September 2026 (+07)