granted the botanical authority. In doing so, he distinguished this genus and species from Leucojum (Leucojum bulbosum trifolium minus), a name by which it previously had been known. Modern In 1763 Michel Adanson began a system of arranging genera in families. Using the synonym Acrocorion (also spelt Akrokorion), he placed Galanthus in the family Liliaceae, section Narcissi. Lamarck provided a description of the genus in his encyclopedia (1786), and later, Illustrations des genres (1793). In 1789 de Jussieu, who is credited with the modern concept of genera organised in families, placed Galanthus and related genera within a division of Monocotyledons, using a modified form of Linnaeus' sexual classification, but with the respective topography of stamens to carpels rather than just their numbers. In doing so he restored the name Galanthus and retained their placement under Narcissi, this time as a family (known as Ordo, at that time) and referred to the French vernacular name, Perce-neige (Snow-pierce), based on the plants tendency to push through early spring snow (see Ecology for illustration)]. The modern family of Amaryllidaceae, in which Galanthus is placed, dates to Jaume Saint-Hilaire (1805) who replaced Jussieu's Narcissi with Amaryllidées. In 1810 Brown proposed that a subgroup of Liliaceae be distinguished on the basis of the position of the ovaries and be referred to as Amaryllideae, and in 1813, de Candolle separated them by describing Liliacées Juss. and Amaryllidées Brown as two quite separate families. However, in his comprehensive survey of the Flora of France (Flore française, 1805–1815) he divided Liliaceae into a series of Ordres, and placed Galanthus into the Narcissi Ordre. This relationship of Galanthus to either liliaceous or amaryllidaceaous taxa (see Taxonomy of Liliaceae) was to last for another two centuries until the two were formally divided at the end of the twentieth century. Lindley (1830) followed this general pattern, placing Galanthus and related genera such as Amaryllis and Narcissus in his Amaryllideae (which he called The Narcissus Tribe in English). By 1853, the number of known plants was increasing considerably and he revised his schema in his last work, placing Galanthus together, and the other two genera in the modern Galantheae in tribe Amarylleae, order Amaryllidaceae, alliance Narcissales. These three genera have been treated together taxonomically by most authors, on the basis of an inferior ovary. As the number of plant species increased, so did the taxonomic complexity. By the time Bentham and Hooker