Galanthus and referred to the French vernacular name, "" (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 and Amaryllidées as two quite separate families. However, in his comprehensive survey of the Flora of France (Flore française,
Chlamydomonas nivalis "Uredo nivalis". Over the next century, many researchers disputed over whether these organisms were lichen, plants, alga, or animal. It was not until the early 20th century when researchers finally began to agree on the algal nature of the organism and gave its currently known name, "Chlamydomonas nivalis". In 1968 "C. nivalis" was officially recognized as a collective taxon. Unfortunately, due to the lack of sequencing techniques, reliance on visually examining similarly looking snow alga, and complicated life cycle of this species, errors continued to be made in classifying this and other species of snow algae. Today, "C. nivalis" has