Aeshna caerulea (Ström, 1783) vs Aeshna coerulea (Anisoptera: Aeshnidae)

Apparently, very few workers have ever consulted H. STROM’s original description of this species, published (1783) somewhat obscurely in a paper titled "Norske inserters beskrivelse med anmaerkinger”, which has appeared in the Nye Samling af del kongelige danske Videnskabers Selskabs Skrivter, Vol. 2, pp. 49- -93,2 pis excl. (Odon.: p. 90), hence the persisting confusion in the spelling of its name. The description itself remained unnoticed until late in the 19th century; it is listed neither in Hagen’s Synonymia libellularum europaearum (1840) nor in Rambur’s Histoire naturelle (1842), nor in the Selysian European monographs (1840, 1850). In his Synonymic Catalogue (1890), Kirby was undecided, listing "coerulea" in the catalogue, but referring to it in the index under both " coerulea "and caerulea". The latter spelling was adopted by most British and French workers. In Central Europe, however, it was probably Erich Schmidt who is responsible for the spreading of the spelling "coerulea", which appears in his key monograph in the Tierwelt Mitteleuropas series (1929), likely so in imitation of the usage by his teacher, F. Ris. C. LONGFIELD (1954, Em. mon. Mag. 90: 145-148) was the first to draw the attention to this confusion, but her argument that "the spelling cae... and not coe... is the most usual interpretation of the original name", was unpersuasive to induce the uniformity. Consequently, in the recentmost catalogues, Davies & Tobin (1985) are using "coe", while Tsuda (1986) adopts the ’Vac"spelling.