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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS

PART OF VOLUME 54

6-

Landmarks of Botanical History

A Study of Certain Epochs in the Development of the

Science of Botany

Part i. — Prior to 1562 A.D.

BY

Edward Lee Greene

No. 1870

CITY OF WASHINGTON

PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN*INSTITUTION

1909

ADVERTISEMENT

The present paper by Dr. Edward Lee Greene, Associate in
Botany in the U. S. National Museum, entitled ''Landmarks
of Botanical History," discusses certain epochs in the develop-
ment of the science of botany. The subject is viewed from a
philosophical rather than an industrial standpoint, and the author
gives prominence to the biography of some of the early botanists,
including Theophrastus (B.C. 370-286), and Brunfelsius, Fuchsius,
Tragus, and Cordus of{the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Doc-
tor Greene has in preparation further contributions on this general

subject.

CHARLES D. WALCOTT,

Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.

WASHINGTON,

November, 1909.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE 7

INTRODUCTORY 13

CHAPTER

I. THE RHIZOTOMI 45

II. THEOPHRASTUS OF ERESUS, B.C. 370-286 (or 262) 52

III. GREEKS AND ROMANS AFTER THEOPHRASTUS . 143

IV. INTRODUCTORY TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY GERMAN

FATHERS . . . 165

V. OTHO BRUNFKLSIUS, 1464-153.) . 169

VI. LEONHARDUS FUCHSIUS, 1501-1566 192
VII. HIERONYMUS TRAGUS, 1498-1554 .

VIII. EURICIUS CORDUS, 1486-1535 . 263

JX. VALERIUS CORDUS, 1515-1544 270

INDEX 315

PREFACE

ANY discussion, or any indication even, of landmarks in the
history of botany must needs be preceded by a somewhat careful
enquiry into the nature and purposes of the science as such. Where-
in does botany, as a science, essentially consist ? With this question
unanswered it were impracticable either to indicate the origin or
trace the progress of it.

In the most extended use of the term, all information about the
plant world or any part of it is botany. According to this view,
all treatises upon agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, forestry,
and pharmacy, in so far as they deal with plants and their products,
are botanical.

What many will consider a better use of the term is more re-
stricted. In this use of it there will be excluded from the category
of the properly botanical whatever has no bearing on the philosophy
of plant life and form. For example, that wheat, rice, and maize
agree together as to that anatomical structure which is called
endogenous would be a fact of purely botanical interest. Quite
as clearly such would be the proposition that all three belong to the
natural family of the grasses; or this, that each represents a genus;
or that the roots in all these plants are fibrous, and of only annual
duration. But if it be said that wheat, rice, and maize as food
products are of supreme importance to mankind, the affirmation
is as completely unbotanical as the several foregoing are per-
fectly botanical. It is strictly an economical consideration.

If such a distinction between botany and plant industry as I
have sought thus to illustrate be received as legitimate, the province
of botany is easily circumscribed and its scope clearly definable.
In any event, for the purposes of the present work our definition
of this science shall be that it occupies itself with the contemplation
of plant as related to plant, and with the whole vegetable kingdom
as viewed philosophically — not economically or commercially —
in its relation to the mineral on the one hand, and to the animal
on the other.

Such a distinguishing between the philosophical study of plants

7

8 PREFACE

and the industrial does not dispute, but rather establishes, the ex-
istence of a wide border domain between science and industrial
art where botanist and industralist work side by side upon plant
subjects; it may be sympathizingly and intercommunicatively, or it
may be ignoring each other's presence; a domain within which
nevertheless each should be in touch with the other, because each
may, and ought to be helpful to the other, as supplying some data
useless for his own purposes but of significance in relation to the
other's aims. The recognition of this border-land domain illustrates
also, if it does not again directly argue, the distinctness of the two
realms of botany and plant industry. Here one may observe that
the distinction itself would seem less marked if he who is to set
himself to the work of an economic or industrial botanist would
first of all equip himself with a knowledge of the principles, and
cultivate an interest in the aims, of philosophic and scientific
botany; so that the industrial botanist as author might always
have two reports to make upon any piece of research, one that
should be of economic interest, the other one of interest botanical.
It may be that this idea will be found to presuppose the conjunction
of the philosophic bent of mind with the industrial; a combination
of two qualities of mind as rare in the world as genius itself, and
less desirable.

In quest, therefore, of a starting point — a first landmark — in the
progress of botany, in my understanding of the science, one may
pass those authors by who professedly treat of plants from the
utilitarian point of view, whether they write of agriculture,
horticulture, or of the materia medica. Passing these by, I say,
though by no means as not meriting the botanist's attention ; for
all matters relating to the qualities of plants naturally interest
him, unless he be of that school in power a century ago, but now
declining in influence, according to whose teachings nothing but
dry morphology was of any import. Moreover, to him who, like
the farmer, the woodsman, and the primitive pharmacist, has much
to do with plants industrially, philosophic ideas may occur about
the vegetable kingdom as a whole or in part; and every such idea,
though crude, perhaps even erroneous, is a concept essentially
botanical. Quite as perfectly so is the distinguishing of different
kinds of plants, and the practice of grouping like kinds together
under one common (generic) name, which is not only universal,
but even a necessity, with those who, like the farmer and gardener,
have much to do with a considerable number of plants of different
sorts. People following these occupations have actually a system-

PREFACE Q

atic botany, with a nomenclature, families, genera, and species, all
their own. So then if, in the search for a possibly early botanical
landmark, the writers upon farming, gardening, and medicine are to
be passed by without serious consideration, it is not because no
traces of genuine botany occur in them; it is because we are in
search of him with whom the leading idea is that of a philosophy
of plant life and form. The first botanist is the first man who under-
takes research upon plants as plants rather than as things useful or
deleterious to man and beast; and the first landmark in the his-
tory of botany is the earliest book in which plants and plant organs
are discussed each in relation to others. If there is any attempt
to distinguish and define plant organs, or any suggestions about
the probable functions of any of them, any indications of how
plants may be distinguished from minerals on the one hand,
and from animals on the other, any attempts to correlate
plants as like and unlike, and that upon some recognized prin-
ciples— in any and all such endeavors, we recognize the acti-
vities of a philosophic mind in its attempts to solve problems not
economic but scientific. In the author of any such treatise upon
plants, however imperfect or even crude his notions may seem to us,
we have nevertheless the author to whom belongs the name of
botanist, as in the vocabulary of the sciences that name ought to be
defined.

What is here undertaken is not a history of botany. There is
no purpose of presenting in chronological succession the long line of
the contributors to the upbuilding of this science, with an account
of the best contributions each has made. That would be the work
of a lifetime; indeed, of two lifetimes; for the history of no science
can be made out, and presented in its perspective, but by him who
first of all has mastered that science itself, in its completeness ; and
the domain of botany however philosophically restricted remains
vast, insomuch that one lifetime seems requisite to the mastery of
it in its several departments. A second lifetime should, then, be
given to him who should be required to write its history. And
still the presentation of a complete and accurate history of botany
would remain impossible. Important data are wanting, and
hopelessly so. For one example, more than twro millenniums ago
a highly philosophic and very extensive treatise upon plants was
indited which alone among books of its kind has survived the pass-
ing of all the centuries. The author of it cites other authors on
the same topic whose books, then extant, are long since lost. This
writer had also in early life a very illustrious teacher who instructed

10 PREFACE

him orally in botany among other subjects, and who also wrote two-
volumes of botany both of which passed into oblivion more than
two thousand years since. How much, then, of the Theophrastan
botany is that author's own? What of its principles are his only
as having been imparted to him by his great friend and tutor
Aristotle? What passages of the work are but compiled from writ-
ings of a more remote antiquity, with which Theophrastus may
have been familiar, of which even the authors' names have perished?
Questions like these serve but to admonish one of this, that the
earliest beginnings of the science do not admit of discovery.
The same is in a measure true of comparatively recent periods.
The annals of our science, as gathered in hitherto, reveal no more
thrilling epoch than that of the sixteenth century. Some of the
best known authors of that period, Brunfels, Tragus, Fuchsius, stud-
ied, besides the not so very many printed books about plants that
were then extant, numbers of old mediaeval manuscripts from
which they brought forth and quoted many a botanical idea,
several of them well advanced beyond the ideas of the ancients as
we know them. No annalist of a later age seems to have had time
or disposition to ascertain how much of the assumed new and
original botany of those German fathers — so they style them — was
taken out of old mediaeval manuscripts which, although they may
still be extant, later historians have neither consulted nor troubled
themselves to enquire after.

Contemporarily with those German herbalists there flourished in
Italy a learned professor, first at the University of Padua, then at
Bologna, afterwards at Pisa, whom people regarded as the one
peerless botanist of the time. His university lectures were received
as oracular, and students came to him from almost everywhere
in Europe; yet Professor Luca Ghini published nothing. His
supremacy as botanist of the first half of the sixteenth century is
attested by tradition only. In the very next generation after him,
several of the chief luminaries of the science were men whom he had
trained, and to one of them, Cesalpino, there is now everywhere
accorded the praise of having created the epoch of modern botany.
To what extent is Cesalpino's great work, De Plant is, a product
of the mind of Ghini? The question is one that forces itself upon us
and is perhaps the more interesting because hopeless of ever being
answered.

Such are a few examples of what the annalist who would be just
and truthful will often find himself in need of knowing, yet can never
ascertain; and they intimate but too pointedly the impossibility of

PREFACE II

any such thing as a complete and faithful history of any period
when once that period is past. It was as realizing this, and also
as wishing to avoid presumptuousness, that the present writer
declined to undertake a history of botany and chose the title of
" Landmarks " as permitting him to evade the responsibilities of the
consecutive historian, and leaving him free to bring into clearer
light — and especially for study on the part of American botanists—
the lives and teachings of those and those only among botanists of
the past whose names are more familiar. This plan bears on its
face the appearance of an easier task, and such it really is ; though
that it is a less responsible undertaking may be doubted; lor in
this case quite as in the other, one must everywhere investigate
individual merit, which is less apt to exist in proportion to a man's
great contemporaneous popularity than in the inverse ratio of it.
It will indeed be found to have happened now and then that the
genius who has discovered principles has also elucidated them, ap-
plied them to the construction of a system, and gained for himself
and his principles the credit and the honor that were due;
but perhaps rather more commonly the genius discovering prin-
ciples has but quietly made the simple announcement of them,
has died scarcely honored, and has been almost forgotten, when
some other, just far enough above mediocrity to see the value of the
principles, and possessing industry and ambition to bring them
forth and build on them the system which the principles themselves
suggest, gets the credit of the whole, is thought to have created the
epoch, and enjoys the fame. But the annalist who leaves all these
things as he finds them, reiterating popular laudation of the parasitic
propagandist, and burying inventive genius yet more deeply in
oblivion, deplorably falsifies history. Quite as little does he de-
serve the name of historian if his mistakes in this regard be those
of ignorance; if they come of his having failed to discover merit
because of its having lain under the pall of forgetfulness for a cen-
tury or two.

The historian who is both conscientious and discreet will give
small heed to popular opinion about any particular man or epoch.
Neither the adulation of the multitude is of any profound import,
nor its voiceless indifference. Its outspoken opposition and de-
nunciation may even be the highest praise. Such being any
writer's estimate of popular opinion regarding botanical eras past,
his readers will be surprised neither by chapters that are icono-
clastic, nor by such paragraphs as reveal immortal honors due to
men whose names had almost faded from the roll of fame.

12 PREFACE

It has seemed to me desirable that,, in the tracing of these outlines
of botanical history some prominence ought to be given to biography.
The reader or the student of a book can never take the deepest
possible interest in it so long as its author is unknown to him, or,
as it might be said, known by name only; though that is but an
empty phrase; for to know a person by name only is not to know
him at all. A fair knowledge of the whole career, early and late,
of the author of a literary or scientific masterpiece not only in-
tensifies, as I said, one's interest in the work, but is most helpful
to the understanding of it, if not indispensable to the full compre-
hension of it. To this natural and reasonable demand on the part of
those who would like to learn something of the history of botany,
the historians have not well responded. In most cases they give
in a single paragraph, or even in a short foot-note, the year of a
man's birth, that of his demise, perhaps the name of the institution
whence he had his degree, and of those in which he occupied a
professor's chair, and so ends the biography of a man who may have
been a genius and the creator of an epoch in science ; mere epitaphic
statements, which seem only to bury more deeply out of sight the
once living and active personality, and to relegate his very name to
a still remoter place in the region of myth and shadow. There are
probably few botanists of this twentieth century who have the most
vague conception of what a single one of the earlier master builders
of our science was like in his personality and character. To most of
us they are too nearly mythical, and mayhap less livingly pictured
in our minds than are some of those really mythological personages
that men believed in four thousand years ago. It will be seen that
in these studies of the landmarks, I give some prominence to the
biographic aspect of botanical history. This has been done at
great expenditure of time and thought ; but I have felt that the end
wras an extremely desirable one; and I have little or no doubt that
these sketches of the lives of great promoters of our science who
lived in other centuries will be received by many as among the most
welcome and instructive of my paragraphs.

UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM.
Washington, D.C.
2 July, 1907-

Landmarks of Botanical History

By EDWARD LEE GREENE

^7TRODUCTORY

PHILOSOPHY OF BOTANICAL HISTORY

ANY history, in order that it shall merit well the name and an-
swer the requirements, must have its definite philosophy. History
presupposes some end awaiting attainment, and in itself it would
seem to be a well connected record of the thoughts, the words, and
the deeds that have either furthered or hindered the attainment of
that end. It does not, however, assume that the actual makers of
history recognize the ultimate end. That is something which not
even the wisest can foresee otherwise than dimly and with much
uncertainty. The aim of the science of botany, for example,
being the fullest and most perfectly systematized knowledge of
the plant world philosophically considered, it still is true that not
one in a hundred among the rank and file of real contributors to-
ward this ultimate purpose has had it definitely in view. The
great bulk of botanical work hitherto accomplished has been done
in detached pieces, and by such as had only proximate ends before
their mental vision. And for the very best of research work no
more is needed. He who carefully investigates and puts on record
the whole life history of a dandelion or of a violet; who gives the
whole anatomy of a few mosses, reeds, or sedges, or indicates the
morphologic distinctions between the pollen grains of hollyhock and
those of thistles, or traces the development of either one; who brings
out the philosophy of the twining of a morning-glory stem, or
indicates the organogeny or the functions of the stipules of vetch
and pea; or he who after years of critical field study catalogues,
with original notes and observations, the flowering plants — or the

13

14 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

fiowerless ones — of a single county, or of the watershed of any
lake or stream, every such laborer contributes to the stock of
botanical knowledge, and this without reference to personal con-
prehensiveness of botanical view, or a looking to far off ultimate
ends.

Upon the historian of botany, however, it seems to devolve
that he shall have some forecast of what botany in its perfection
as a science shall be like; for in practice he sits in judgment on
each epoch and decides whether as an epoch its tendency was more
to the advancement of the science than to its retardation; from
which kind of procedure it becomes certain that some ideal of
perfection is in his mind. Every writer on botanical history must
have his philosophy of that history, unless he content himself
and hope to satisfy his readers with disconnected historic frag-
ments.

It may be useful to survey in this connection, though with the
utmost brevity, the methods of several representative historians
of botany.

Tournefort (1700), eminent among even the greatest promoters
of botany, was also its historian. The first fifty pages of his
Institutiones1 are occupied with an abridged history of the science
during two thousand years preceding his own date. The history
is prefaced by a definition. There are two parts to botany: the
knowledge of plants, and the knowledge of the uses (vertus) of
them. It is a distinguishing between systematic botany and
economic. He says the distinction must be carefully noted. He
denies to the properties or uses of plants any part in, or influence
upon, the systematizing of them. A systematized presentation
of the known facts constitutes the first beginning of every science.
There can be absolutely no botany at all without systematic
botany. These are Tournefort's ground principles. From them we
shall gather his philosophy of the advancement of botany. The
plant world can never come to be well known until sounder prin-
ciples of classification shall have been established, and the whole
aggregate of known plants shall have been grouped over again upon
those better principles. The long line of the most noted authors
before him had classified plants in all kinds of ways, some according
to characters of the roots, some by differences of stems and leaves,
one^by fruits alone, another by the qualities and uses of the plants;
another grouping them according to their places of growth, or
ecologically, as we now say. Seldom were the systems of any two

1 Institutions Rei Herbaria, Paris, 1700.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE iq

authors at even approximate agreement. Often that of an indi-
vidual author was a compound of inconsistencies, utterly inhar-
monious within itself. As to that very first necessity of botany,
rational system, confusion seemed to reign. The flower was an
organ hitherto little studied, and scarcely yet appealed to in the
art or science of plant grouping. Two or three botanists of a
century earlier than Tournefort had suggested that, after all, not
in roots or stems or leaves, but in the flower there might per-
chance be found the key to a more satisfactory method of plant
classifying. He undertook now a new systematization of the world
of plants, everywhere appealing to anthology in so far as by the
presence of flowers and fruits the appeal was possible. Ceasing
to take as criteria the qualities of plants, or even the characters
of their vegetative organs, and by giving special and close study to
both flowers and fruits instead, with judicious co-ordination and
use of the characters of both, will botanical system henceforward
obtain best furtherance.

With neither the strong points nor the weak ones in Tournefort's
system, nor with its success or failure, are we here concerned. All
that will engage us now is his conception of botany as a science in
process of further development and improvement; in other words,
what he would have taken to be the leading philosophic threads of
botanical history. They would probably be two, at least as chiefly
conspicuous ; for during his career his mind had been much occupied
with (i) the thought that better and more firmly established generic
groups had been the most crying need of botany from the earliest
times, and (2) that such more acceptable and more securely estab-
lished genera would result from the defining of them according to
morphology of flower and fruit, the consideration of vegetative
organs being omitted as far as possible. So then, from his own
outlook over the past of botany and from his best forecasting of its
future, they have helped it forward most who have most contri-
buted to a better anthology and carpology, and such obtain with
him foremost places in his epitome of botanical history. The
fullest credit is given to all botanical travellers to distant shores
who have contributed to the enrichment of botanical gardens,
and to the making of illustrated folios representing flowers and
fruits of plants alien and rare. Meanwhile how small consideration
Tournefort accorded to plant anatomy and physiology is evinced
by this, that in his history he has not a line to spare for the names
of Grew and Malpighi, great promoters though they were of the
cause of plant organography in general, and well entitled to rank

l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54.

among creative botanists. We may chance to find historians of
less comprehensiveness of view than Tournefort, and some with
greater.

Two generations later a countryman of his, Michel Adanson,
sketched less succinctly than Tournefort had done the history
of botany. It forms the more important part of a voluminous pre-
face to Adanson's Families des Plantes. 1 Eighty-five years after its
first publication this History was reprinted, with many augmenta-
tions which the author had left in manuscript at the time his death.2

A man whom all nature in her every phase attracted and en-
gaged, but still first and last and always a botanist, Adanson's
horizon was a broad one. He was also a botanist with a specialty,
that of discovering how genera naturally stand together in larger
groups that may be called families. On the whole, and if such dis-
tinction be allowed as legitimate, he was a systematic botanist;
most pronouncedly such. But the sketch that he gives of the
history of botany is neither partial nor one-sided. He reviews the
science as having progressed along many lines, not one of them
unimportant. But since it is families of plants that he is now to
treat of at length, the foremost thought in his mind in the writing of
a history of botany as a preface to the book is, that he may demon-
strate the early rise and tardy progress of this very idea of plant
families. It is not, however, the history of that one aspect of
botany merely that he writes. Something a little too near the
one-idea history was what Tournefort had presented; even as one
may to-day say of the latest of all the historians of our science, that
he came rather too near to excluding from very thoughtful consid-
eration almost everything except the history of plant anatomy and
physiology, and of the taxonomy of the cryptogams. Adanson
appears to have realized that no one part of botany is alienable from •
any other part ; that the history of a part of it can not be written
as disconnected from that of the other parts; and therefore, con-
nectedly with the presentation of whatever had been done before
his time towards a natural correlating or grouping of genera, he
brings into view not only that line, but others along which botany
has made progress ; paying due respect to every kind of effort that
makes for a fuller knowledge of the plant world.

With the main purpose, then, of finding early traces of the re-
cognition of something like natural families, Adanson analyzes

1 Families des Plantes, Paris, 1763, Partie I. Preface pp. i-cliv.

2 Families Naturelles des Plantes de Michel Adanson, z ed. Par MM.
Alexandra Adanson et J. Payer, Paris, 1847.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE I 7

briefly and in chronological succession more than sixty leading au-
thors, beginning with Theophrastus and ending with some who
have been contemporary with himself in the middle of the eigh-
teenth century. Assuming that these analyses are correct, one may
read connectedly, with small sacrifice of time and as it were step
by step the progress which, up to Adanson's time, had been made
in the grouping of genera into families — or whatever else one may
choose to call such groups; and, while it will be regarded an im-
portant one among several threads that the philosophical and im-
partial historian is bound to follow I know not who besides Adanson
has ever attempted to trace this one except for a very short distance.1

And the next thread of botanical story which Adanson picks
up and follows is one that lies close alongside the aforementioned.
The earlier endeavors to indicate groups of genera were made an-
teriorly to the time when structure of flower and fruit had come
to be accepted as the guide. By what marks did those pioneers of
classification guide themselves in their attempted groupings? By
way of answer I give a short selection from Adanson's own more
detailed report of the matter. Lobel (1570), he says was guided
by general resemblances, size, qualities, and uses; Porta (1588), by
ecology, forms of roots, of leaves, and vegetative organs generally;
J. Bauhin (1650), has 40 classes, by appeal to all organs, as well
as to properties of plants and their ecology; Rivinus (1690), in-
florescence, calyx, and corolla; Boerhaave (1710), general aspects,
ecology, leaves, fruits; Haller (1742), cotyledons, calyx, corolla,
stamens, seeds; Gleditsch (1749), flowers, insertion of stamens; and
so on through a list of some sixty writers, each a celebrity in his
day as the author of some new attempt at system in botany.2 Of
a situation like this, and one so necessary to be brought forward in
any history of the science, Sachs knewnothing, neither even Sprengel.

There is another outlook upon the progress of botany that is
almost peculiarly Adanson's. At the beginning of the analysis of
each author's treatise he notifies us how many different kinds of
plants each man knew, or had under discussion in his book — Theo-
phrastus 500, Hermann 5600, Tournefort 10,146, Ray 18,655, as
examples — thus recognizing at every step the important considera-
tion that, other things being equal, the greater the number of plant

1 Linnaeus in his Classes Plantarum accomplished this admirably for a
very limited period, that is, for the time between 1583 and 1738; only a small
fraction of the time during which the idea of classes, or families, had been
in the minds of botanists and found more or less distinct expression.

2 Adanson, Families, vol. i, pp. Ixxxix-xciii.

l8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

forms a man knows, the safer his conclusions as to the interrelations
of all, or of the members of any group of them.

Of course the specialist in plant anatomy, little interested in the
whole chain of plant relationships — he to whom 500 species were
enough for his own purposes — may chance not to be in sympathy
with these searchings of all corners of the earth for new plants. 1

But to what comprehension of the whole of botany has such a
mind attained? It would have something like its parallel in the
astronomer, if such astronomer there had been, who had deprecated
the labor involved in the discovery of the planets Uranus and Nep-
tune upon the plea that there was already enough to do with the
rings of Saturn and the canals of Mars. At least somewhat like
that is the attitude of the historian who makes light of the work
of plant discovery and plant description. To ascertain, as Adanson
was at the pains of doing, what number of species a given systemat-
ist had known, was the only possible way of informing himself of the
comprehensiveness of the man's view of things. And as to the ideal
and ultimate perfection of knowledge of the vegetable kingdom,
that is manifestly impossible of attainment, so long as a single
type, either living or fossil, remains undiscovered and undescribed.
It is a principle which not only justifies, but, in the interests of the
science as viewed without partiality or prejudice and compre-
hensively, imperatively demands the most thorough exploration of
every field, the equipment of the best possible botanic gardens and
herbaria, and also the highest possible perfection of the art of
phytography, that is, plant diagnosis or description.

Of incalculable usefulness to the student of systematization is
phytography. Its purpose is that of enabling the botanist to
measurably complete his knowledge of this and that group of plants
only some proportion of the species of which he has been able to
see, inspect, and study in the living state. All that a man may
learn about plants in twenty years of field work, supplemented by
all that gardens and herbaria have to show, will not amount to the
knowledge of any more than a fractional part of the specific mem-
bership of as much as one of the many families or considerable genera
of higher plants. For the rounding out of his knowledge —general,
even superficial knowledge— of whatsoever plant alliance, one is
always dependent on descriptions. It is one of the most important
conditions of all general botany ; one that was fully recognized at
the beginning ; also one that will forever remain. It has always been
and it will always be, that a good plant description, placed before

i Sachs, Geschichte, pp. 42, 43- English edition, pp. 39, 40-

'

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 19

one mentally equipped for the exact interpretation of it. is decidedly
more satisfactory than the usual herbarium fragment of a plant.

Yet one word as to correct and incorrect phytography. One
who has a new plant in hand, and who knows it thoroughly from
root to seed, may use the whole of an octavo page and the half of
another in what will be supposed to have been an attempt to
picture this type in words. This same plant may be much more
distinctly pictured to the mind of the trained and habituated
phytographer in one-fourth that space or even less, by using the set
terminology of descriptive botany. This was invented for the two-
fold purpose of saving space and increasing perspicuity in plant
definition. In its most nearly perfected state it is quite modern;
and the history of this terminology is a very significant part of
botanical history. The discovery of each term was, in its day, a
distinctly botanical discovery and an important one ; yet the Spren-
gels and Sachses have given rarely a hint of the evolution of ter-
minology. To have made out lucidly its history would have been
a heavy tax on precious time. Adanson almost alone, it may be
said, has not neglected it. It was seen by him that in a well de-
vised scheme of botanical history an account of the development of
descriptive terminology and the art of describing should find place.
Accordingly in these mere outlines for such history he charges
certain authors with having described plants poorly; others he
remarks upon as having described them fairly, while to here and
there he gives the praise of having described them well.

One must not pursue further the subject of Adanson's topical
divisions. Those presented may suffice for what I wished to il-
lustrate, namely his appreciation of what ought to enter into the
making of a history of botany. Synoptically placed, those few of
his topics of which I make mention are :

1 . History of grouping of genera as classes or families.

2. History of accepted criteria of affinity.

3. Progress in discovery of new types.

4. Development of phytography and its terminology.

This mere beginning of Adanson's scheme of history will enable
me to indicate the contrast that subsists between his and that of
Sprengel, whose not unpretentious work in two volumes was given
to the public one year after Adanson's death.1 Out of the four
Adansonian topics named above, only one, the third, obtains good
treatment at the hands of Sprengel. The first and second are blank
with him; while under the fourth one may gather little beyond

» C. Sprengel, Historia Rei Herbariae, Amsterdam, 1808, 2 vols., 8vo.

20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

some salient points in the history of anthology. Anatomy and
physiology are so discussed as if not inseparably connected with
botany proper. Indeed in his partitioning of the science into the
two compartments of the Systematic and Structural he expresses
his mind to the effect that while Botany proper is a part of Natural
History, the consideration of the inner structure and physiology of
plants belongs rather to Physiology.1 His treatment of these, as
developed in the course of the seventeenth century is nevertheless
full and explicit. But it is progress in the disco very of new types,
history of botanical exploration at home and abroad, and the
enrichment of botanical gardens, which more particularly engage
Sprengel; and, as Adanson had been more interested in the de-
velopment of the idea of plant families, Sprengel, as a devoted
Linnaean, gives himself to the investigation of the history of genera
and species. All the long way from Theophrastus to Linnaeus
Sprengel lists new types generic and specific as discovered and
published by prominent authors ; so that a fair chronological history
of at least the European Flora is furnished ; and these lists of each
man's discoveries form so large a part of the body of his work that its
principal index is an idex of genera and species.

There is no need of pursuing beyond this brief initiative our
examination into the somewhat diverse philosophies of botanical
history that have hitherto found expression. Every one may be
permitted to have his own. In the present treatise exception will
be taken to one assumption made by all earlier historians, that for
the earliest intimations of anything looking in the direction of the
science of botany we must have recourse to those oldest pieces of
literature in which plants are more or less freely mentioned.
Adanson, for example, does not begin botanical history without
naming Orpheus, Musa, Solomon, Hesiod, Homer, Metrodorus, and
Hippocrates who as poets or as physicians wrote of plants. Spren-
gel has among his initial chapters one bearing the title "Flora
Biblica" another "Flora Homerica, " another, "Flora Hippocra-
tica " ; and these chapters of Sprengel are botany, even very interest-
ing botany2 ; but this is not saying that there is botany in the Sacred
Scriptures, or in the poems of Homer, or in the medical writings of
Hippocrates. They are, however, classic texts upon which a man
of Spren gel's rare accomplishments may write botany. And yet
I seem to apprehend certain rudiments of a science of botany in
those ancient pieces of literature, the real substance of which those

1 Sprengel, Hist. Rei Herb., vol. i, p. 3.
1 Ibid,, vol. i, pp. 6-4Q.

LANDMARKS OF BDTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 21

authors of botanical commentary on the Bible, on Homer, on
Vergil, and the classics generally, have completely overlooked.
Let me repeat it, that in several pieces of very old literature there
are legible traces of a science of botany; traces of which even
learned and botanically instructed commentators seem to have
failed to take due note.

Here, let any reader who has supposed that certain sciences had
their beginnings in the minds ot men who wrote books, banish, if
possible, that idea. No opinion ever held by a multitude of people
was more groundless. If, according to the definitions given by
authorities, science is classified knowledge and classification is the
process of distinguishing and separating between things like and
unlike .then there are certain of our sciences the earliest rudiments of
which are almost among the very necessities of human speech. It
will not be easy to imagine a tribe of wandering savages on any
continent or in any age unused to the distinctions of plain, hill,
mountain, or spring, brook, river, lake, and ocean. Their very
languages will show that their mind had wrought out these per-
fectly solid and immovable foundations of the science of Geography.
Long subsequently the man of enlightenment, he who knows how to
commit thought to writing, takes this old and hitherto unwritten
classification of the diversities of the earth's surface, gives it logical
statement, dignifies it with the Greek name Geography, and then
proceeds to build as on very old yet firm foundations his nobler
edifice. He may or may not recognize it that those indispensable
group names, plain and mountain, lake and river, are but a heritage
to his scientific geography from a very far off antiquity; from an
antiquity the history of which neither has been written, nor ever
will be. It were well, however, that the geographer should perceive
it that the real first beginnings of his science are not with the author
of any book, but that they antedate all writing.

Botany, as certainly as geography, had its initiative in primal man's
distinguishings and separatings between objects appertaining to the
world of plants. The fact that in the rudest and simplest dialects
of primitive peoples there exist group names for botanical entities
establishes this. It is improbable that there ever was a primitive
language, other than that of some arctic tribe, in which there did not
occur words equivalent to tree, bush, grass, or to trunk, branch,
leaf, fruit, root; and every one of these is the name, not of an indi-
vidual object, but of a group of like objects. Each is a general — a
generic — name, and each testifies most clearly to observation,
comparison, reflection, generalization, and also either the invention

22 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

of a new word, or else the more extended application of an old one,
which, in as far as sciencs is concerned amounts to the same thing.
It is possible to trace to a time that lies well within the period
of modern botany the first detection and first naming of that kind
of organ which we call a stipule ; but no one will have the hardihood
to propose that we may trace to its first employment the term leaf.
Yet this term, which one may never hope to trace to its origin, is
as strictly botanical as the later term stipule, and more important.
Furthermore, there was a time when the very term leaf — or at
least its equivalent in some lost language of a primal race — first
came into use. And still further, the mental processes by which a
Malpighi arrives at the distinguishing between the stipule and the
other parts of the leaf, and those by which the unknown primal
investigator came to distinguish between leaf and the stem or
branch that bears it, are the same. Neither was more nor less
scientific than the other. Each equally with the other had done a
piece of strictly botanical research. This is not affirming equality
of intelligence for the two, or questioning that he of the later time
was capable of solving many problems of plant life impossible of
solution by him of the earlier era. Also the motives leading to
examination and distinguishing may have been quite different: he
of the more recent period was actuated it may have been by that
scientific curiosity, that mere zeal for knowledge, which often fires
the cultivated mind; he of the primeval time was impelled per-
haps by sheer necessity. He is much dependent on the plant world
for life's comforts, even for its necessities. One part of a tree is
of great use to him for one purpose, another part for a very different
purpose, a third being of no use. Therefore from his utilitarian
point of view it becomes manifestly needful that the different parts
of plants be distinguished and each different part named. Language
demands the introduction of such terms. But the mental pro-
cesses, I repeat it, are the same in either case, and without respect
to the actuating motive. It is all work of examining, comparing,
distinguishing, segregating, and naming the segregates. Every
step in the procedure of either is scientific. If one is tributary to a
science of botany, so is the other. And if these reflections seem to
indicate that scientific botany may be, as to its first elements, older
than all literature, what of it? There is but one point of view
from which it will be disputed, namely that which regards man as
having made his first appearance on earth in a condition of advanced
intelligence, with a well-developed language, and also bearing
a divine commission to assign names to all manner of natural

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 23

objects at first sight.1 When one notes the perfect silence of the
historians as to the possible origin of the most common and uni-
versal botanic terms, one seems forced to conclude that they ac-
cepted this doctrine of the sudden and inspirational derivation
of them; and that then, as if unwilling to say so, they evaded
the subject by going about the completely different and really
quite irrelevant task of cataloguing the trees, shrubs, and herbs
mentioned in the Bible, giving them the appellations due them
according to the nomenclature of Linnaeus' Species Plantarum.
This was all a mere matter of giving the Linnaean Latin names of
certain plants in place of their more ancient Hebrew names. It
was not approaching by so much as one step the origin of botany,
but rather, as I have said, evading the search.

Assuming that the simplest and most universally employed botanic
terms entered into human speech not all at once by sudden and
supernatural illumination of one particular mind, but one after
another as a part of the natural and gradual evolution of language,
it will be conceded that they had been formed and in use during long
ages of human existence that preceded the invention of writing.
And the chief botanical interest attaching to very early writings will
be, not in that they furnish a few score Hebrew or Greek names of
plants which the well skilled botanist of a recent period may trans-
late into the terms of modern nomenclature; it will be in this, first
of all, that they incidentally record names of some plant organs.
Such words as fruit, seed, branch, leaf, and root occur, and these
seem to reveal it that plants in numbers have been looked into and
studied organologically, and with such success that these names of
different parts of trees and herbs are already an indispensable and a
firmly settled part of every language. Moreover, the terms tree
and herb, grass and grain tell as plainly another story, that of a pre-
historic distributing of plants in groups according to resemblances.
These two kinds, or at least two phases, of botany are in the writings
of Moses and of Homer, and perhaps more valuable because there
only incidentally, that is, without botanical thought or purpose
in the minds of the writers themselves. They only happen to
give us, as through a window accidentally left open, a view in which
we see individual plants consisting of named parts or organs, and
also assemblages of individual plants, some spoken of as grass, some
as herbs, some as thorns, others as thistles, some as bushes, others
as trees. Though it be no more than a passing glimpse that one has
gained, it is enough to excite curiosity, and to suggest a number of

1 Genesis vol. ii, pp. 19, 20.

24 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

queries legitimately botanical as to just what, in so primitive a time,
may have been the full meaning and acceptation of this or that
morphologic or taxonomic term as thus early in general use. Such
questionings may not necessarily be idle or useless. There being
no room for doubt that as far back as the time of Homer, and even
of Moses, there was at least here and there a person somewhat
specially skilled in the knowledge of plants, how would such a one
have applied, for example, the term root? How many things, in
his mind, would have been included under that name? What, in a
word, might have been his definition of a root? Possibly we shall
never know. Neither is it wholly impossible that we may some
day ascertain it, at least approximately; for not so very many cen-
turies after Homer specialists in plant knowledge began to write
books upon the subject. Some of those books are still extant, and
in print ; though they have been made too little use of thus far by our
historians, some of whom appear to have been disposed to divide
the honors of elementary plant organography between Adam and
Linnaeus; which was an easy way of evading an important though
most difficult part of botanical history. In the writings, I say, of the
earliest of professedly botanical authors there would be reasonable
expectation of finding a clue to that primitive conception of the
root which was theirs who introduced the word into speech; for
always the first work of him who is ready to reform and rebuild a
science is that of showing wherein the prevailing opinions are at
fault. To him nothing is more necessary than this. Our appeal
in this instance must be made to Theophrastus of Eresus, whose
writings on the philosophy of plant life and form are the oldest
that are extant. As a controversialist this philosopher is of the
mildest type; more apt to suggest, urbanely, that an old opinion
may be wrong than bluntly to pronounce it false. His whole
treatment of the subject of the roots of plants reads as if
he had gone to work stealthily to undermine an old and every-
where received opinion that roots are simply the underground
parts of plants. He names two or three familiar species
which, as he reminds his readers, produce roots that are aerial,
or at least not subterranean. Then he cites, and very well
describes, certain subterranean parts — bulbs and corms, we call
them now — which he thinks hardly ought to be considered roots.
That Theophrastus openly discredits the doctrine that a root is a
root because of its being subterraneously located is proof enough
that it was the doctrine commonly received in his time. We are
also perfectly warranted in believing that the exceptions he takes

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 25

to it are his own and new; because no writer in ancient times was
more careful than he to attribute to their proper authors any new or
remarkable opinions which met with his own approval. But, that
the primeval understanding of the root was that which I have sup-
posed is again attested by its universal prevalence in our own time
among people who have not been initiated into, or influenced by,
the botany taught in our schools. Such peoples, dwelling in all
parts of the world, if engaged in farming or gardening hold to a
certain classification of farm products, and are wont to speak of
grain crops, root crops, etc., using the last named expression with-
out ever a suspicion that a potato is a kind of branch, and an onion
a kind of bud. Beyond doubt a very great majority of the in-
habitants of the earth to-day, if questioned upon the matter, would
answer promptly, and fearless of contradiction, that whatever
part of a plant grows beneath the soil is its root ; and if any remotely
domiciled rustic between Nova Scotia and Patagonia should re-
mark that a white potato is a tuber and that onions are not roots
but bulbs, we should know without parley that his abandonment
of the principles of primeval plant organography had been brought
to pass under the influence of modern book or school.

The survival of these primitive notions about the subterranean
organs is more interesting than the origin of those notions. The
tardiness of their displacement by a more rational organology is to
my mind one of the curiosities of botanical history. That most
complicated and difficult of organs, the flower, began to be well
understood as early as the dawn of the eighteenth century; but
at a time when, by the aid of better microscopes, the important
function of stamens had been brought to light, and the doctrine
of the flower thereby revolutionized and nearly perfected, it still
remained that the rhizomes of iris, the bulbs of lilies and tulips, and
the corms of crocuses were called roots by all the botanists; this
also some two thousand years after Theophrastus of Eresus had
suggested that it might not be very good organology. And as for
our historians, I have not found with one of them any intimation
of who it was who at last solved for us the hard problem of an
acceptable definition of a stem; the definition which at once com-
pelled the recognition of subterranean stems as being stems, not
roots. In my view this has always appeared to be one of the most
signal triumphs of organographic research. Using the term under-
standingly and comprehensively, organography is more than half
of botany. It is the whole foundation and framework of the
science, and a good deal more than that. The progress of botany

26 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS V DL. 54

all along is largely identifiable with the advancement that has been
made in the knowledge of plant organs; yet it is just this which one
is able to learn least about from the historians. This statement
must be qualified by the admission that, as regards that sudden leap
forward which anthology made early in the eighteenth century,
Sprengel is quite explicit ; though he gives little indeed of its earlier
history. It is also acknowledged that the story of the rise of
microscopic organology, and its progress down to the middle of the
nineteenth century was given by Sachs, and with such fulness as
to make it occupy more than half his entire volume of the History
of Botany. Still these are but separate and disconnected chapters
in the real history of organology.

If I here indicate this incompleteness of the history of botany as
hitherto presented, it is not because I dare hope in these land-
mark chapters to make good the deficiency, though earnest and
laborious effort is made to show how I think it may be done.

That prehistorically and primevally there existed not only an
organology of plants but also a classification of the familiar kinds
has already been suggested; and the proposition may here receive
clearer statement. Moreover, certain somewhat stilted and pedan-
tic views rather widely prevalent respecting systematic botany as
of recent origin, no less than the interests of a truer philosophy of
botanical history, seem to call for a vindication of this thesis.

Owing to the profusion of plant individuals on the face of
the earth everywhere, the bewildering diversity of their forms,
and the usefulness of them to man, it was never possible for
men, at whatever stage of mental development, to intercom-
municate concerning plants without having group names for
them. Words that should have application to particular as*
semblages or kinds of plants were among the earlier necessities
of language; and to speak of plants under group names is nothing
less than to speak of them as already classified. The classification
has necessarily preceded the invention, and the adoption into
language, of the collective name. By way of illustration I select
out of a hundred or two of plant names which in our English speech
are as old as the language itself, the word "clover." It tells its own
story. It was applied to certain plants which were seen to have
this common characteristic, that each leaf was made up of — cloven
into — three separate equal and in every way consimilar leaves.
I say leaves in order to avoid being anachronistic ; because leaflet is a
term of really very modern invention; one unknown in English, and
without its equivalent in any other language, at least of Europe,

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 2J

until the middle of the seventeenth century. Now clover was
from the first the name of an assemblage of individuals; if of in-
dividual plants of several somewhat different kinds all exhibiting
the common leaf character then it was what it now long has been —
a generic name. It ought to seem superfluous to say that clover is
just as much a generic name as Trifolium, and that white clover,
red clover, and alsike clover are as perfectly binary specific names as
Trifolium re pens, T. pratense, and T. hybridum; but, as I have
intimated already, the curious notion is here and there prevalent
that a genus is not a genus, nor a species a species, until it obtain
a Latin name. I have thought desirable to indicate thus plainly the
incontestable fact that to the most primitive and untaught of herds-
men and cultivators, in their close dependence upon many mem-
bers of the plant world, generic names and specific are as much a
necessity, and as certainly in every-day use, as they are with us
their school-taught posterity who call ourselves botanists. The
true philosophy of botanical history seems to call for special in-
sistence on this fact; as also that the viewing of a number of related
genera, and the speaking of them under a family name, is likewise
of a very remote antiquity. The English collective plant name
"pulse" is as old as the language itself, as covering under a mono-
syllable all the sorts of peas, beans, vetches, and lentils. It is
nothing less than a family name, invented as a means of briefly
designating the whole natural group of those cultivated plants of
various genera which, in recent botany, are called Papilionaceas.
Ancient Latin writers, to whom many genera of umbelliferous
plants were known familiarly, saw plainly their interrelationship
and called the whole assemblage of them the Ferulaceae, naming it
after the well-known genus Ferula which, as a genus, is represented
by several species in the Mediterranean flora. And all this the
Latins had only borrowed from a still more ancient Greek botany;
for the Greeks had known as well the genus Ferula under the name
Narthex, and were used to speak of the whole line of related genera
as the Narthecodes.

From these two or three lucid examples of the naturalness of
plant classifying taken from the records of antiquity, let us pro-
ceed to make some enquiry into like usages as they obtain among
the most untaught in our own time. It is improbable that there
may not be found in every country of the Old World peasant peo-
ples who, entirely uninfluenced by books or schools, have never-
theless each some rudimentary system of botany; some terms
expressive of their own classify ings of plants, at least such kinds of

28 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

them as they have much to do with, whether as herdsmen, as
cultivators of the soil, or as woodsmen. An American student,
however untravelled except in his own broad country, may have
gathered even here illustrations enough of the principle now under
consideration.

To the colonists and early settlers of a new country no native
products of the soil are more important than the trees. Timber,
lumber, wood for all kinds of building and fencing purposes, for
the construction of bridges, vehicles, and household furniture, not
to speak of fuel, bark for tanning purposes, and in autumn mast of
nuts and acorns for the fattening of swine for the slaughter — these
are among the reasons why early settlers always located their first
domiciles along the edges of great forests. And now, if we remind
ourselves of certain conditions of the first colonists who came to
these shores from western Europe three centuries ago, we shall
realize that, while they found themselves in the midst of a land
bountifully supplied with timber, the particular kinds were new
and strange to them. Nothing was quite the same as anything
that they had known in the Old World; and no kind of informa-
tion would have been more welcome to these colonists than
that relating to the enduring and wearing qualities of the
woods of these different kinds of strange trees. Every kind
was untested, and there was no one to teach them. All had
to be learned by trial and experience. Yet not quite all; for,
to a band of colonists of three centuries ago, coming to these shores
from England, there must be credited such knowledge of English
trees and timber as was usual with Englishmen of that period; a
knowledge that would be of some service to them as American
colonists notwithstanding that American trees were of a much
greater number of species, and none quite identical with and
European kinds. They had brought with them across the sea a
knowledge of oak, walnut, chestnut, beech, elm, linden, and some
other trees. As for the chestnut, the beech, and the linden, they
found but one kind of each here, and these not very notably unlike
their congeneric European species. The settlers would naturally
expect to find the American trees of these sorts available for the
same economic purposes as their European allies. Neither as to the
aspect of the trees nor the qualities of their wood was there so
much difference; but with those very important timber trees, the
oak and the walnut, the case was different. In place of the one
European kind of walnut, the Virginian forests presented, them
with at least a half-dozen, each strikingly unlike the Old World

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 2Q

type, both as to characteristics of foliage and fruit, and as to color
and qualities of the wood. If one type of these peculiarly American
walnuts bears to-day the name of White Walnut, l it is undoubtedly
because the first settlers of Virginia, taking it for a probable equi-
valent of the English Walnut for lumbering purposes, found its wood
to be by comparison much lighter in color, and named the tree, after
the usages of lumbermen, by the color of its wood. The Black
Walnut 2 in like manner obtained its name from the almost blackish
hue of its wood compared with that of the tree of Europe.3 And
both these names bear distinctly the marks of an early colonial
origin; for no native American woodsman of however early a
period would have known the wood of the European Walnut so
as to have made the comparisons.

From this representation of colonists as practical woodsmen—
beyond all cavil an essentially faithful representation — it appears
that men without the least training in school botany, exploring
the woodland resources of a new continent with none other than
utilitarian ends in view, find systematic botany an indispensable
necessity, create for themselves a serviceable system of woodland
taxonomy, make themselves the pioneers of taxonomic research
in the new field; this not, however, as using the terms taxonomy and
classification; not even as necessarily knowing so much as the name
of the science which they are practising. Let us distinguish mental
processes. Nothing more is here needful. He who is occupied
with testing wood or timber as to its economic usefulness is doing
the part of the industrialist. He who compares one sort of living
tree with another, noting by what marks of habit, of bark, of foliage
or of fruit the two may be distinguished, and who determines to
call one of them by one name and the other by some name that is
different, is doing exactly the work of the botanical systematist.
This man may never have learned a syllable of the terminology
employed in schools of botany. He may not have heard the Latin
name for oak, for maple, for poplar, or any other genus of trees, or
even the word genus ; but he is a botanical systematist none the less ;
and since his business obliges him to be this he proves the utility
of botanical system. It is not possible for the occupations of the
farmer, the herdsman, or the lumberman to be carried on without
botanical classification and a fixed nomenclature of both genera and
species. Therefore those thus engaged have never at any time in

1 Juglans alba, Linn.

2 Juglans nigra, Linn.

3 Juglans regia, Linn.

30 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

history waited for the schools and the school-trained botanists.
They have made their own botany, have established both system
and nomenclature; and these, in so far as they had proceeded, the
professionals when they came upon the scene adopted. The two,
that of rustic, of mountaineer, of herdsman, and of woodsman, and
that of the schools, are as essentially one botany, as certainly one
in kind, as wild pears, wild apples, and wild grapes are respectively
one in kind with their cultivated and improved offspring of the
orchards and vineyards. If this be true, then the annals of
botanical science have another beginning than that which our
annalists have assigned it.

When once it is seen that group names for plants are as old as
language, and that these very names establish it that men always
in all ages classified the many plants with which they had to do,
there is another matter which immediately calls for careful in-
vestigation, that is, the parts of the plants to which rude primeval
botanists looked for the marks by which to range their plants in
convenient groups. We have already seen that Adanson alone
among historians perceived that attempts had been made down
through all the centuries to group plants by other data than those
of flower and fruit. In bringing this fact into view, and by citing
a long line of early authors in attestation of it, he was fearlessly
contradicting, and at the same time successfully controverting
what his contemporary, Linnaeus, had said when in the warmth
of his zeal for the great Cesalpino he had pronounced him first
in the order of time among real systematists. l The truth about
.Cesalpino was simply this, that he had been the first to attempt
an orderly arrangement of the plant world by universal appeal to
the fruit and seed ; and that alone would still have been the super-
lative of praise, doubtless well merited. But that the Cesal-
pinian system seemed incomparably superior to every one that had
preceded it could never become a warrant for saying that those
systems antedating it might be left out of view altogether, as never
having been systems at all. I can conceive of nothing which
science more inflexibly exacts of every scientific man than truth-
fulness. She cannot permit an enthusiastic fancy to take the
place of fact. But there have been successive generations of
botanists since Linnaeus who, as if swearing by his authority as if
he had been infallible, have seemed to have no idea that any plant
classifying ever was attempted upon any other than that antho-
carpological basis which now for some three centuries has been

1 Linnasus, Philosophia Botanica, § 54.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 3!

steadily in use. As a mere prejudgment it is deeply seated in the
botanical mind of to-day, that nothing can be done, or ever could
have been done, in the direction of an orderly arranging of the
world of plants but by appeal to characters of flower and fruit.
And along with this prejudice there dwells another as deeply
ingrained, namely, that the flower was the same thing to botanists
of four hundred years ago, if not to those of three thousand years
since, which it is to us; whereas not yet two centuries have passed
since the flower began to be known. Our classifying by flower and
fruit was fairly established while as yet the corolla was regarded as
the principal part of the flower, and was in fact the synonym for
flower, without even its name corolla.

Something may be done towards undermining these prejudices
by giving a few examples of primitive systematizing as undertaken
while as yet the flower, as to its essentials and its functions, re-
mained an undiscovered organ.

For a good illustration of classifying by leaf characters alone,
those of flower and fruit being quite ignored, we need go no farther
back than the later years of the sixteenth century and the first
quarter of the seventeenth. Let us limit ourselves to the forty years
intervening between 1583 and 1623; also inspecting certain pages
of two of the widely known and thoroughly approved professional
botanists of the time, Rembert Dodonaeus and Caspar Bauhin.
The genus Clover, in ancient Latin Trifolium, in Greek Triphyllon,
already referred to in this chapter, is an ample one with the authors
named. Bauhin's book contains names and descriptions of some
sixty species ; and since both he and Dodonaeus are almost as strict
adherents of binary nomenclature as was Linnaeus himself who
came into this field of nomenclature a century later, it will be easy
to show what they received into the genus Trifolium by presenting
here two opposite columns of binary names. In as far as they
admitted to their Clover genus genuine clovers as we now un-
derstand them, the reproduction of their names need not be made.

Dodonaeus (1583), and Bauhin (1623) Recent Names

Trifolium bituminosum Psoralea bituminosa.

Trifolium odoratum Melilotus officinalis.

Trifolium corniculatum Lotus corniculatus.

Trifolium cochleatum Medicago orbicularis.

Trifolium palustre Menyanthes trifoliata.

Trifolium acetosum Oxalis acetosella.

Trifolium hepaticum Hepatica triloba.

32 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

It ought here to be noted that for the combining of Melilotus with
Trifolium, Dodonaeus is reponsible but not Bauhin, who at this
point saw fit to abandon the trifoliolate leaves as essentially and
without exception conclusive of membership in Trifolium. He
does not, however, as others had done before him, accept the
melilot species as constituting a genus of their own, but places them
all as members of the genus Lotus, where also some species are
trifoliolate, others not so.

I observe also that if only the first four of the species of the above
list had gained admission to Trifolium along with the clovers proper,
one might have thought it probable that some dependence, after all,
had been placed upon the floral structure; for in that case the
authors would have had a Trifolium composed of papilionaceous
plants exclusively. But neither in the defining of the genus
nor in the description of a single one of the about sixty species of
Bauhin's Trifolium is any mention made of the morphology of the
flower. And by the admission of gentian aceous, oxalidaceous, and
ranunculaceous types into that genus it is placed beyond question
that in his mind the genus was limited by nothing else but the
herbaceous nature of the plants, ternate foliage, and dry fruits. I
say dry fruits, because in Bauhin's book the strawberries, as typic-
ally trifoliolate as the most genuine of clovers and as herbaceous,
stand in closest juxtaposition to them, and it is manifest that their,
juicy berry-like receptacles, with seeds all on the outside, saved
Fragaria from being merged in the Trifolium of that author.
And in this giving so much attention to the fruit where flowers were
wholly ignored we see the influence of Cesalpino's great treatise;
for Bauhin and Cesalpino were contemporaries, in a manner,
the former younger by thirty years.

All through such books as have here been cited one reads the
resoluteness of purpose and the hard perseverance with which men
labored to improve botanical system by studying and comparing
texture and duration of stems, and above all else the morphology
of leaves; a very crude system at its best; but system of some sort
there had to be; the flower was still virtually unknown; the fruit
was barely beginning to be appreciated in its usefulness to taxonomy ;
therefore the vegetative organs, chiefly the leaves, were most
commonly allowed to be decisive.

The appeal to leaves was not, however, first thought of in either
the seventeenth century or the sixteenth. Even then it had been
more or less in vogue for three or four thousand years that we
know of.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 33

As a good example of an antique genus of trees based on leaf
characters alone, with no dependence on those of flower or fruit, one
recalls the Daphne of the Greeks. The original Daphne with them
was the sweet bay, Laurus nobilis Linn., the type-species of the
genus Laurus as now received. Its foliage, being lance-shaped, of
a somewhat leathery texture, with no marginal indentation, repre-
sents a rather common leaf type, and the tree is evergreen. Now
there was a period of Greek history within which there was not
only some travel to foreign lands, but even some written reports about
the natural products of other countries; and there is the most
convincing evidence that every new tree or shrub that came to
light that was both evergreen and clothed with oblong or lanceolate
entire leathery leaves was at once relegated to the genus Daphne;
was named as another kind of laurel. Here is a list, possibly not a
complete one, of trees with Laurus foliage which ancient Greeks,
on that account alone, had referred to that genus: Laurus nobilis,
Nerium Oleander, Nerium odorum, Avicennia offiiinalis, Rhizophora
mitcronata, Ruscus Hypophyllunt1 ; six species of so-called Daphne
or laurel, belonging to five different genera, and representing as
many different families, all anciently accepted as of one genus,
because the foliage in all was much the same, and for no other
reason whatsoever. And this again reminds us that in eastern
North America, where there is no laurel, we have a number of
kinds of native shrubs that have always been called by that name,
just as if they had been members of the genus Laurus to which
they are in no wise related. If we ask ourselves how this false
naming came to pass, the answer is, that at the time of the early
colonization of this new continent the old Greek idea was still
dominant, that whatever bush or tree had a laurel foliage was a
good enough laurel. The colonists brought that idea hither, and
naturally enough applied the name to our Kalmias and Rhododen-
drons one and all.

This classifying by foliage was never received as anything like a
general principle everywhere to be applied. So far from that, the
rude primitive groupings were accomplished here and there under
the sole guidance of the fruit ; though in the main only as to none
but its most superficial characteristics. Among fruit-bearing trees
the apple tree was perhaps the oldest and most familiar type, unless
the pear be excepted; and as new kinds of fruit trees in the course
of history became introduced into Europe from other lands, every
kind, the fruit of which was of considerable size and of something

1 Bretzl, Botanische Forschungen des Ahtanderzuges, p. 405.

34 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

like the sphericity of the apple, was called a kind of apple tree, a
member of the genus Mains, as it was called in Latin speech and
writing. Here is a partial list of the kinds of Mains, or apple tree,
that find record and description with several early authors;
excluding, however, the true apples, which were of many varieties
all with binary names.

Malus Armeniaca Armeniaca vulgaris.
Malus Persica Amygdalus Persica.

Malus arantia Citrus aurantium.

Malus limonia Citrus limonium.

Malus medica Citrus medica.

Malus cotonea \

Malus cydonia Cydonia vulgaris.

Malus aurea }

Malus Punica )

Punica granatum
Malus granata j

Malus Indica Zizyphus jujuba.

In outline, the history of the development of such a genus
Malus as the above is this. In primeval southern Europe they
had the common apple tree, Mains commnnis, and, from the
beginning of the historic period at least, they had it in many culti-
vated varieties. The fruit was malum with the Latins, the tree
mains. Then, as other kinds of trees were introduced from the
East having spherical or ovoid fruits not too small for apples, their
fruits were also designated as kinds of apples, and the trees as species
of malus. To us who, with also several generations of our botanical
ancestry, have become accustomed to a greatly improved classifica-
tion, such a piece of systematizing as the above list of apple-tree
species exemplifies cannot but seem absurd; but the presentation
of something of that kind was necessary, partly in order that we
might realize from what small and simple beginnings our later and
better systems of carpological classifying have been evolved; also
partly as demonstrating the groundlessness of the Linnaean hypo-
thesis that classification by fruit characters took its rise with
Cesalpino, and as late as the end of the sixteenth century.

I am unwilling to dismiss the subject of early and practically
pre-Cesalpinian classifying by fruit without having given one
more illustration of it. For this purpose I shall again advert to
the taxonomic procedures of the early Virginian colonists. I have
cited the case of their having found there, in place of the English
Walnut, two allies of that tree, and that they named these new

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 35

kinds Black Walnut and White Walnut respectively; also that
this naming of the kinds was made not in reference to any morpholo-
gical characters of the trees, but to that of the colors of the wood;
this having been done quite after the manner of self-taught wood-
men, whereas school-taught botanists would have assigned names
suggested by organographic marks. But this all relates to nothing
else but the making of specific distinctions and the assigning of
specific names. When we ask ourselves by what marks they were
able to refer these new trees to the genus of the walnuts, we obtain
but the answer that it was by those of their fruits; these in such
degree resembling that of the one kind of walnut before known to
them as to warrant the conclusion that the trees were of the walnut
kind, as they would have expressed it, rather than of the oak or
chestnut kind.

But our colonists' experiences with the native American oaks, if
they had been more fully recorded than they were, would have
been still more interesting. As English woodsmen only one kind of
oak can have been well known to them. In Virginia they can not
have failed to meet at once with about a half-dozen sorts, most of
them in aspect exceedingly unlike the English Oak; so much so
that they can not reasonab y be supposed to have identified them
with that genus of trees at all until after close inspection. One of
the sorts displayed to them the foliage of the chestnut tree, another
that of the laurel, still another the leaves of a willow. The chest-
nut-leaved kind had not at all the bark nor the wood of chestnut
trees, but of oaks, rather; therefore these first observers of the tree
would hardly have needed to appeal to the fruits in order to satisfy
themselves that this new tree was but an oak, merely imitating the
chestnut as to its foliage. But among the other kinds, such as had
neither foliage nor bark nor wood in any way answering their idea
of an oak tree, they can not have determined to be oaks by any
other note in each but that of its fruit.

That which I have thus far hypothecated concerning early Vir-
ginian colonists in relation to native Virginian oaks is demonstrable
as something more than even the most rational of hypotheses.
There is documentary evidence of the historic truthfulness of all,
and more than all, that I have here but intimated as probable. That
these men, forced by circumstance to make trial of the timber of
trees new to them, did early recognize as oaks certain kinds most
unlike what they had known as oaks, in all except their fruits,
is attested by a colonial list of names of new American oaks which
was published when the colony was but two generations old. I re-

36 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL 54

fer to Banister's Catalogue. l This contains a list of binary names
of Virginian oaks, such as Quercus alba, Q. rubra, Q. Hispanica, Q.
castanece folia, Q. salicijolia. Now while a casual reader of the
catalogue cited would, without a second thought about the matter,
attribute those five names to Banister, it is extremely unlikely
that any one of them was invented by him. It is next to certain
that the whole five are his mere translations into Latin of the oak
names that he found in use among the colonists. Perhaps the
plainest proof of this is, in that by turning those five binary names
back into English you get precisely the names by which five com-
mon oaks are known to dwellers in that same region now, two
hundred and twenty-seven years after Banister's having written
his list. It is really evidence that is incontestable. To dispute it
would be to affirm that the names were made by Banister himself, in
Latin, then turned into English for the use of the woodsmen settlers;
that these had been waiting sixty years or more for the professional
botanist to come and tell them by what names to call their several
kinds of oak; each part of which proposition, like the whole of it,
is absurd. Under pressure of necessity, and from the outset, they
must have begun to learn the different qualities of the wood or
timber of those strange new kinds of oak. One or two of them
were found comparable with the familiar oak of the mother country
as being hard, durable, subserving the purposes of the builder, the
wheelwright, and the cabinet-maker; another, not subject to decay
when set into the ground, useful for posts; still another durable
only when used for bars, rails, and like purposes; and there may
have been a fourth and fifth kind excellent for winter fuel, but
nearly worthless otherwise. No man will pretend to believe that
colonial woodmen and handicraftsmen, learning by degrees the
different qualities and uses of our various American oaks, did not
immediately assign a particular name to each particular kind.
The important industries of house-building, boat-building, cabinet-
making, the constructing of vehicles, the building of fences, and
the providing of the winter's fuel, all demanded quite imperatively
that there be a well ordered and generally accepted system of
woodmen's nomenclature of oaks as well as of othe; genera
of timber trees. So it came to pass that all important trees
everywhere, in America quite as elsewhere, had their established
names before the arrival of the writers of floras and silvas; and
there is many a kind of tree the Latin name of which bears the

i Banister, Cat. Plant. Virg., transmitted from Virginia to John Ray in 1680;
published by Ray, in Hist., vol. ii, in 1688.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 3 7

*

mark of its having been originally the woodmen's vernacular name
for it.

Hitherto this fact of the universal existence of a crude primitive
system of plant classification — one that antedates all botanical
writing, a system that is in vogue to-day all over the world in out-
of-the-way places, in complete isolation from the influence of
colleges and universities — appears to have remained unnoticed by
botanical writers. At least, I have met with no allusion to the
fact. I therefore doubt that it has entered into the minds of
botanical thinkers in recent times that such untutored yet effective
and useful plant taxonomy exists, and must have existed primevally.

There will be readers enough to whom this thought will be new and
somewhat startling. The fond conceit has long prevailed, that there
was never anything in the world that could be called science until
some three centuries ago, or four, at the farthest. Among several
ideas about the botany of the past — ideas very widely, almost uni-
versally, entertained, though without the least warrant from history
— I shall here mention but the following : that plant genera did not
obtain fair recognition until Tournefort, nor species as distinguished
from varieties until Linnaeus, nor families before Adanson. Now
if, according to the present thesis, the beginning of the receiving
and naming of common plants in groups is ancient beyond all
possibility of discovery, then no author can be credited with, or
any date be assigned for, the beginning of the recognition and
naming of either genera or species. What great men like those just
named accomplished for the improvement of system in botany
was, the better delimitation of several anciently accepted genera,
and the laying down of certain rules and principles by which
they thought all plants, known and unknown, might be arranged in
groups more nearly according to their affinities. Assuming that
the rules and principles were philosophic, all this was immensely
to the advantage of classification ; but when for the twofold purpose
of emphasizing the principles and making the new system easy to
learn, they caused each genus name to be printed in large type,
in the middle of the page, occupying a line by itself, then close
under that the formal statement of its characters as a genus, and
after that and only less conspicuously the species names, each
occupying a separate paragraph, they were by this rigid formalism
inaugurating, though they knew it not, an era of didacticism
which now after two centuries has degenerated into an almost
gross pedantry which rules systematic botany at present well-nigh
•universally. To illustrate the supremacy of this pedantry let me

SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

suppose that some accomplishe'd botanist of Italy or France or Ger-
many, having a new genus to propose, ignores all the usual post-
Tournefortian formalities in his naming and defining of it.
This will mean only that, declining to follow established typo-
graphical usages, he does not place the new generic name in large
letters in a conspicuous place above all that he has to say of it,
but begins his paragraph with a statement that the type is new,
thence proceeding without a break to name the marks by which
the genus is distinguishable from all its allies, then directly adding,
in the same type and without the formality of an initial capital, even
in the middle of a line, if it so happen, the name by which he proposes
that the genus shall be known; all this followed, still without break-
ing the paragraph, by whatever else he may have to say about the
plant or plants of this new genus. Between such simple uncapi-
talized compact taxonomic paragraph as I have supposed, and the
familiar stereotyped form of naming and defining a genus, there
is at first glance the appearance of great dissimilarity. As to the
meaning of the two, and the information that is conveyed, there is
no shade of difference between them. The plant type, supposing
it to be the same, is as fully described and as certainly named in
the more simple paragraph as in the one that is ostentatious.
All that the botanical scholar can learn from the one he may
learn just as perfectly and just as promptly from the other. Really
the differences between the two are hardly more than typographical;
yet notwithstanding this, it is probable that forty-nine out of every
fifty botanists of to-day, if not even a much larger proporton of
them, would in part fail utterly to perceive that the simple unosten-
tatious paragraph which I have supposed, with generic name in
small type set in the midst, had been intended as the publication
of a new genus; and it is as probable that those of the forty-nine
who did perceive the author's intention would deliberately ignore
the paragraph, under the plea that the name and characters of a
genus printed in a style so very unconventional must not be ad-
mitted to answer the requirements of publication. The genus must
be treated as unpublished. This, be it noted, will be the same as to
order that a new scientific fact be, in as far as possible, suppressed
for the reason that certain familiar usages as to type and para-
graphing were not followed in the publication of that fact. It will
be regarding form of expression as superior to the facts expressed ;
will be allowing individual whim or fancy to ignore important
matter; will make for the establishment of shallow pedantry in
place of solid information and the use of plain good sense. I have

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 39

stated this case hypothetically ; but there are provinces where the
situation is to-day actual.

But the greater number of my hypothetic forty-nine, as I have
said, will even fail to discover that a plant group has been named
and defined on any page where the modern typographical conven-
tionalities are not in evidence. I think that among such as are
quite proficient in systematic botany there are many whose im-
pression of the printed pages of Ruellius, of Dorsten, and of several
other classics of sixteenth-century botany would be that they give
no account of families, genera, or species; and this only because
great authors had not then learned to make a separate paragraph
for every group, and to print the names of genera and of species in
type different from and more conspicuous than that used for the
descriptive passages. There is no question of the superior con-
venience of our modern style of printing taxonomic matter; still,
for the mistaking of mere incidentals for essentials by people
professedly scientific, it is not easy to frame excuse. But the psy-
chologic fact is well established that men do in this wise err, and
that there are multitudes of biologic taxonomists whom familiar
usage has completely deceived into thinking that no name is generic
unless printed in large letters; multitudes of botanists who will
have been startled by the proposition incontestable that clover,
parsley, hazel, and birch, all as here printed, are names as perfectly
generic as TRIFOLIUM, APIUM, CORYLUS, and BETULA.
Moreover, there have been learned historians of botany in post-
Tournefortian times whose minds appear to have been under the
same delusion, and who thereby missed one of the fundamentals
of the philosophy of botanical history.

It is impossible that men, even the most primeval and unlettered,
manage their affairs with various denizens of the plant world
without classifying them. Names of plants, generic and specific,
and also other names more comprehensive, are a part of the ver-
nacular of every tribe of the uncivilized, as well as of that of every
rural province within the bounds of civilization to-day. The very
names attest the fact of classification; for no name is that of an
individual plant. It is that of a group of plants, always; a group
specific, generic, or more comprehensive than either.

It may occur to some that the named groups recognized by the
untaught do not in their delimitation correspond to those that
obtain with the professional plant taxonomist; as if that, if it were
true, would in the least alter the situation or affect the argument.
It will be difficult to understand how the vernacular genera of the

40 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

ruralists can possibly correspond to the Latin-named genera of
the scientific botanists when the latter themselves are seldom
at agreement among themselves as to the exact limits of any
considerable genus, or of any polymorphous species. When we
ourselves may have learned to agree as to where one of our Latin-
named groups is to end and the next is to begin, may we with
some propriety criticise the same kind of doing as accomplished
by the unindoctrinated.

And now let me demonstrate it, that in the history of classification
the unlettered vulgus now and again has been first to arrive at
the satisfactory delimitation of a natural group, the learned doctors
having arrived at this same judgment later by one or more genera-
tions, and so as to seem to have adopted it from the untutored
laity. This point may perhaps be most easily made plain by return-
ing to the contemplation of North American colonial botany and the
colonial dendrologists. It was shown above, that all the several
American trees of the walnut alliance with which they became ac-
quainted, although all, in certain particulars, different enough
from that one Old World walnut which they had known, they called
walnuts ; precisely the same as if they had denominated them species
of JUGLANS, which would have been the case assuredly, had they but
known and used the Latin terminology in place of the English.
We, of three centuries later, dispose of these American trees dif-
ferently, referring nearly all of them to another genus; but what is
remarkably to the credit of that colonial and primitive taxonomy
is, that so exalted an authority as Linnaeus found no fault with it,
but simply adopted it. With him all the different kinds figure as
good enough species of JUGLANS, and bear with him even the. same
specific names which the colonists had assigned, but of course
Latinized.

When, in a preceding paragraph, I gave early American colonists
the credit of having recognized and named as oaks a considerable list
of native acorn-bearing trees; even as having determined them to
be oaks by their acorns alone, I felt that there might be demurrers
to the opinion that these had not learned this mark of the genus
Quercus from the^schools in some more or less indirect way. I
may well, therefore, here place it beyond dispute that in this case
also the unlettered men of field and forest did arrive at the proper
delimitation of a genus of trees quite in advance of the professional
taxonomists, and these last virtually adopted the genus, as we now
have it, from the ruralists. In the first decade of the seventeenth
century, when the Virginian colonists were beginning to learn the

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 4!

industrial uses, and at the same time the characteristic superficial
— as we should now say morphological — marks, of many new trees,
there was yet no book of botany extant, in as far as I can learn, in
which it was taught that any and every tree that has an acorn for a
fruit is hereby known to be a Quercus. Neither Pliny nor Tourne-
fort, nor any author of the fifteen centuries that intervene between
those two, has fewer than three distinct genera of acorn-bearing
trees. With each and all of them a tree bearing acorns, in order that
it may be of the genus Quercus, must be deciduous, and its foliage
sinuately lobed. In other words, none but deciduous white oaks
are properly called oaks by these old authorities. Trees bearing
acorns, but evergreen as to foliage, the leaf margins prickly, are
of a separate genus, Ilex; while those oaks of southern Europe with
peculiar foliage, along with a thick spongy bark, — cork oaks, we call
them, — are of a third genus, Suber. At the time, therefore, when
Banister was turning into Latin those English binary names which
colonists had given to Virginian trees bearing acorns, there was
not yet a book of botany extant in which it was taught that its
yielding acorns was a sufficient warrant for naming a tree an oak.
It was only the country people, the woodmen, who held that view
as to the extent of the genus Oak. The learned John Ray, the
same who received from Banister the manuscript catalogue of
Virginian plants and caused it to be published, himself never
swerved from the doctrine then time-honored and classic, that we
have here three genera, Quercus, Ilex, and Suber, yet expressly states
that " the common people so extend the name Quercus as to include
under it all kinds of trees that bear acorns. " 1 In as far as I have
been able to trace the history of oak classifying on the part of pro-
fessional botanists, Linnaeus appears to have been the very first
to repudiate what had been the opinion of all his predecessors, and
to adopt as more true to nature the more comprehensive genus
Quercus which the vulgus had invented. And so, if we of the pres-
ent, following Linnaeus as to the limits of Quercus, are in the right,
then let us concede freely the fact, from which there is no escape,
that during long centuries the unlettered vulgus was taxonomically
correct, while all the learned botanists were wrong.

By means of the popular nomenclature of common ornamental
plants, one is able to see how those uninstructed in botany readily
classify things according to floral structure. Everywhere lovers of
flowers have a group of plants which they call by the collective
name of lily. This happens to be many times more comprehensive

L_ '.Ray, Historia Plantarum, vol/ii, 1385 (1683).

42 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

than the lily genus of the modern professionals; though not so
widely different from that of the books of botany of some centuries
ago. It embraces Lilium, Fritillaria (Checkered Lily), Hemero-
callis (Day Lily), Amaryllis (Belladonna Lily), Vallota (Scarlet
L ly) , and many another genus of liliaceous and amaryllidaceous
plants, besides Convallaria and the members of several iridaceous
genera. All of these have showy flowers of the same morphological
type as that of the true lily. And to this floral type even the
white funnel-form spathes of certain araceous plants have been
associated, as the name Calla Lily plainly betrays; though it is not
to be doubted that the entire, narrow, veinless foliage of all these
plants has helped in the making of this popular generic synthesis.
And then, on the part of the botanists, the analyzing, assorting,
and systematically arranging of these diverse elements of the
primitive genus lily — the genus as even now, I say, accepted by
a great multitude of mere flower lovers — has occupied a great
number of taxonomic specialists during later centuries. The care-
fully gathered records of the gradual evolution of our present
taxonomy of the lily-flowered plants would fill a thick volume;
would most perfectly establish the fact that those botanically
untaught sometimes classify by the flowers; would illustrate how
different generations of professed taxonomists have made their
various appeals to different organs, some to the flowers chiefly,
others giving much weight to considerations of roots, bulbs, and
corms, while others were more influenced by considerations of the-
pericarp and seed. And such a book, in its completeness, would
form an instructive epitome of the whole history of botany.

It would be as easy to produce instances of a primitive classifying
by characters of the root; or, at least, of those subterranean parts of
plants which, until within a very recent period, were universally
confused as roots. But it may be unnecessary to multiply proofs
of the existence of an almost more than fragmentary, and really
rather extensive system of what one may paradoxically denominate
pre-botanical botany. Enough may have been said already for
the accentuating of the opinion that there are beginnings of our
science which the historians should not have overlooked. It has
been out of those crude beginnings that learning and philosophy have
developed what we now call the real systematic botany. They
are even the prothallium from which at length there has arisen the
frond of whatever strength and symmetry and grace there may
be in the now accepted taxonomy of plants.

This condition of things being once seen and admitted, we shall

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 43

for the first begin to be able to understand, to appreciate, and to
interpret the earliest botanical authors; not those only of ancient
Greece and Italy, but of the fathers of botany in England, in
France, in Germany, and Switzerland; a worthy company whose true
position seems to me never to have been half understood, and
whose works have therefore more or less completely baffled the
attempts of profound scholars and eminent botanists who in the
capacity of historians, have sought to elucidate the texts of these
forefathers and to show what they severally accomplished. Botany
did not begin with the first books of botany, nor with the men who
indited them; though every historian of the science whom I have
read has assumed that it did. The most remote and primitive of
botanical writers, of whatever country or language, found a more
or less extensive vocabulary of elementary botany in the colloquial
speech of all. The chief organs of plants — stem, trunk, branch, leaf,
flower, fruit, pod, seed, root, tendril, thorn, and a multitude of
others — had been discriminated and named; the organs even known
by all who had acquaintance with plants and trees, and the names
were everywhere in use. Even the functions of several of the or-
gans had been correctly ascertained before ever a line of botany
had been written; most probably even before letters had been
invented. The improvement of wild things by cultivation, the
propagating of the newly acquired sorts by cuttings, by division of
perennial roots, and, in the case of trees, by grafting, are likewise
arts that seem to antedate history; as do also the designating of
different varieties or species that are evidently nearly akin, by
twofold names, one generic, the other specific or varietal.

All these conditions being recognized, a new and peculiar difficulty
will confront the critical student of a protobotanical author. It will
in exceptional cases seem doubtful as to whether a given fact or
generalization is the fruit of that author's own investigations, and
therefore new with him, or whether it be something already long
understood and accepted, which he is but placing upon written
record. It is, however, a kind of difficulty that gives zest to the
study of classic texts; and many such doubts may give place to
certainty, or something near it, after persevering examination, and
comparison with other passages that are not of doubtful import.

I am unwilling to conclude this introduction without repeating
it, that the essence and substance of botany proper are organ-
ography and the logical deductions that we draw from organography.
They may not be said to be the whole of the science ; yet duly and
comprehensively considered they will be found to come near it.

44 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

The line of the development of organography — organography as
necessarily including terminology — is that along which a truly
coherent and philosophic history of botany must needs be written.
The condition is one that will entail the expenditure of incalculable
time and unremitting toil ; but the cost of time and energy must not
be counted if anything beyond disconnected and fragmentary
paragraphs of history are to be the outcome.

CHAPTER I
THE RHIZOTOMI

IT is characteristic of all very early phytography that the root,
that least obvious and most hardly accessible of plant organs, is
as carefully described as are the stems, the leaves, and the fruits.
This fact that the first of all describers of plants should have taken
the root into account, and that so uniformly and so particularly,
must seem strange enough to every thoughtful botanist of later
centuries; it is in such marked contrast to the descriptive usages
with which we of the present are better acquainted.

In the voluminous and carefully technical phytographic works
of the eighteenth century and the nineteenth, one may chance upon
successive pages filled with descriptions of scores of species, about
the roots of which not a word is said. Nothing like this occurs in
any book or chapter of Theophrastus,Dioscorides,or any other classic
botanical writer. In the case of every species of herbaceous plant,
and of many that are woody, they do not conclude a description
without telling us what the subterranean parts are like, whether
fibrous or fleshy or tuberous or bulbous, usually informing us as to
the colors of these organs, as well as the properties of them when
they are known to have any. And so carefully did the fathers
who wrought a revival of botany in the sixteenth century follow
those classic models that, in their illustrated folios, never a plant
is figured the root of which is not as faithfu ly delineated as the
foliage or the flower. Even in the letterpress accompanying the
plates of Brunfels, Fuchs, Tragus, and others, the root is as well
described as the foliage, and much better than the flower. All
this for the simple reason that the great masters of remote antiquity
had set them the example. But how did it come to pass that the
ancient Greek botanists were so almost singularly familiar with
the underground parts of plants, and that they so accentuated the
importance of them to phytography? One would not have ex-
pected this, and it seems almost anomalous. No one who ever
went forth to make philosophic conquest of the vegetable kingdom

45

46 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

was confronted at the outset by the roots of plants. These parts
are recondite. He who for any purpose would inspect a root must
undergo the labor and inconvenience of digging about the plant,
wresting that root from its hiding-place, and then cleansing it,
so that its characteristics may become visible and tangible. When
all is done, there is a great sameness about roots. They do not
promise much aid to him who would find marks by which to dis-
tinguish between like and unlike. Stems present a much greater
diversity, and either leaves or flowers or fruits a hundred times
more differences by which to distinguish plants, than do these
underground parts. It being granted that the function of the root
as a vital organ was thoroughly understood, as it appears to have
been from the earliest historic period, still, as regards early de-
scriptive botany, there would have been less reason to be surprised if
the early fathers had commonly ignored it ; or at best had made as
little account of it in their descriptions of species as most of the
modern systematists have done. And there must be a philosophy of
this very ancient and once universal appreciation of the root as a
subject of phytographic notice equally with stem and leaf. The
cause must, if possible, be ascertained.

If the ancestors, even somewhat remote, of the first botanical
philosophers had been savages such as, in dearth of animal food,
had found the subterranean parts of many a wild plant available
in its stead, then would there have been some show of reason for
that singular prestige which roots had obtained so almost prime-
vally. In the transition from savagery to civilization such root-
food plants would have come into cultivation, where they would
have held their place and been well known to enlightened posterity.
But at the time when writing about plants began, at least with the
Greeks and Latins, roots and bulbs constituted but an inconsiderable
part of their table fare. The bulk of their farm and garden pro-
ducts were the cereals, orchard fruits, pot-herbs, and salads. The
ancestry of the philosophers for centuries, possib'y for millenniums,
had been highly civilized, perhaps to the degree of having lost the
traditions of nomadic life and the feeding upon wild products of
the plains and woodlands.

In this civilization, however, the art of medicine held an im-
portant place ; and in this circumstance we have a clew to that pre-
dilection for describing so faithfully the roots of everything which
is so almost peculiar to the phytography of the ancients and their
sixteenth-century imitators.

Throughout the whole period of Greek antiquity there was a

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 47

class of men who followed as a regular business the gathering, pre-
paring, and selling of roots and herbs that were of repute in medi-
cine. It was of course naturally inferred and easily ascertained that
whatever properties perennial herbs possess are concentrated in
their subterranean parts during the season of the plants' rest in
autumn and winter; so that what were called the roots of plants
formed the bulk of the materia medica. All this the very name
of rhizotomi, root-gatherers, sufficiently declares.

The botanists of antiquity, that is to say, they who inves-
tigated the plant world as philosophers rather than as econo-
mists, inform us that the rhizotomi were mostly unlettered
men, usually more superstitious than scientific, observing an ex-
tensive ritual in the digging as well as in the after prepara-
tion of their simples; evidently mixing medicine and magic
after a manner almost universal in the early history of the healing
art; as often attributing to their preparations magic virtues as
medicinal. Concerning some of the ceremonies of the rhizotomi we
have information.1 There were various prayers and incantations
to be said or sung. Some kinds of roots were to be dug in the day-
time, some others by night only; the powerful plant hellebore,
only after the observance of various precautions. The point of a
sharp sword must be drawn three times around certain roots to
make them more efficacious. The gatherer of some sorts must be
careful to face the east while digging. In the case of others he
must stand on the windward side of the plant. Some require to be
collected by one newly anointed with oil. As preparatory to the
culling of other kinds, the rhizotomos must eat garlic and drink
wine. As modern and as learned an author as Kurt Sprengel
relegates all those observances without discrimination to the
category of foolish superstitions2; this, as it seems to me, incon-
siderately. There are plants enough the exhalations of which
are so deleterious that persons of delicate organism may be un-
comfortably affected by the mere passing close to them on the
leeward side, of a breezy day. Any discreet American botanist
not immune against Toxicodendron vulgare, if tempted to gather
specimens of it, would use among other precautions that of holding
himself to the windward of the plant if there happened to be a
breath of air stirring. His act would be adjudged sane and rea-
sonable. Another such precaution might be that of using gloves
while handling any parts of the plant ; whereas an old-time oriental,

1 Theophrastus, Hist., Book ix, ch. 9.

2 Sprengel, Hist. Rei Herb., vol. i, p. 63.

48 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

with whom the anointing of the body with scented oil was a com-
mon practice, might successfully use oil instead of gloves while
gathering particularly acrid herbs and roots. Also when one is
informed that the ancient drug gatherer never proceeded to dig
certain roots but with breath laden with an odor as intolerable
as that engendered by garlic and alcoholic drink, there is still no
reason to charge that to superstition; any more than the surveyor
or handicraftsman, whose work for the day is in the midst of a
steaming and unwholesome marsh or fen, makes free use of to-
bacco smoke as, by the physician's counsel, tending in some degree
toward immunity from malarial influence. With us who believe
so much in the efficacy of malodorous disinfectants as bringing
immunity from infectious and malarial disease it should seem
natural to attribute similar precautions to Greeks of 4000 years ago,
especially when assured, as we may assure ourselves, that even at
that remote period one of the rhizotomi propounded the theory,
now in our day revived, that myriads of germs, minute, invisible,
permeate every atmosphere.

Such partial apology for some of the so-called ritual observances
of the rhizotomi is no digression. The historians have usually re-
ferred to them as in large part a body of superstitious fakers.
Such, to a degree, many of them may have become in the long
course of centuries during which their profession flourished. Super-
stitious observance is often enough the end of that which in the
beginning was a reasonable and sensible measure of precaution;
and it is not a legitimate office of history to exaggerate the differ-
ences subsisting between an earlier and a later age or race. The
agejDf superstition even as regards medicine and pharmacy, though
passing it may be, is not yet quite past. If the scholarly Sprengel
cites the ceremonies of the rhizotomi with impatience, it is because
he is influenced — as many another passage in his work makes it
evident — by an almost morbid abhorrence of everything that to him
has the appearance of a superstition. If anything appeared to
be an empty ceremony, he could not tolerate the thought of it long
enough to examine into the possibility of its having had an origin
that was scientific and utilitarian.

If the rhizotomi were mostly illiterate men and quacks, still
there were exceptions. Here and there among them there seems to
have been a man of letters ; and a few investigated plants more or
less scientifically, and wrote books. The names of several such
have been handed down through history, together with some of the
more original and remarkable of their sayings. THRASYAS MANTIN-

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 49

ENSIS is mentioned by Theophrastus as one of the worthiest among
them, because as if ignoring the common beliefs about magical
effects he gave himself to the investigation of the properties of
plants. He seems to have been the original proponent of the
doctrine that the good or bad effects of a medicine may depend
upon the temperament of the individual patient; a proposition
which has met with some acceptance, at least outside the pro-
fession, if one may judge by its having been long since crystallized
into a proverb, that what is medicine to one, may be poison to
another. The idea is revolutionary, though without yet having
brought about much of a revolution. To this same Thrasyas is
ascribed the compounding of that vegetable poison, so frequently
in use with the ancients, which never failed to bring a speedy and
absolutely painless death.1 Theophrastus devotes two chapters
to an account of the pharmacological researches of this Thrasyas,
and those o his eminently successful disciple Alexius, and of those of
a third of the same school of intelligent and really scientific rhizo-
tomi, Eudemus of Chios. One and another of these men, living at
periods so remote as barely to fall short of being prehistoric, tested
in their own persons the adaptability of the human system to the
harmless use of drastic and poisonous vegetable substances. Be-
ginning with small doses and increasing them gradually, it was
ascertained that one might after a time consume without bad
results such a quantity of hellebore, for example, as under ordinary
conditions might have proven fatal. Using at first earthen pots
and pans in the probing of questions about possible or probable
antidotes to certain poisons, they would proceed, under the light
gained by such experiments, to the using of their own stomachs as
the crucibles.2 And the reports of these instructive and daring
experiments, together with the names of the men who made them,
were either written and subscribed to at the time or else handed
down by tradition to the time of Theophrastus who gave them per-
manent record.

Among the earlier rhizotomi there was a famous one named
CLEIDEMUS, who wrote upon the subject of electrical storms so as
to have been quoted by Aristotle in his Meteorology.3 He also in-
vestigated diseases of plants, especially of the fig-tree, olive-tree, and
vine. Cleidemus is therefore the earliest of vegetable pathologists.
And what may be more interestingly significant is this, that Theo-

1 Theophrastus, Hist. Plant., Book ix, ch. 17.

2 Ibid., ch.'iS.

3 Aristotle, Meteor., Book i, ch. 2.

50 SMITHSONIAN* MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

phrastus credits him with having maintained that there is the closest
analogy between the organs of plants and those of animals. Infor-
mation like this can not fail to awaken regret that the writings of
Cleidemus have not survived; it would now be so Very interesting
to know whether this genius o a forgotten time went so far beyond
those of later periods as to have apprehended the existence of
breathing organs and those of sex in plants.

HIPPON was among the rhizotomi who philosophized about
plants in general, and wrote books. His waitings are quoted by
both Aristotle1 and Theophrastus,2 and he appears to have been
the earliest among students of plant life and form to venture the
opinion that all cultivated trees, shrubs, and herbs have been derived
from wild ones, and are susceptible of reversion to their pristine
condition. It is the earliest hint — and a very early one, apparently
unknown to the annalists of evolution — of what cultivation may
accomplish in the way of transformation. But the doctrine must
have had the sound of a heresy verging toward atheism in the ears
of a populace that had never questioned the proposition that every
cultivated plant and tree had been coeval with the human race,
and had been so created at the first.

But it is not that small, better-educated, more reflective, and
philosophizing contingent of the rhizotomi, or the possible influence
of these few upon early botanical theory, that we are just now
chiefly concerned with. It is rather that in this whole body of
those who, for so many pre-Theophrastan centuries, followed the
root-gatherers' calling, we have the men who securely established
that precedent, from which the earliest philosophic students of and
writers about plants did not break away, of taking full cognizance
of those among plant organs which nature had most deeply con-
cealed, as if they were perhaps the last and the least to be considered.
It was the example of the rhizotomists, in their books of plant
description extant in the times of Aristotle and Theophrastus, that
impelled Theophrastus and others after him to give the form,
texture, color, odor, flavor, as well as the active properties, when
these were known, of the roots or underground parts of almost
every plant. And when, as already noted, it is seen that from
Dioscorides and Pliny down through the middle ages, and out to
near the end of the seventeenth century, authors in general de-
scribed and figured the roots of every weed and grass and bush and
tree, it will be conceded to have been the lot of the half-illiterate

» Aristotle, De Anim., Book i, ch. 2.

2 Theophrastus, Hist Plant., Book i, ch. 6.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 51

rhizotomi to make their peculiar impress upon the character of
descriptive botany, an impress that should last for well nigh
two thousand years 1

The occupation of the root gatherers is by no means peculiar
to Greek antiquity. In every part of the world it may be as old
as, or older than, .he beginnings o: civilization. Nor is it probable
that in Europe there was any interruption or cessation of the occupa-
tion during the two thousand years intervening between the time
of Homer and Hesiod and that of the Renaissance. The botanical
writers of the sixteen h century, particularly those of middle
Europe, refer to the practices, and even to the opinions, of such
as ransack the woods to gather roots and herbs, sell them to the
druggists and to the peasantry whom they serve in the capacity of
physicians, and from whom the educated and philosophic students
of plants themselves sometimes gain valuable information. Nor
would it be safe to say that the rhizotomi are even now everywhere
obsolete. Their traces are very plainly legible in the popular
nomenclature of North American plants. Every common name
into which root enters as a component is one that had its origin
with the "herb doctor," or "root doctor," as he was called; per-
haps not a few of the names were borrowed, along with some infor-
mation about the plant's virtues, from the aborigines.2

1 It was Valerius Cordus, the greatest if not the only botanical genius of
the first half of the sixteenth century, who first gave expression to the opinion
that, from the morphologic and phytographic point of view, the importance
of the root had always been overestimated. He set the example for a reform
of descriptive botany in this particular; but, as usual with men of genius, he
was a century in advance of the ideas of the multitude.

2 The following are illustrative examples: Alum-root, Blood-root,
Bowman's-root, Culver's-root, Cancer-root, Canker-root, Black Snakeroot,
Button Snakeroot, Seneca Snakeroot, Indian-root, Musquash-root, Colic-
root, Pappoose-root, Pepper-root, Pink-root, Red-root, Yellow-root, Sheep-
root. It were easy to double the number of such names of American plants,
not one of which was assigned either by a learned physician or a professional
botanist.

CHAPTER II
THEOPHRASTUS OF/1ERESUS. B. C. 370-286 (or 262).

LINN^US, in the practice of his favorite art of systematizing
classified not only plants but the writers about them. The writers
he distinguishes primarily as Botanists, and Plant Lovers; recogniz-
ing as Botanists only such as treat of plants from some philosophic
or scientific point of view. Choosing his illustrations from the an-
nals of remote antiquity, he names among the earliest of the Greeks
who wrote of plants Hippocrates 1 ; but because he wrote of plants
only in the interests of medicine Linnaeus styles him Father of
Medicine ; a title that had been conceded to that worthy ages before
Linnaeus, and will be accorded him until the end of time, no doubt.
Similarly Aristotle, who is also known to have written upon plants,
but whose volumes on that subject have been lost, is down in the
Linnasan list of ancient celebrities as Prince of Philosophers. To
Theophrastus, however, he accords the title Father of Botany.
From this opinion, far from having been newly promulgated in
Linnaeus' time, there has been no dissenting voice. On the con-
trary, Albert Haller, one of the most learned men in Europe in
his day, and a botanist o : such renown that Linnaeus held him in
reverence, and also in some fear, denominates Theophrastus
" the first o: real botanists in point of time. " 2 Curtius Sprengel in
the nineteenth century, having rehearsed the names of a long line
of ancient authors who had written more or less concerning plants,
says: " But the most illustrious of them all, and the true father of
botany, was Theophrastus Eresius. " 3 If the author of the latest of
nineteenth-century volumes of botanical history, Julius von Sachs,
makes but passing mention of Theophrastus, along with the names
of Galen, Dioscorides, and Pliny — as if he had not been otherwise a
botanist than they — he may be more or less excusable upon the

1 Linnaeus, Philosophia Botanica, § 9.

2 " Primus verorum botanicorum." Haller, Bibliotheca Botanica, vol. i, p. 31.

3 " Celeberrimus autem omnium, verus rei herbariae parens, THEOPHRASTUS
fuit Eresius." Sprengel, Historia Rei Herbariae, vol. i, p. 66.

52

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 53

ground that he was not engaged upon a general history of botany,
but only dealing with the short period intervening between the
years 1530 and 1860 of our era. However, that Sachs had no
acquaintance with Theophrastus, or even of Dioscorides, is proven
by this, that he credits his sixteenth-century German compatriots
with having gone straight to nature and described plants originally,
whereas the truth is that nearly all the plant descriptions occurring
in Brunfels and Fuchs, are almost word for word translations of
the ancient paragraphs of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and others;
sometimes with a few words of their own added, as often with
none. And as regards that exact and intimate knowledge of
plants which comes of the careful study of them alive and growing,
it is safe to say that all which Sachs' sixteenth-century German
fathers knew combined, would have amounted to but a fractional
part of Theophrastus' knowledge, and that much of their own
observing had been suggested to them in their reading of his books.
An abstract of Theophrastus' work should enable the unbiased
and impartial to judge for themselves whether scientific botany
had its beginning with those good German herbalists of the six-
teenth century, or with an immortal Athenian or two who had
lived, studied plants long and carefully, lectured to thousands of
students, and written down the substance of their botanical lec-
tures seventeen centuries earlier than they.

Life. Mitylene, a large and rich island in the ^gean Sea close
by the coast of Asia Minor, was famous millenniums ago as having
given birth to many an illustrious personage. Arion and Terpan-
der, ancient masters of the art of music, Alcaeus and Sappho, un-
rivalled among lyric poets, as learned critics gather from the
fragments of their masterpieces that remain — these names but
head the list of celebrities that had been born on that island in
the earlier half of the thousand years next preceding the beginning
of the Christian era. How very famous this island was for the ex-
cellent quality of its products, material, artistic, and intellectual, is
shown in the fact that Greeks and Romans of a somewhat later
period, wishing to bestow the highest praise on anything, whether it
were a piece of music, a verse of poetry, or a cask of wine, were
accustomed to pronounce it Lesbian — that is, fit to have come
from Lesbos, the name by which the modern Mitylene was known
anciently. Such are a few of the available hints of the environ-
ment in which the protobotanist was born in the year B.C. 370.
His birthplace was Eresos, the most important town of the island,
whence he has been styled Eresius — the Eresian, perhaps to dis-

54 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

tinguish him from others of his time who bore the not uncommon
name Theophrastus. His father's name, Melanthus, and that of
his boyhood's teacher at Eresos, one Leucippus, have found a
place in history only as associated with that of this child and youth
whom they called Tyrtamus. We shall be warranted in inferring
that the child was o: unusual gifts and marked by nature for the
intellectual life; also that Melanthus, the fuller, was in comfortable
circumstances financially, for the educational advantages that were
given the boy were then somewhat rare and costly. How well the
child had improved his opportunities is attested by this, that
while as yet but a- youth, he was away beyond the farther shore of
the ^Egean Sea, at Athens, and there numbered among the disciples
of Plato. All historians of the period credit him with having been
under that philosopher's instruction before coming to Aristotle; and
as Tyrtamus was only twenty-two years old when Plato died, it is
plain that the enrolment among Plato's pupils must have been
made when the subject of our sketch was but a youth — possibly a
precocious, eager, ambitious boy only.

The histories all read as if Aristotle's marked friendship and ef-
ficient patronage had had very much to do with establishing the
fame and directing the luminous career of Theophrastus. There
must be a large measure of truthfulness in this representation, though
it is more than possible that it is somewhat exaggeiated in Aristotle's
favor ; and history should take cognizance of the universal and even
necessary fact, that in great friendships the influences are mutual,
just as when, in the heavens, two planets move to their conjunction
each influences irresistibly the orbit of the other, draws it some-
what aside from what should have been its path. The story, as
always rather too briefly told, leaves an impression, not intended
to be made, of great disparity between the two both as to years and
some other controlling influences ; seeming to represent Tyrtamus as
the brilliant young favorite, and Aristotle the elderly admiring
teacher and foster- fatheily patron. That the youth, as if irre-
sistibly obedient to an old and revered master's mandate, should
have renounced the name Tyrtamus that he brought with him
from the paternal home in Eresos, so that henceforward he
should be Theophrastus, is something to create almost a convic-
tion that the one was old and masterful, the other young and
submissive, and not to be thought of as an influence upon the
thought and action of the elder. Such impressions are wrong,
and must vanish by a comparison of certain well authenticated
dates, which show that Aristotle was Theophrastus' senior by only

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 55

fifteen years; also that the two were fellow students under Plato.
Aristotle from the age of seventeen to thirty-seven had been Plato's
pupil. Tyrtamus, it may reasonably be assumed, entered Plato's
discipleship at seventeen if not earlier. If so, he may have been
Aristotle's student companion there for from five to seven years be-
fore the day when Aristotle left Plato and opened a Lyceum of his
own. Shortly after this Plato died; and then, unless he had done
so even earlier, Theophrastus became Aristotle's student. And
as for this new name, it is not necessary to suppose that it was
bestowed merely as the flattering compliment paid a highly promis-
ing young student by an old preceptor. The two were in truth
much upon an equality. They were companions and much at-
tached friends, with no signal disparity between them as to years;
so that the change of name may well be thought to have been
brought about by mutual agreement.

I can not but wonder at the boldness with which Meyer pro-
nounces this change of name from Tyrtamus to Theophrastus to be
a fable. ! No one else has questioned the authenticity of this part
of the biography ; and he has not been able to adduce so much as
one valid reason for his pronouncement against its truthfulness.
One of his supposed reasons is, that Aristotle was no flatterer. To
have rendered this an argument, Meyer should first have disputed
the sincerity of Aristotle's friendship for Theophrastus; for between
genuine and devoted friends flattery is impossible. But he says
the name Theophrastus was not uncommon among Greeks of the
period, which is equivalent to saying that, if the philosopher had
been going to give his disciple a new name he would have selected
some uncommon name, or else that the Eresian had always been
Theophrastus and never Tyrtamus. That "such a changing of
names was unknown" is quite as inane as the rest of this historian's
argument upon the subject. Not one in ten thousand of the ancient
Greeks has been known to us by any name at all. Even of that
comparatively very small number whose names we have heard,
who shall say that none besides Theophrastus ever underwent a
change of name because the event if it happened was not recorded?
There is not the least reason for thinking that with Greeks, in
passing from one age or condition of life to another, the taking of a
new name was uncommon. There were distinguished examples
of it among some of their neighbors, the Hebrews, for example.
Meyer concedes that this "fable" about Theophrastus was uni-
versally received as a fact by all the ancients, and we add that it

1 E. H. F. Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, i, p. 147.

56 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

is as perfectly authenticated as any other fact or incident in Theo-
phrastus' life. He who can make fiction of this part of it may upon
similar grounds invalidate, piece by piece, the whole biography. No
reason having been given for doubting about this incident, every one
to whom the appellation is not meaningless will see that Tyrta-
mus was a grotesque name, if not a ridiculous one, to be borne by a
scholar and orator of commanding presence and predestined great
renown. The young man himself, as well as his master and friend,
must have realized this; and it is hardly to be doubted that the
displacement and rejection of the unsuitable name was the first
object which the change had in view; and that what the new name
should be was but a secondary consideration — a matter of less
importance. Indeed, the biographer Laertius relates that at first
the Eresian began to be called Euphrastus, and then later Theo-
phrastus. Posterity should be grateful that the change was made;
and also grateful for that devoted attachment between the two
philosophers by which it came to pass that the elder of them, dying
in middle age, had his own work taken up, and carried forward
with success during almost another half-century.1 It was such a
friendship as led Aristotle to give to Theophrastus his owrn library,
said to have been the richest one then in existence, and to have
included the manuscripts of his own wrorks, a treasure which by
means of Theophrastus' jealous care was almost singularly pre-
served, and handed down to posterity well-nigh complete. Also the
botanic garden which Aristotle had established at Athens was
made a gift to Theophrastus; by whom also it was newly equipped,
variously improved and adapted to greater usefulness; this, too,
on a scale so extensive, that a wealthy friend of Theophrastus and
benefactor of science is named in history as having borne the
expense of those improvements.2 The fact of the existence of
this Athenian botanic garden will explain how Theophrastus, oc-
cupied as he was with the management of, and also engaged in
teaching in, a school of two thousand students, with no time or
opportunity for travel, gained so intimate a knowledge of the life
histories of many plants as he surprises us with in certain chapters
of his books. He had studied in that garden at morning, noon, and

1 Aristotle died at the age of sixty-three years. Theophrastus was then
forty-eight; and, according to his own statement in his preface to that book
entitled Characteres, he had finished it in his ninety-ninth year. St. Jerome
says that Theophrastus died at the age of 107.

2 The name of this first wealthy patron of botanical science was Demetrius
Phalereus, according to Laertius, vol. i, p. 350.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 57

evening for perhaps sixty years or more when, almost a centenarian,
he wrote such clauses as the following in his will. They should
help us to a realization of the scientific zeal and activity of a jor-
gotten time.

" I bequeath to my friends, who are specially named in this
my Will,1 and to those that will spend their time with them in
learning and philosophy, my garden, walk, and houses adjoining;
upon condition however that none of them shall claim any particu-
lar property therein, or alienate them from their proper use; but
that they shall be enjoyed in common by them all. as a sacred
place where they may familiarly visit one another and discourse
together like good friends."2 And further: " I desire to be buried
in any part of the garden that they shall think most suitable; charg-
ing them not to be at any superfluous expense either upon my
funeral or upon my tomb. Which being done, my will is that
Pomphylus who lives in the house take care of everything, as he
did before."3

That Pomphylus was an overseer, directing the labors of bonds-
men gardeners owned by Theophrastus, comes out incidentally
in another clause. " As for my boys, it is my will that Molo, Cymo,
and Parmeno be forthwith set at liberty. As for Manes and Callias,
I will not have them given their freedom until they shall have la-
bored four years longer in the garden, so that there be no fault
found with their labor and diligence; but after that, let them have
their freedom. " Besides these five, two others are mentioned. " I
give Cano to Demotimus, and Donax to Neleus."4

By means of this testamentary document, the transcript of which
has been fortunately preserved, one is able to realize something of
the extent, and even of the perpetuation during perhaps three
generations, of this pristine garden for biologic research. And this
realization will be exceedingly helpful toward a comprehension of
the magnitude of Theophrastus' work along these lines. The
philosopher was never, like many of his class and in his time, a
traveller. He did not devote any more than a fraction of his time
to botany. His writings on this subject amount to perhaps not
more than a twentieth part of all that he did in the line of written
authorship. And there are chapters in the Historia Plantarum that

1 Hipparchus, Neleus, Strato, Gallic, Demotimus, Callisthenes, and
Cresarchus are their names, according to Laertius, vol. i, 361.

1 Laertius, vol. i, 358. 3 Ibid., 359.

« Laertius, vol. i, 360. Note also the botanical names of the two young
slaves Cymo and Donax.

58 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL, 54

are so crowded with facts about seeds, seeds in process of germina-
tion, young seedling plants and older ones, observations upon this
plant and that shrub as they appear in spring, summer, autumn, and
winter, that, all being considered, we should have wondered greatly
how this most untravelled and sedentary of the great philosophers
had gained all this minuteness of knowledge about the little things
of plant life had we not been informed concerning this great garden
in the midst of which he dwelt, taking' his daily recreation along its
paths, and among its seed beds, and within the bounds of which,
obedient to his last request, they buried him.

Theophrastus was a voluminous author, having written upon a
great diversity of topics. The biographer Laertius gives the
titles of 227 treatises. Not many of these have reached us; but
among those preserved are the Historia Plantarum, in nine books,
with the fragment of a tenth, and the De Causis Plantarum, origin-
ally in eight books according to ancient records, of which the last
two have long been lost. The following paragraphs are the result
of a prolonged and laborious study of the principal work, the His-
toria, the edition quoted being that of Stapelius, published at
Amsterdam in 1644.

As we have already seen,1 there existed in the old Greek literature
that was before Theophrastus, many a trace of properly botanical
observation and reflection, so that he is not in such wise the father
of botanical science as that no one before him had recorded a
philo ophic thought or suggestion about the plant world separately
considered. Yet he is, in most cases which he cites, the sole per-
petuator o the name and fame of such as Menestor, Hippon, and
Leophanes whose passages he quotes and in quoting has saved
from oblivion. There is, then, no reason to suppose that in his
philosophizings about plant life he had been helped by any pre-
decessors beyond that for which he has given them full credit.
It has been observed by historians and critics that a few passages
in Theophrastus are also in Aristotle, unaltered, and uncredited
to their real author. This hardly merits notice. It is undoubted
that the enlistment of Theophrastus' great talents in the service
of botany was secured by Aristotle; and it is as certain that the
alliance between these two celebrities of antiquity was that of the
most devoted friendship; that at Aristotle's demise all his manu-
scripts, published and unpublished, complete and fragmentary,
were gladly bestowed on Theophrastus. They became his property.

1 See pp. -(8-50 preceding.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 59

He was free to dispose of them, to publish any parts of them, ac-
cording to his own judgment. Modern science and erudition have
no example to show us of like community of even intellectual
property between two illustrious friends. Moreover, from the fact
of Theophrastus' having lived and studied and written during half a
century after Aristotle's demise, we are warranted in thinking of
him as of one who had acquired a great store of knowledge about
plants beyond all that to which Aristotle in his briefer day had
attained.

As having been the author of the oldest distinctively botanical
treatise that is extant, the place of Theophrastus is unique, and
invites to special and careful consideration. He writes from the
midst of an advanced civilization ; a state of society in which there
is much farming, extensive cultivation of the vine and olive, fruit
growing, market gardening, and cultivating of medicinal, aro-
matic, and ornamentally flowering herbs, shrubs, and trees; a time
when many improved varieties of all sorts of things have been
derived through cultivation, and when it is already perfectly well
known that such improved varieties can not be depended on to
come true to seed, but may be preserved, and the stock of each
increased by division of roots, by cuttings, and by grafting. It is
also a time when the very masterpieces of literature — some of
them even in Theophrastus' time ancient and classic — abound in
facts and fancies and myths and fables about flowers and fruits,
shrubs and trees. Of course all obvious and familiar parts of
plants — their organs — have their names. These are a part of the
common vocabulary of things. Also group names for growths that
are alike are in as universal requisition. If a genus evidently con-
sists of several different kinds, be they what the botanist of the
present would denominate species, or be they notable varieties
only, each such kind is designated in speech or writing by a cog-
nomen; so that a binary nomenclature, precisely that which all
farmers, gardeners, and foresters find needful and have always
created and employed, is perfectly established.

Such, in brief outline, is what Greek civilization had attained to
in the way of experimental knowledge of plants, independently of
all philosophy, and without help from the philosophers. And
if Theophrastus had been less than a botanical philosopher, and if
as a mere annalist he had but recorded the untaught industrial
and experimental botany of his period, together with that very
considerable vocabulary of botanical terms which then formed a
part of the Greek language, he would still have done us an ines-

60 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

timable service; though masters of the science in the seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries of our era would not have
styled him Father of Botany.

In our study of this maker of the first Landmark in the History
of Botany the main object must be that of discovering in what
ways, under what limitations, and yet how well, he accomplished
the placing of knowledge of plant life and form upon the list of
the sciences.

Method. That a treatise be recognizable as scientific it must be
methodical. It is even a necessary characteristic of it. There
must be a principle, or a set of principles according to which the
facts or propositions find an orderly arrangement. This does
not, however, imply that the method or system be of some par-
ticular kind, as, for example, that in botany one should be required
to arrange the matter of one's treatise according to what are con-
ceived to be the natural affinities between plant and plant.
The author who writes botany from the industrial point of
view, if he so elect, may discuss his plants in the order of their
relationship in families, genera, and species; or, ignoring taxonomy
of that sort, he may arrange them according to the nature of their
serviceability in household economy and what are called the
useful arts; may discuss in successive chapters food plants, drug
plants, textile plants, vegetable dye-stuffs; trees, as supplying
timber, fuel, oils, gums, sugars, resins, nuts, etc. That botanical
matter so arranged may be scientific can not successfully be
controverted.

Theophrastus of Eresus might have adopted such a method as
this last. He was abundantly capable of discussing the plant world
from the economic and utilitarian standpoint ; indeed, had he so
arranged the substance of his work he would but have been following
established precedent. Every treatise on plants which was extant
in his day was of the nature of agricultural, horticultural, or medical
botany. There was not yet any other method of arrangement for
botanical writing but the economical. Furthermore, his own
chapters everywhere abound in references to the qualities of plants,
and their uses in the economy of human life ; though such references
are commonly supplementary to the statement of other and differ-
ent considerations. The very title of his work, History of Plants
—in more idiomatic English, The Story of the Plants — seems to
look toward an investigation of this realm of nature for its own
sake, the vegetable kingdom thought of philosophically rather than
industrially. No work was yet in existence, unless one by Aris-

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 6l

totle which has been lost, in which plant organ was discussed in
relation to plant organ, and the kinds of plants in relation to other
kinds. The prevailing attitude of mind respecting the plant world
was not such as would tend to the encouragement of other than
utilitarian views of it. That these objects were brought into exist-
ence only with reference to man, and for his use and benefit, was
even a part of the religious belief. And so deeply seated and
generally prevailing was this sentiment that it is said the students
of Aristotle and of Theophrastus became objects of ridicule with
some of the literaries, poets, satirists of the time, because of their
going about the country picking up and curiously peering into
the least little things of nature, such as were of no possible use.
And one may not attribute to antiquity alone these prejudices
against philosophic nature study ; for they rule the mind of untold
millions even now. Antiquity, in this phase of it, is with us still,
in the ideas of the uncivilized races, and also in rural districts of
the lands of the enlightened. Not many a botanical traveller and
explorer along the frontiers and in the remoter country sides has
failed to be accosted with friendly queries respecting plants of
which he has been seen to be making specimens : What use has this
plant? What is that kind good for? And what betrays in these
good-naturedly inquisitive rustics their complete subjection to the
pre-Theophrastan utilitarian botany is, that when the man of
science answers frankly that he knows no use whatever for the
plants in question, he is not believed, but is silently credited with
wishing, for his own pecuniary advantage, to keep their use a
secret. The adherents of this archaic philosophy of the vegetable
kingdom are, I say, doubtless numbered by thousands on all the
continents; people who have not heard of any other; and we have
no proof that another had been any more than merely suggested
before Theophrastus.

In the Second Chapter of the philosopher's First Book there is
presented the following list of the external and obvious organs of
a highly organized plant, i.e., a tree: root, stem, branch, bud, leaf,
flower, fruit. 1 I recall that upon first reading these initial chapters
of Theophrastan botany I was quite startled to find here this com-
plete and faultless statement of the external organs of a tree or
shrub; to be confronted with it even here, and be made to realize
that it is so very, very old; that our own masters and tutors of a
few years ago did not invent it, neither their own immediate

> Hist., Book i, ch. 2.

62 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

botanical ancestry, but that all so-called modern botany has this
fundamental of plant-morphology from old Theophrastus. and all
unawares. But the surprise passes. The sentence is so simple,
so natural, so logical, the connection between term and term so
perfect, that one doubts that it could have been done otherwise;
and may be disposed to say to himself that any botanist of whatever
epoch might have gone out on a morning walk, looked at a number
of different kinds of growths, come in and written down that method-
ical proposition offhand. It is extremely improbable that it was so
done. It is next to certain that it cost its author a great deal of
careful observation and prolonged study and reflection. The
sentence is studiedly methodical, and no less a dictum of science
than a work of art. It is easy to forget that, as in art, the produc-
tion from which all evidence of the artist's anxious care and hard
work has been eliminated is the masterpiece, so in science and
philosophy the axiom or the aphorism which when finished reads
as easily, smoothly, and convincingly as if every one always must
have seen its transparent truthfulness, and as if almost any novice
in that same science might have written it down in just those
words — that this is the little sentence which may have cost its
author the expenditure of time and mental energy with which he
might have written a whole volume upon some topic that was not
difficult.

If the origin of the simplest elements of universal botany is to
be shown, this Theophrastan list of plant organs will have to be
looked into rather particularly; will need to be studied with great
care and caution. Those six or seven important terms, as our
philosopher links them together, constitute the most classic piece
of elementary botany in existence. The sentence has also much
to reveal about the author's botanical method in general.

First of all, the terms of the sentence, root, stem, leaf, bud, etc.,
have not been created or invented by Theophrastus. As the
names of those things they are part of the common vocabulary;
botanical terms, assuredly, yet in their framing and use doubtless
far antedating all written botany. That our first philosopher of
plant life, he who first brought the terms together and placed them
in line, altered the meaning of certain of them by giving them a
more comprehensive or else a more restricted application, is easily
possible; though that does not here concern us. We have but to
note that this fine equipment of most fundamental botanic terms,
the first botanist — as we must denominate him despite the sug-
gestion of the paradoxical — found ready made. They and other

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 63

such terms had been the legacy to human speech made by a primeval
race of nature-ponderers, almost infinitely remote and prehistoric
even in Theophrastus' time.

Observe now, that while root, stem, bud, leaves, flowers, etc.,
are familiar and obvious parts of a tree, they are far enough from
being a complete list of such obvious parts. Viewed at close range
the bark is very conspicuous; more so than either the buds or
flowers in the majority of arboreal and arborescent growths; and
since he has here left it out, one is obliged to think that this point
was well inquired into by him; that the omission was deliberate,
and the result of sound reasoning. We shall find proof by and by
that he investigated the inner structure of trees; and there, among
the anatomical parts of the tree as they disclose themselves in the
cross-section of its trunk or stem, we shall find him cataloguing
the bark. To separate organography into the two divisions,
morphological and anatomical, is, then, also classic. It is another
part of universally approved botanical method which originated
with and was established by Theophrastus.

With that Theophrastan list of organs under consideration,
modern botany at the very outset divides it into two parts, la-
beling one division of them the vegetative organs, the other
the reproductive. The Greek has incidentally given us to know
that he, too, pondered very seriously indeed the question of a
natural division of his series, and that he effected one. It is as far
as possible from corresponding to our modern classification of the
same organs, and must needs have been so ; because the only repro-
ductive organs of plants known to Theophrastus were seeds and
buds. Of the sexual organism of the flower he had no information.
He was without a microscope. His dividing line between the two
classes of organs is drawn, not as with us toward the upper end of
the series, but near the middle of it. Root, stem, branch, bud,
form the first division; and the perfect naturalness of it may be
realized by observing that precisely those organs, and no more,
are what one enumerates as constituting deciduous woody plants
in their winter condition. No leaf, no flower, no fruit is there;
yet the organism as it stands betrays no imperfection. From
its deepest rootlets to _its remotest twigs and scaly buds it
is alive, in health, perfectly normal in every particular. What is
more, every such tree and shrub on the face of the earth passes
half the period of its life in just that condition, no difference
whether that life period be fifteen years or fifteen hundred. It is
a classifying of the external organs of a plant as permanent and

64 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

transient; a very remarkable division of the series, as true to
nature as any classification of organs that ever has been proposed
anywhere by any man, and yet, as I suppose, entirely peculiar to
Theophrastus' method. How thoroughly natural and scientific
this proposition is, may be further shown; as also how studiously
the learned Greek nature student reached his conclusion about it.
It is not the deciduous tree only whose different organs fall into
the two classes of the permanent and the transient. He has dis-
covered that the evergreen trees, like the rest, acquire one set of
new leaves each year, and as unvaryingly lose an old set ! ; so that
their perpetual verdure is due to this only, that each set of leaves
remains on the tree during two or more seasons. It is clear to his
mind that if leaves, flowers, and fruits are to be catalogued as plant
organs at all, the division of the whole series into constant organs
and inconstant must be maintained. But he is even perplexed
with a question of whether those inconstant and scarcely more
than occasional parts are to be listed as plant organs at all2; a
position which most twentieth-century readers will think very
singular and strange. But must there not also have been with
him a time of doubt as to the placement of certain other very com-
mon and external parts of plants? Such things as prickles, spines,
thorns, tendrils, excrescences of several kinds which imitate fruits
but are not — it was by no accidental oversight that these were
omitted from his catalogue of plant organs. Since in the phyto-
graphic and taxonomic parts of his writing he evinces his perfect
familiarity with them, it becomes certain that he surveyed with
his wonted carefulness the ground of their possible right to enumera-
tion among these other organs, and that he deliberately ruled them
out. The ground of his doubt concerning leaf, flower, and fruit
as admissible into the line he states fully. Being himself first a
zoologist, then a botanist, and always interested in making com-
parisons between these two kingdoms of nature, he is aware that
the foetus of a gravid animal is no part or organ of that animal.
The fruit of plants, being analogous to the animal foetus, should
be denied any place in the list of plant organs. To make this
part of the Theophrastan argument quite clear to the reader, it
will be needful to anticipate our study of his anthology in so far
as to say that the conception of ovary and ovules as being parts of
the flower is one that never entered into the mind of Theophrastus.
With him those first small rudiments, as they appear still encircled by

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 15.

2 Hist., Book i, ch. i.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 05

or concealed within their colored floral leaves, are the fruit. From
this incipient stage, in which, as I say, we call them parts of the
flower, the Greek held them to be the fruit, and so forward to their
fuller development and final maturity, always the fruit. Whether,
by the way, his doctrine of the fruit or ours is the more natural,
the more logical, and the less forced and arbitrary, he may determine
who may divest his mind of its every prejudgment about the case.
In the light of this explanation it will be easy to see that, if the
fruit be denied by Theophrastus its place in the list of plant organs,
the flower, that is what we call corolla, is equally disqualified,
partly on account of its intimate connection with the fruit, and
partly on the score of its exceeding transiency in all cases. Fur-
thermore, because in the thought of the Greek the flower itself
was but a circle of leaves, different from the ordinary foliage only
as to form and coloring, if the floral leaves must fall short of mention
in the list of important organs, the green leaves must remain with
them. So the catalogue would begin and end thus: root, stem,
branch, bud. Indeed, his first presentation of it is in this ab-
breviated form. Now against his own argument for the exclusion
of such parts from the list, he presents such reflections as the
following. It is only when trees stand vested in their full foliage,
flowers, and fruits, that they seem to have reached their fullness of
beauty and perfection. That which makes for the perfection of
an organism should apparently be accounted a part of that or-
ganism. And as for permanency, there are exceptional cases among
animals in which certain parts are transitory. Fowls periodically
shed their feathers, and stags their horns; and his last observation
here is that animals and plants are in many ways so very different
in their constitution that arguments from analogy must not be
pressed too far. And so, after much observation and astute rea-
soning upon the subject, he convinces himself that leaf, flower,
and fruit are entitled to places in the list of plant organs, where
nevertheless they by their nature form themselves into a separate
division. One can not but admire this piece of Theophrastan
method, wrought out originally and laboriously by himself, and
so unique; in its deepest meaning fairly amounting to a division
of the organs as vegetative and reproductive, and drawing the
line between bud and leaf — mistakenly, of course — instead of
between leaf and flower.

There is another mark of deep study in the making of this list.
It lies there, rather well concealed from our first glance, in that
elegant sequence according to which the names of the organs are

66 SMITHSOXIAX MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

placed: root, stem, leaf, flower, fruit. Its mere orderliness pleases
one, even captivates the mind to that degree that one readily
believes that it is of both natural and logical necessity, and that
any single modification of that arrangement would make the whole
unmethodical and altogether bad. To begin at one pole of the
plant axis and proceed thence without a break to the opposite pole
is artistic, and therefore satisfies our esthetic fancies. It may also
be that such procession of names of plant organs is called for by
scientific principle; and since our protobotanist was keenly in
quest of principles and a little indifferent to matters of phraseology,
we must inquire into his scientific reason for writing the root first
on the list of plant organs, rather than the stem.

We have already seen that primevally the root received more
attention morphologically than any other organ of the series l ; that
early descriptive botany is rather anomalous in this particular, and
that all this came to pass through the influence of root-gatherers
and their patrons the physicians and the pharmacists. Such a
merely economic and commercial consideration as that which
influenced men of the time in their descriptions of roots can not be
supposed to have the least effect upon the mind of Theophrastus
at this particular juncture, where he is engaged upon a study that
is in nature purely scientific, biologic. No botanist has lived
in any age of the world more capable of distinguishing between
the economic and the biologic in nature study. Now in those parts
of his work which are descriptive, written for the purpose of en-
abling the reader to identify the plant, his sequence of the organs
is different. It is now stem, leaf, flower, fruit, root; another not
unnoteworthy item of Theophrastan method ; one sequence for the
treatment of organs phytographically, and another sequence for
the discussion of them biologically. The former is well suited
to its purpose; for, to the great majority of observers, nothing is
seen of any plant or tree but its stem, foliage, flower, and fruit;
and any reader would be discouraged if not repelled by a description
beginning with a full account of the root, about which part he
neither knows nor particularly cares to know anything. As to the
other and biological sequence, it is evident that the philosopher
arrived at it only after careful and prolonged investigation. " In
all plants the growth of the root precedes that of the superior
parts." The allusion is to young plants, whether growing from
seeds or from cuttings; which latter means of propagation was

'[Page 45 preceding.
2 Hist., Book i, ch. 1 1.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 67

only less extensively resorted to by the ancient Greeks than it is by
ourselves; and they knew as well as we that when a cutting set
into the ground has remained for weeks and maybe months with-
out having been increased by so much as one leaf, that only means
that it is slow in forming its roots, and that until these are
somewhat grown, other growth will not begin. It is improbable
that this kind of fact was not of common knowledge with gardeners
and orchardmen ages before Theophrastus ; so that all he had to
do was to verify it by experiment. But when he states that even
within the seed it is the radicle which first begins to swell and grow,
and that this is invariably the first part of the growing seed to appear
outside the shell,1 we feel assured that these are fruits of observa-
tion on the part of no gardener, but of a biologist.

In the year 1672 of our era Nehemiah Grew, aided by a microscope
(!), had repeated those investigations of the seed as germinating,
and published what was but a confirmation of the view that Theo-
phrastus had presented some nineteen hundred years before,
namely, that biologically considered the root is first among plant
organs, then the stem, and after them, leaf, flower, and fruit.

One must now leave the Theophrastan method in merely ele-
mentary organography, and survey briefly the outlines of his
dealing with plant as compared with plant.

The philosopher has several different viewpoints from each of
which he perceives the vegetable kingdom as a whole to be divisible
into two parts. The first of these divisions is according to texture
and duration of stem and root ; a chapter in botany which he wrote
for all time ; the distinction between woody plants and herbaceous.
Trees and shrubs, alike as to their woodiness, are distinguished by
him precisely as in the most recent botany, not neglecting the
word of caution that no hard and fast line separates the two;
that many, like the filbert and the pomegranate, are naturally
shrubs, the stems growing in clumps, and are seen in the form and
dimensions of trees only when under the cultivator's care and art.
Even the pear tree, olive, and fig when left to themselves become
many-stemmed and shrub-like. He also apprizes the reader that
certain pot-herbs of the gardens have always the one-stemmed and
arboreal mode of growth, even approaching trees in their dimen-
sions, and all within the time of a few months; but that these have
not the duration of trees or even of shrubs, and therefore prove
that they are neither. He mentions certain mallow and cabbage

> Hist., Book viii, ch. 2.

68 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

kinds as of this category.1 He denominates them Sf
which his Latin translators have rendered olerarbores, and would
appear in English as tree-potherbs. All herbaceous plants he
classifies as perennial, biennial, and annual; also carefully stating
that the annual and biennial are hardly distinguishable, inasmuch
as both die, root and branch, within the space of a year, and as
soon as they have once perfected seeds.

While this important example of botanical method is in hand,
it will be pertinent to take note of those two mental processes,
analysis and synthesis, of which every piece of method is the
outcome; this for the purpose of clearing our own mental vision
for an inquiry into the question of how much of this classifying
according to texture and duration was found by Theophrastus
ready-made and in common use, and to what extent, if at all, he
revised, augmented, and improved it. Problems of this kind are
most difficult; even impossible of exact solution by the mere
botanist. The erudition of the specialist in philology and the
history of language is here called for, without the aid of which the
early history of botany never can be written. Happily, however,
great linguistic learning is not requisite to a few reasonable infer-
ences respecting Theophrastus' part in this classic piece of method.
The distinguishing between woody growths and herbaceous is
doubtless older than history. It is also evident that with remote
enlightened antiquity tree and shrub were distinguished. The
words representing these ideas are very ancient; but the half-
shrub, or suffrutescent growth as we of to-day speak of it, appears
to have been set apart as a group, and assigned a distinctive name
by Theophrastus himself. There are many old and classic names
for plants distinctively herbaceous. There is weed, grass, herb,
vegetable, even the word "plant " itself as originally used, every one
implying the herbaceous as to texture and short-life period; and
so much for very primitive analysis and synthesis ; but the putting
of all these things together, the synthesis of them under one com-
prehensive term, was, if I mistake not, a Theophrastan contribution
to botanical method. Moreover, and what is of even more profound
interest, it appears as if the synthesis of everything that vegetates
— tree, shrub, half-shrub, and herbaceous plants, including even
sea-weeds and fungi — into one vast comprehensive assemblage of
living entities called plants, is also to be attributed, if I mistake
not, to Theophrastus. Primeval and prehistoric observations

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 5.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 69

and reasonings, I say, doubtless established and named such lesser
groups as tree, perhaps bush, certainly garden vegetable and field
and garden weed, and grass and reed, rush and mushroom; but
the synthesis of all as in some way alike and interrelated, and as
spoken of comprehensively under one word — that would seem to
have awaited the advent of a master mind like that of Aristotle.
The written record of so significant a piece of method in nature
study I find for the first time in Aristotle's greatest botanical dis-
ciple. The fuller investigation of this topic may be deferred until we
come to Theophrastus as the founder of Botanical Terminology.

From another viewpoint Theophrastus beheld the world of
plants as divisible into the cultivated and the wild 1 ; and he formally
approves this line of separation, though almost as compelled by
circumstances; for he admits that it is not natural, and that the
differences are in the main such as result from cultivation. It
presents, nevertheless, a forcible example of rude primitive plant
classifying. Untaught peoples of all countries, and many all
around us, hold to such a division, — and that even superstitiously ;
firmly believing that the wild parsnip or wild carrot — differing
from its parent plant only as growing spontaneously by the way-
side, rather than within the garden wall under cultivation — is a
poisonous thing, perilous to the life of him who would dare to eat
it. Our present nomenclature of plants, the vernacular as well as
the Latin, presents countless clear vestiges of the former popularity
of this antique parting of all the plant world into these two divisions.
Such specific adjectives as agrestis, silvestris, trivialis, arvensis,
pratensis, hortensis, sativus, urbanns, and many more tell of a
time past when about the first question concerning any plant was,
whether it was wild or cultivated. There is no need of citing exam-
ples of those hundreds of vernacular plant names the first term of
which is " wild " ; but all of them, as relics of pristine botanical ages,
attest the once universal prevalence of this partitioning of all things
that grow out of the ground, into the two groups of the cultivated
and the wild.

As for Theophrastus, out of the some 500 species and varieties
of plants of which he treats, only an insignificant proportion are
other than domesticated ; and he says that the uncultivated things
of wildwood and mountain are mostly still unknown and have no
names. To have assigned space in his book for the consideration
of many wild plants must have appeared like a marked innovation ;

« Hist.. Book i, ch. 6.

70 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

one that indeed looked in the direction of a widening of the field
of botanical investigation, and was therefore of promise for the
future of the science; but it must have given occasion for carping
critics to ask how wild plants, such as have neither names nor
history, are entitled to a place in the History of Plants. But while
this newly suggested distinction had within itself one element that
would eventually accomplish its obliteration, Theophrastus did
not perceive this. Among wild trees and other growths which it
had been sought to introduce into gardens, there were some which
had baffled every effort to transfer them, whether by root or seed.
From this he reasoned that there existed a line of natural demar-
cation, at least between plants that were susceptible of domestica-
tion and such as were not. But some trees which he named as
apparently impossible of domestication are now successfully
cultivated.

Having held the status of an acceptable part of botanical method
for a millennium and a half, at the revival of botany in the first part
of the sixteenth century this distinction began to decline in
popular favor, and within two centuries more it became so nearly
obsolete that, in books descriptive of the plants of particular
regions or districts, those of field and garden were wholly omitted.
Only wild plants were now taken note of; and so an extreme
squarely opposite to that of Theophrastan times had been reached.
And what lends deeper interest to these observations now, is the
circumstance that of late years there has been awakened the keen-
est passion for the study of cultivated plants that history has
known. I speak, of course, of that purely philosophic and scientific
investigation of them which' either together with or apart from the
industrial in motive, engages the attention of many botanists.
And here, realizing that the very father of written botany was
chiefly attentive to domesticated growths, and upon these as prin-
cipal subjects wrought out his scientific system, one wonders
whether or not in botany the first cycle of its history is being
completed.

From yet another outlook over the vegetable kingdom as a
whole, all the subjects thereof range themselves under the two
assemblages of the ' ' flowering ' ' and the ' ' flowerless ' ' . Theophrastus
records this ; but assuredly the invention of such a division cannot
be ascribed to him. It must have formed a part of the universal
prehistoric botany. Never since human intelligence came into the
world, and lived in converse with nature, can people have failed
to remark the presence here, and the absence there, of those differ-

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 71

ently shaped, differently colored, and singularly congested foliar
parts that they call the flower. It must have been observed
immemorially, and accepted as a nature-taught fact, that such
and such trees, weeds, and other plants never display flowers.
They are flowerless. What I have been careful to state, namely,
that the primitive notion of a flower is that it consists of leaves,
must be insisted on. The reader must not permit himself to think
of the pristine idea of flowerless plants as embracing anything less
than the cryptogams plus the whole body of the apetalous phan-
erogams. With this fixed in our minds, we are then ready to in-
quire whether or not Theophrastus made any improvements of his
own upon this part of pristine botanic method ; whether perchance
he looked into the matter far enough to have discovered that there
exist such things as flowers destitute of flower leaves, and thereupon
enlarged the boundaries of the flowering plants and correspondingly
restricted those of the flowerless group. The answer must await
our study of Theophrastan anthology.

In close connection with his separating between the flowering and
the flowerless, the Greek divides the whole plant world again into
the two categories of the "fruit-bearing " and the" sterile "-1 Judged
by certain criteria that are of comparatively recent adoption there
would be no call for this last distinction; for the flowering and the
fructiferous would exactly correspond to each other, as would also
the flowerless and the sterile; so that this last seeming distinction
would be but a different naming of two primary groups before
indicated. But this is not true; for when we have learned his doc-
trine of the flower we shall perceive that he had in mind fructiferous
plants, and trees even, the flowers of which he had been unable
to detect and which therefore of logical necessity he must classify
as flowerless. Also, since he knew nothing of such sexual dis-
tinctions as have their ground in floral structure, there presented
themselves to him what we of to-day know as the males of certain
dioecious plants, which flowered freely, and yet were sterile in-
variably. There was, then, no correspondence at all between
those two items of his method as he saw and indicated them.

As regards the scientific merits of these two groupings our esti-
mate must be formed according to their correspondence with the
facts known at the time the groups were proposed, and not by
bringing, for example, Theophrastus' groups of "flowering" and
" flowerless " abruptly into contrast with those groups as they stand

1 I have inverted Theophrastus' order here. He places fruit-bearing and
sterile before flowering and flowerless.

J2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

in recent botany under those same names. Such a mistake as
this the historian Meyer 1 must have made when he pronounced
the Theophrastan distinguishing between "flowering" and "flower-
less" to be "of little value." Its worth or worthlessness should
have been determined — in the judgment of a historian, at all events
—by the measure of its answerability to the state of knowledge
actual at the time of its promulgation, and also with reference to its
usefulness as an incentive to further inquiry into the nature of
plants as flowering and flowerless. Or, even as the historic start-
ing point in the designation of two groups, in name at least equiva-
lent to Phanerogams and Cryptogams, this Theophrastan and very
suggestive expression is of deep interest, and of no small value.

These mere outlines of his general method must be concluded
with the bare mention of some other aspects of the vegetable
kingdom as it presented itself to the comprehensive and deeply
thoughtful mind of the protobotanist. He discusses, and in much
more than mere outline, meteorology and climatology in relation
to plant life ; has chapter after chapter upon ecology and geographic
distribution, and even touches more than lightly the topics of
plant pathology and the transmutation of species.

Vegetative Organography. Theophrastus begins his botany at
the beginning. The remark is pertinent; for with recent writers
it is no uncommon practice to begin somewhere toward the middle
of the subject, leaving the foundations of the science out of sight.
It is an easy way, avoiding as it does the difficulty and the re-
sponsibility of laying down first principles. To recognize three
separate realms of nature seems necessary; yet to indicate clearly
the boundary lines between them is confessedly anything but
easy. Theophrastus at the outset acknowledged the difficulty of
distinguishing universally between the vegetable and animal king-
doms, but he faced it. There was no evasion. He addresses him-
self at once to the task of defining the plant as differing from the
animal. And first he presents what must have been the popularly
accepted method of indicating the distinction, though only to show
its insufficiency for the purposes of science. Animals of whatever
description have at least a mouth and a stomach. But it can not
be said that all plants have roots, stems, branches, buds, leaves,
or fruits. To circumscribe the plant world by listing the common
organs of plants may enforce the exclusion of many things which
are neither of the animal kingdom nor of the mineral, and are there-

i Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. i, 162.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 73

fore plants. Here it should be remarked that well toward the
beginning of the seventeenth century there were people — among
these at least one very eminent botanical author — who did not
allow the fungi to be classed as plants at all. Theophrastus knew
all these lower forms of vegetable life, fungi both terrestrial and
hypogeous, lichens and algae in abundance, and proclaimed
it unhesitatingly that they are plants; plants indeed without
stem or leaf or root or seed. 'The phases of plant life are
so exceedingly diverse in nature and constitution that, to give
a general (i. e., morphological) definition of a plant, and that
in few words, is not possible,"1 he savs. He ventures, however,
one distinctive peculiarity of plants. ' They are not, like animals,
endowed with ethical susceptibilities and the power of voluntary
action." This is metaphysical, indeed, yet no whit more so than
that which Linnaeus gave in the middle of the eighteenth century
when, pressed for one single mark of distinction between the genus
Homo as separate from those anthropoid mammals next in rank,
he was compelled to cite the " Nosce teipsum"; that is, man's
consciousness of his own existence. Between animal and vegetable
kingdoms the man of the eighteenth century could offer no better
distinction than this: "Plants grow and live. Animals grow, live,
and feel."3 But he of twenty centuries earlier had been more
circumspect and cautious. Such movements as heliotropism and
nyctotropism, and others seemingly akin to nervous irritability,
were not unrecognized by Theophrastus, and may well have seemed
to indicate something too closely allied to feeling.

In defining the manifest organs of higher plants the philosopher
proceeds with like caution, preferring physiological to morpho-
logical characteristics; in this, the first precursor of the modern
biologist, who, if required to name one distinction between plant
and animal, confines himself to a point in physiology.

The root, Theophrastus says, is that by which aliment is taken
up4; not a satisfactory definition to us moderns who demand
morphological distinctions. Yet very safe is Theophrastus in his
reserve; for what he names as characteristic of roots, albeit a
merely functional characteristic, is one that holds. It is also
apparently a new definition, framed by himself, and intended to

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 2.

2 Hist., Book i, ch. i. I trust I may not be found to have rendered too
freely the words fiOy and

* Syst. Nat., 4th ed., p. 3.

* Hist., Book i, ch. 2.

74 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

displace another definition which, though time-honored, was
fallacious. That antique fallacious definition of a root has not
yet been universally displaced. Without going quite out of sight
of some of our colleges one may elicit that same old characterization
of the root, and from the voices of people who have a certain
familiarity with this particular plant organ. Multitudes in every
land under the sun to-day will answer promptly that the root is
the underground part of a plant. The Lesbian boy, while yet
untaught by either Plato or Aristotle, it is most likely would have
given this same answer. In maturer years, after much careful
questioning of nature, he has found that that popular definition of
a root does not hold good. The shrub or tree which the Greeks
call Helix, the common ivy, he has observed minutely and ex-
perimented with until he has established it that those threads by
which it climbs rocks, walls, and tree-trunks have nothing of the
nature of tendrils, but are perfect roots, exercising in some degree
even the usual function of roots.1 He knows quite as intimately
the shrub Ixos, the mistletoe, and that its seeds refuse to so
much as sprout elsewhere than on the bark of living trees, into
which bark it strikes its roots.2 He had not seen the banyan tree
of the Indies; but there were Greeks, educated Greeks, who had
both seen and described it, with its many lesser subsidiary trunks
grouped around the large central and original one. In their
descriptions the travellers had stated so definitely the origin of
the| accessory trunks as starting out from main branches and
growing straight downwards, that Theophrastus without hesitating
declared that such things, however trunk-like they may at last
appear, are roots.3 Thus did the first master of organology com-
pletely invalidate the ancient world's definition of the root, and
at the same time indicate with clearness the two categories of roots,
subterranean and aerial. He did not, however, name them. As
nomenclator of even his own most brilliant discoveries he was
usually delinquent. We seem to read it between his lines that
there were in his mind some suggestions of root characteristics
which, had he been less cautious than he was, he might have
added to that very reserved and merely physiological definition.
The downward growth from the branches, in case of the banyan,
and also the statement that those pendents at first and while
young and tender are of a light color and hairy (!) — both these

1 Hist., Book iii, ch. 18.

2 De Causis Plantarum, Book ii, ch. 23.

3 Hist., Book iv, ch. 5.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 75

reported facts influenced his decision that these were roots. We
shall also see presently that he had noted other morphologic
marks, but such as he did not think universal.

The roots of herbaceous growths he in general classifies as
ligneous, fibrous, and fleshy; and these include many things recog-
nized in recent botany as subterranean stems, that is bulbs, corms,
tubers, and the more thick and fleshy forms of root stock or rhi-
zome. All really fleshy underground parts he distinguishes again
as vertically elongated, spherical, depressed-globose, and what
he calls nut-like; this last class embracing such incongruities as
the small and solitary shell-covered corms of the crocus, and those
tuberiform enlargements that appear, as if strung like nuts, on the
roots of the asphodel. The rhizomes of arundo, and of what he
names as arundinaceous plants in general, and which he remarks
are sometimes partly above ground, he denominates jointed roots,
but notices that these all have fibrous roots attached to them
Others, like the bulbs of squill and onion, are composed of a multi-
plicity of scales or tunics which can be removed one by one; so
that these differ from other fleshy roots in that they exhibit two
different kinds. Their nature is so peculiar that one might be
excused for doubting that they are roots at all; for if in that they
are subterranean they would at first seem to be such, they are in
other particulars of quite another nature; because roots properly
so-called diminish in size toward their lower extremity and end
there acutely, whereas these bulbs and their like are widest at
base and grow smaller in the opposite direction; moreover those
fibres which descend from the bases of some and from the sides of
others are the real roots which take up aliment ; but the extuberant
part is more like a foetus, or a fruit.1 However, after still further
discussion, he seems to rest in the conclusion that, as roots are of
various kinds, and even bulbs and other fleshy roots are functionally
much alike, all may well enough be continued under the category
of roots. If to any botanists of the twentieth century it may
seem a strange thing that the Greek, having distinguished between
roots as subterranean and aerial, should have failed — and after
all his study of them — to classify stems also as aerial and sub-
terranean, let them recall to mind that philosophic conservatism
which led Theophrastus to make more of the function of an organ
than of its form; that he was sure that corm and rhizome and
tunicated bulb attract nutriment and are by that token roots.

i Hist., Book i, ch. 10.

76 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Let them also contemplate the fact that for twenty hundred years
and more all botanists accepted the decision of Theophrastus, and
that even with Linnaeus, those organs which we have somewhat
recently been learning to regard as subterranean stems were
nothing but roots; and that Linnaeus in this particular was even
so far back of Theophrastus that he had no doubts about their
being roots.

That in the most primitive phytography roots received almost
singularly minute attention has been adverted to, and the probable
reason assigned. Accordingly we shall find Theophrastus, when
done with their morphology, anatomy, and physiology, giving a full
account of their differences as to color, odor, flavor, and their
qualities as wholesome or deleterious. In color, some are white,
others black, not a few yellow, some tinged with red, and some
quite intensely red. As to odors and flavors there is again much
diversity; and some that are sweet and pleasant to the taste are
deadly poisonous, while several kinds that are of disagreeable
odor or bitter are harmless, and even of medicinal value.

At the correct definition of a stem as being that part of a plant
which bears leaves, Theophrastus did not arrive. His imperfect
conception of the leaf, for one thing, stood in the way. Those
merely scale-like short leaves, upright and even appressed to the
stem, such as those of asparagus and orobanche, were mere scales
in his view of them, and the stems of such plants he considered
leafless. Again, to his vision there was a horde of stemless plants
the leaves of which arise not from any stem at all, but directly
from the roots. Here I can not forbear remarking that we of
to-day, despite our better characterization of the stem, and our
recognition of it as present in all except the very lowest plants,
yet contradict our own definition in our practice, and have fallen
back upon that of Theophrastus whenever we speak or write, as
we freely do, about acaulescent plants and radical leaves. The
ancient author defines the stem primarily as that part which is
the main vehicle of aliment to the other parts ; adding that it rises
up singly from the ground 1 ; which is of course to distinguish it
from the branches and leaf-stalks, both of which he knew to be also
channels for aliment. This definition, equally with that of the
root, evinces his distrust of morphological characteristics as de-
finitive, and his feeling that the physiological are safer. But, the
stem once defined functionally, he proceeds with care and skill

' Hist., Book i, ch, 2.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 77

to indicate its many morphological diversities; and here not only
classifies but also names several of the classes. He acts as if he
thought the language of science would be defective if such dis-
similar things as an oak log, a mullein stalk, and a rye straw all were
to bear the name of stem. In practice, therefore, he called the
stem of a tree its trunk, ffrsAexoe, the light hollow or pithy stem
of all grassy and reedy things was a culm, ndXaf^os- thus the ordi-
nary word stem or stalk, xavhos, was mostly limited to designate
those of what we know as herbaceous exogens; and so our modern
botany has these three kinds of stems as designated by Theo-
phrastus. Culm is even very manifestly a modification of the
Greek kalamos. Embracing as it does almost all endogenous
stems, it is more comprehensive than the English words straw,
reed, and rush all combined ; and in our botany we were obliged to
borrow and make over just the Greek term which Theophrastus
invented — unless he, too, borrowed it; or, what amounts to the
same, extended the use and gave a new and scientific meaning to
an old and familiar term. As to their forms and modes of growth
he distinguishes many kinds of stem among herbaceous plants.
And, as woody growths are classified as trees and shrubs, according
as their trunks are one or several from each root, so the herbaceous
are distinguished as one-stemmed or many-stemmed. The nu-
merous kinds of bulbous plants both wild and cultivated he under-
stands as being invariably one-stemmed, and therefore does not
speak of this in his descriptions of such; but of other herbaceous
growths his custom is to mention, in his descriptions of them,
whether the root sends up a single stem or many. It is a dis-
tinction of importance to phytography; and if the anthological
extremists of one and two centuries ago thought it superfluous,
and neglected it, its value is now again beginning to be clearly
seen and freely admitted. Again, herbaceous stems are upright,
or reclining, trailing, climbing, or twining. 1 He also has observed
that one-stemmed herbs are apt to be erect, the many-stemmed
otherwise; or at least that the reclining or trailing are always
many-stemmed. Among upright stems he perceives how different
those of the umbellifers are from most others in that they are
fluted, or at least striate, and, giving these and all their like a
name that really points to their anatomical structure rather than
to their external appearance, he denominates all such plants
nervose-stemmed. Through having missed the discovery of the

1 Hist., Book vii, ch. 8.

78 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

good morphologic mark of stems, he is constrained to offer the
category of what he calls smooth-stemmed plants. Such
"stems" are nothing more or less than the flower-stalks of
acaulescent perennials, called smooth stems because devoid of
those unevennesses now designated as the nodes and internodes,
and received as the most universal mark of real stems. His
examples of the smooth stem are those of the onion and leek, 1
good illustrations of the scape, as named and denned in later
organography.

The leaf is a thing so almost infinitely diversified that he does
not attempt to characterize it morphologically, or even physi-
ologically, for he can not with any degree of certainty name its
chief function. So without vouchsafing any definition of it, he
goes about the rehearsal of its many aspects. Although as an
organ it heads the list of that division of them which he has dis-
tinguished as transitory, and therefore in a manner secondary, no
part of a plant would seem more deeply to have interested him,
or to have been more carefully observed. He is even somewhat
diffuse in his writing upon it ; more so than in the case of any other
organ, unless the fruit and seed are to be excepted; and, since the
opinion now prevails almost too widely that little was done in the
direction of plant organography until within the last two centuries,
the interests of truth can not at just this point be better subserved
than by giving the substance of this ancient Greek's morphology of
the leaf somewhat in detail.

" Leaves are commonly attached to the stem or branch or to
whatever else supports them, by a stalklet; this either firm and
holding the leaf steadily in a certain position, or else slender and
feeble, allowing the leaf to hang downward and perhaps tremble
with the passing breeze, or even to become inverted, turning the
usually paler lower face upward. But there are also leaves with
no stalklet, these adhering directly to the branch. Some leaves
arrange themselves only in opposite pairs, with regular intervals
between the pairs, while others are scattered singly and without
order up and down the stem."

It will be seen that these beginnings of Theophrastan teaching
about the leaf are precisely what one finds in every primer of
botany to-day. Every beginner has to be taught the importance
of the distinctions between a petiolate leaf and one that is sessile,
and between the opposite and the alternate in leaf arrangement.

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 16; also Book vii, ch. 7.

2 Excerpts from Hist., Book i, ch. 16.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 79

We have improved the descriptive phraseology, and are able to
say the same things in fewer words; but that is about the only
difference. Some general differences in the configuration of leaves
are also adduced. There are those of rounded periphery, or even
somewhat elongated, all without angles, and there are the
angular in outline, some of them like those of the fig deeply cleft,
others like those of the oak sinuated all around, still others
with saw-like teeth all around; and some are sharply pointed
at the apex, the slender leaves of pine and others even ending in a
prickle. In certain thistles he notes that spines take the
place of foliage. He is convinced that certain leaf-like organs in
a number of asparagus allies are not leaves, yet he gives them no
name; nor had they obtained a name — that of cladodes — even
as late as the time of Linnaeus, who, as if he had been of a pre-
Theophrastan age, still called them leaves. The hollow and fistu-
lous foliage of the onion and some of its kindred elicited remark
from Theophrastus as being very exceptionally curious. So did
that of the sedges, as being conduplicate and keeled. The essen-
tial characteristics of the leaf that is pinnately compound he also
seems first to have detected; for he is at the trouble to argue the
case before those who, as he seems to acknowledge that he himself
also once did, regard this as a leafy branch. He has observed the
autumnal falling of the foliage in the ash tree, elder, and sorbus,
and reports that the whole of that which seems a branch falls away
piece by piece, thus establishing it beyond dispute that the whole
is one leaf. He even speaks of it, afterwards, as the pinnate leaf. x
And, as there are kinds of tree in which leafy branches, by being
somewhat lengthened and having their leaves set closely in two
opposite ranks, resemble the compound leaf, Theophrastus in one
place that I have noted cautions the student against being deceived.
The case is that of the elm, the pinnately leafy twigs of which
might be mistaken by the unwary for compound leaves. The
observer is warned that the elm has but a simple leaf, cpvX\or
aVjzdfV.2 The leaves of the rose bush I do not find described in
Theophrastus. These shrubs were so universally familiar that
description of their foliage was needless; but that he recognized
this as a pinnate foliage is evident by one comparison that he
makes. Wishing to convey some notion of the leaves of an inter-
esting tree of the Orient (Tamarindus Indica, Linn.), he says it is
"many-leaved, after the manner of the rose bush,"3 meaning that

1 Hist., Book iii, chs. u, 12, 13, and 16.

2 Ibid., ch. 14. 3 Ibid., Book iv, ch. 9.

8o SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

the individual leaf of the tamarind tree is of many leaflets, like that
of the rose. The philosopher devised now and then a new botanical
term, but did this with reserve; and the discovery of compound
leaves does not appear to have called, in his thought, for any such
distinction as that of leaf and leaflet. He applies the term leaf,
(pvXXov, to the compound leaf as a whole, and to the individual
leaflet indiscriminately. As regards the differences of compound
leaves and the classification of them he did nothing; nor, indeed,
does anything appear to have been attempted in this direction,
after Theophrastus, until the time of Jung, who in the middle
of the seventeenth century strongly advanced the morphology
of the leaf. But Theophrastus in his environment can not have
met with anything like that diversity of compound leaves with
which Jung was familiar. He must have known the bipinnate
fronds of certain ferns, but did not essay any description of them;
and when a certain bipinnate-leaved tree from Egypt (Mimosa polya-
cantha, Willd.} was in need of a description, he evaded the difficulty
of the situation by saying that its leaves were like those of a fern.1
We shall be furnished later with some proofs that the venerable
Greek could make significant discoveries in connection with such
very little things of the plant world as small apetalous flowers, and
even the inner structure of small seeds. Without microscope,
hand lens, or spectacles, he seems to have been almost microscopic-
eyed sometimes, as well as always alert for the detection of the
exceptional or unusual in the grosser morphology of things. We
therefore wonder that, after his having noted so carefully that
some leaves, even small ones, are compound and even doubly
compound, he should not have taken stipules into account; for he
makes no mention of them. During it may have been fifty winters
he had seen the branchlets of the plane trees under which lay his
daily walks, encircled at intervals by their wheel-shaped stipules
still persistent after the body of the leaf had fallen. During as
many summers of his centenarian career he had observed the
foliage of many garden leguminosa?, in some species of which every-
where in cultivation anciently, more than half the foliar area is
stipule; and yet this organ is unmentioned by Theophrastus. As
to its presence on the boughs of the most common Athenian way-
side shade tree, and its more conspicuous showing amid the herbage
of every sort of pea and vetch and lentil, this father of plant
organography is as silent as if the organ had not existed. This

1 Hist., Book iv, ch 3.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 8l

seems anomalous. To the average reader it will seem like a
curious hiatus in the Theophrastan leaf-morphology. The situa-
tion seems nevertheless readily to explain itself. One has but to
recall to mind the ancient botanist's strong inclination to regard
function first and form last everywhere in his organography. The
excessively enlarged and leaflet-like stipules of Pisum and some
other leguminous herbs have not the least appearance of being
functionally different from the other leaflets. They are larger
and also located a little differently from the others, but that is all;
and there is the best of evidence that a thorough training in modern
organographic refinements is requisite to the determination of the
enlarged basal leaflets of the pea- vine as stipules. The evidence
is this: that the most original and logical of great organographers
and terminologists, Joachim Jung, as late as the year 1662 of our
era knew nothing of any such organ as a stipule. Tournefort in
the year 1700 knew them not, and Linnaeus claims them as among
his own organographic discoveries, though unwarrantedly, as we
shall see later.

There is, however, one particular kind of stipule which, unless I
misunderstand Theophrastus, drew his attention and elicited his
comment. It was a case in which there is about the strongest
possible contrast in appearance between the leaf proper and the
stipular appendage; that of certain umbellifers in which while the
decompound blade is deep green and almost capillarily dissected,
the large stipular development below it is pale, membranaceous,
wholly uncut, sometimes cup-shaped and hollow. Here again it
would seem to require our modern refinement in organography
to perceive in such a thin bladdery stipule and green capillarily cut
blade the different parts of one and the same organ. Theophrastus,
at all events, knew some umbellifers of this description, and wrote
concerning one species of the genus Ferula that it puts forth at the
nodes of its stem leaves and ftXaffroi.1 The blastoi, one from each
node of the stem, have perplexed some of the botanical commen-
tators upon the text. I think they are the stipules.

If Theophrastus does not anywhere formally define the leaf,
that may have been for the reason that, not at all comprehending
its function, it was not possible for him to define the organ, as he
had defined root and stem, physiologically. Nevertheless he did
state, in a most informal way, its very best morphological mark;
that by which it is almost always readily distinguishable from a

i Hist., Book vi, ch. 2.

82 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

stem or any part of it. He observes that most leaves have an
upper face and a lower. The upper, exposed to the sun, he notes
as being of a deeper green and smoother; the lower face is paler,
roughened by the greater prominence of the veins, and apt to be
pubescent.1 From the fact that the lower face of leaves when
pubescent is found to be moist he says it has been inferred that it
absorbs nutriment and feeds the rest of the leaf. This he confi-
dently declares to be erroneous, affirming that all parts of a leaf
are fed by way of the veins and fibres which are carried to every
part, and which he knows to be connected with the bark. This
was the thing which he could easily demonstrate and prove. The
other proposition was not in his day demonstrable; for he could
not know either the structure of a plant hair, or the existence of
stomata. Theophrastus, like his class in all ages, is likely to be
correct in that which he affirms, and wrong as to that which he
denies.

Anthology. Without any understanding of flowers as organs of
sex, and quite in the dark as to their significance in the economy
of plant life, Theophrastus applied himself assiduously to the study
of their morphology, and that with a measure of success compelling
the admission that he is the founder of anthology; for several of
his distinctions remain fundamental in the anthology of to-day,
notwithstanding that the theory of the flower has been completely
revolutionized within the modern period.2 And his success is the
more remarkable because of his having made his researches at a
time when, for mere lack of optical equipments, the discovery of
the functions of the essential floral organs was impossible.

From ages antedating all history cultivators must have ob-
served that in such trees, garden shrubs, and herbaceous field
crops as flower conspicuously, no fruit or seed develops but as an
aftergrowth from the flower; that a young tree never fruits until
after having for the first time flowered, and that any mischance
befalling the flowers of the tree in their season extinguishes, for that
year, all hope of fruit. Upon a considerable array of facts of this
kind, the first philosophic investigator who came along might
naturally propound such a theory as this, that wherever there is
now a fruit or seed, at some time there must have been a flower;
a proposition which the cultivators at once and with one voice
would have disputed; for in the husbandry of antiquity no tree
was more esteemed, nor any more familiarly known than the fig

1 Hist. Book i, ch 16.

2 Namely, by Sebastian Vaillant, De Stnictura Florum, Paris, 1717.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE . 83

tree, and this, as all the world understood, produced its fruits
two crops a year, without a trace of flower. And Theophrastus,
after all his searching for and philosophizing about flowers, seems
to have found no way of controverting the universal opinion. He
thought that the fig produces its fruit without flower of any de-
scription.1 But in his philosophic quest for flowers of some sort
as the forerunners of all fruits and seeds, he appears to have dis-
covered true flowers, though sometimes recondite, in other trees
that had been supposed to be like the fig, flowerless. The flower,
in prehistoric thought and speech, may most reasonably be as-
sumed to have been a thing showy on account of its being made
up of leaves colored differently from ordinary foliage, and differently
arranged. It must have been essentially that which modern
botany knows as a corolla. This inference as to what a flower
was before either botany or history began to be written is confirmed
by our experience with untaught rustics and mountaineers of
to-day, as to their understanding of what trees and plants have
flowers and what have none. They are the modern counterpart
of those unlettered ruralists of remote antiquity whom Theophrastus
cites as denying that oak and walnut trees, hazel bushes and chest-
nut trees and junipers have any flowers at all.2 The philosopher,
the man of science who is truly such, has this among other char-
acteristics, that with him negations are apt to go for naught. Of
the populace they are largely the mental stock in trade, so to speak,
but himself negations do not satisfy. They say that neither oaks
nor hazel bushes have flowers. They recognize it that oaks put
forth clusters of loose pendulous tassels that they call oak-moss,
and also globose bodies denominated galls; but oak-moss is not a
flower, any more than oak-galls are acorns. These are specimens
of the facts, and of the reasonings upon them, which confronted the
protobotanist of so long ago. Stimulated by the thought that
almost always where a fruit or seed now is, there was once a flower,
from the very heart of which the fruit or seed took its origin, he
enters upon his researches. Now this very idea that flower and
fruit are related as antecedent and consequent so that where any
manner of fruit or seed is found the essentials of a flower must be
sought, is the germinal idea out of which the whole of systematic

1 Hist. Book ii, ch. 6. There is but one record of the discovery of the
flower of the fig until after the invention of magnifying lenses, and some
eighteen centuries after Theophrastus. Even Linnaeus, still later by two
centuries, had the genus Ficus under the Cryptogamia.

2 Hist., Book iii, ch. 6.

84 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

botany as we have it has been engendered; and the originator of
that idea would have been the father of botany even if he had
accomplished nothing further.

There is one thing which he who would know, even in outline
only and superficially, the history of botany, must not do. When
in Theophrastus he meets with the word avdo*, or in Pliny
with the term "flos," he must use care not to read into that term
the meaning which the word flower has in modern botany; for, if
he assume that the word stood, with those authors as with us, for
a congeries of four circles of different organs, beginning with the
calyx and ending with the gyncecium, he will never correctly appre-
hend a word they say about the flower. That view of the com-
prehensiveness of the flower which we now take, extremely unlike
the ancient idea, was really first presented for acceptance within
somewhat less than two hundred years from the date at which I
write. The flos of remote antiquity, the pre-Theophrastan anthos,
appears to have been simply the corolla, as we have said before;
and that without a special name as such. It was but a set of leaves,
shaped and colored and arranged differently from ordinary foliage,
and having for its function the protecting of the future fruit and
seed while in their tender and rudimentary stages.

Now oaks, walnut trees, alders, and hazels have no corollas.
They had been considered flowerless because they have none, and
correctly enough so long as the flower was defined as a whorl or
tuft of specially altered and colored leaves; and it was so defined
in the minds of the majority of people in that time, as it is in the
minds of untold thousands in every land to-day. And the very
possibility of detecting upon oaks and filbert bushes some small
thing that should mark the point of origin and presage the coming
of each nut and acorn involved the possibility of a revolution in
the idea and definition of a flower; an extension of the term, to
make it embrace anything, no matter how colorless, shapeless, and
obscure, which should be found in the place where a flower ought
to be.

This earliest Historia Plantarum, intensely interesting though
t be as we have it, would have been still more so had its author
given some record of his own processes of research; his successes
and his failures in attempting to find flowers on trees and herbs
that had the reputation of being flowerless. But the traditions
of the lyceum at Athens were against that. Men were taught that
knowledge is best communicated in language concise and brief;
and Theophrastus' three short chapters of anthology may vie with

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 85

any other three chapters of scientific matter ever written, in respect
to the terseness and brevity with which important propositions
follow one another in close succession.1 His first proposition as to
the general morphology of the flower is this: "Some flowers are
capillary, like those of the grape, mulberry, and ivy; others are
composed of leaves, like those of the almond, apple, pear, and plum
trees." These are trees; but he proceeds to say that quite the
same is true of the flowers of herbaceous and annual plants, some
of which have foliaceous flowers, others capillary. It is evident
as can be that by examining the earliest germs of fruit in plants
that never show flower-leaves, he has found those fruit-germs at a
certain early period encircled by hair-like or filamentose things
quite as transient as flower-leaves, and which seem in some way
to take the place of them, though they have not always the usual
special coloring of flower-leaves. On the strength of what he has
studiously observed, he has now virtually given to the term avdos,
flower, a new definition, a scientific one. The term must embrace
whatever is intimately though transiently connected with a fruit-
germ, whether laminal and colored or filamentose and greenish.
This, in so far as written records show, is the earliest proposition
ever laid down concerning the morphology of the flower ; and it was
a mighty contribution to scientific botany. It is in substance the
distinction of petaliferous and apetalous flowers. It will therefore
hold its place in the science of plant life and form as long as such
a science shall exist.

The investigations of Theophrastus along the line of what we
denominate apetalous flowers appear to have opened his eyes to the
presence of the capillary organs in a large and showy petaliferous
kind; for in this same chapter he states that many flowers are two-
fold, showing another flower inside the main one. He cites such
familiar garden flowers as the rose, violet, and white lily as ex-
amples; and, as against any suspicion of ours that his twofold
flower of rose and violet and lily might mean a double flower, as
composed of multiplied petals within the main outer circle, there
occurs the one word SIX/JOCK, two-colored, or differently colored.
It is, of course, the stamens within the corolla of red rose, purple
violet, and white lily that are colored differently from the corolla.
This is the earliest recognition of the flower as other than a simple
organ. It is the beginning of the classification of its parts; a
small beginning, but highly significant. It is given out for the first

1 Hist., Book i, chs. 20, 21, 22.

2 Ibid., ch. 21.

86 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

time, that many flowers have two circles of organs, a flower within
a flower, the one within readily distinguishable from the broad,
|eafy one outside. He does not formally name this inside flower,
qut he has found so many flowers that lack the leafy outside circle
altogether, displaying nothing but the inner, that he names this
kind capillary or woolly flowers. It must here be affirmed that
Theophrastus knows nothing of the calyx as being any part of a
flower. The color and texture of floral organs were what distin-
guished them from ordinary foliage; and by their points of agree-
ment with the latter any green leaf-like organ or circle, however
near the "flower," would fail to be included as a part of it. Also
the ovary and ovules were not indicated or received as organs of
the flower. They were simply the fruit or seed, in whatever stage
from that of the flowering to that of full maturity; and this neither
through dullness nor indifference. The colored leaves, together
with the colored threads, set in the midst of them, were all there
was to the flqwer. One may fancy some brilliant Greek pupil
asking the master if that protuberance in the middle of many
flowers ought not to be regarded as a part of the flower, and called
the fruit, ought not to be called by a name of its own while in the
flowering stage. He who knows the keenly penetrating and severely
logical mind of Theophrastus will infer without chance of a mis-
take, what the substance of his answer would have been. At what
particular point in its development will that protuberance begin
to be a fruit? I suppose that such logic might silence the ablest
morphologist who has lived hitherto. Our modern term ovary
is but an illogical convenience. It suitably abbreviates the follow-
ing expression: " fruit at the budding or flowering stages and for an
indefinite period thereafter." Our neighbors the industrial bot-
anists even of to-day have no need of the term ovary and ignore it.
When a hard unseasonable frost has sterilized the ovaries of their
trees, whether in bud or inflower.it is the "fruit" that has been
killed ; and so the Theophrastan anthology still lives and is widely
though unwittingly approved.

What are now known as the styles were not segregated from the
other flocci, or capillamenta — that is, from the stamens — until
ages after Theophrastus. He made no distinction between these
two, at least when found together within the same flower; and
his capillary flower might consist of stamens alone, or of styles only,
or of both. What is more, there are certain arrangements of
stamens under which they failed to gain recognition by him as
being of the nature of floral parts, as in the aments of hazel, the

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 87

walnut, the oaks, and many more. He gave them a name, iovkoij-
Latinized as juli, writing about them so minutely and describing
them so well as to attest his perfect familiarity with them; but
apparently the more he studied them the more enigmatic did they
seem.2 The filbert, Corylus av ell ana, not only grows wild in
Greece, but it had been cultivated there doubtless for ages before
Theophrastus' time. It would be irrational to question that it was
among the shrubs of that botanic garden in the midst of which lay
his daily walks for many years. At all events, his perfect fa-
miliarity with its tassels is attested by the following account which
he gives of them. " In autumn after the nuts have fallen, there
appear in bunches of several certain things that look like worms,
inserted on a short thick stalk. These are called juli. Each is
made up of countless scales arranged somewhat after the manner
of those of the nut pine (Finns pinea, Linn.), the whole longer in
proportion to its thickness than that, and also of equal thickness
throughout. Before the end of winter it begins to grow. In early
spring the scales separate and stand apart, and are then become
yellow, the whole then sometimes as much as three inches long.
When the leaves begin to put forth, these things shrivel and fall.
Then the cups that enclose the nuts develop; one cup for each
flower, and one nut in a cup."

The concluding sentence places it beyond doubt that the writer
knew the crimson pistils of the shrub as well as he did the yellow
aments. He does not stop to describe them. They are of his
class of capillary flowers, and that is enough. In a later chapter,4
in which he brings out the habit and vegetative characters of the
filberts, indicating twro species (C. avellana, Linn., and C. tubulosa,
Willd.) by differences of fruit, he has no occasion to mention again
the flowers, but can not forego renewed allusion to those per-
plexing aments. ' To these shrubs belong that julus of compacted
scales which we have elsewhere described." The sterile aments
of the oaks, slender, lax, more tufted than those of the hazel as
well as of short duration, must also have been known to Theo-
phrastus ; and so were the colorless and very inconspicuous pistillate
flowers; for, while he quotes the popular opinion of his time that

1 Hist., Book iii, ch. 7.

2 Pliny, some three centuries after Theophrastus, refers to the juli of the
filbert in terms that prove them still incomprehensible to nature students
of the time. He says they are ad nihil utiles; which we remark is a negation,
and therefore unscientific.

3 Hist., Book iii, ch. 7. * Ibid., ch. 15.

88 SMITHSONIAN' MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

these and other like trees are flowerless, he tersely contradicts it.
" Both oaks and alders flower " *• ; by which he must have meant the
axillary and scattered pistils of the oak, and the cone-like clusters
into which the alder pistils are congested.

Of the aments of fir and pine I observe no mention in Theo-
phrastus. Even the young cone of pistils with their subtending
scales in the conifers, from its form he denominates a julus; but
it is not of the enigmatic class. Without hesitation he denominates
that the flower. It is also plain that with him this must be re-
ceived as a petaliferous or leafy flower, for it shows nothing that
could be called a capillamentum. The rudiment of each fruit
rests in the axil of an ample and highly colored leaf. 2 Nor does
he here cite the opinion of any of his forerunners or contemporaries
as having denied or questioned that these are flowering trees, as
they had done in the case of oaks and alders and hazels. The
flowers of the fig tree he could never discover. To him it was as
flowerless as a fern or moss. He was loath to believe that junipers
are not equally flowerless. He had investigated them ; had observed
that in summer their fructiferous branches bear one set of fruits
full grown, and another set newly formed and not half grown; a
proof that its fruits require a year and somewhat more for their
growth and ripening. He can hardly have failed to see the stami-
nate aments, small though they be, and of brief duration. They
were nothing, in his view; at least nothing floral, and not worth
mentioning after he had once described the like phenomenon as
conspicuous and of long duration in other trees and shrubs. What
he was looking for, he could never find, that is, what he would
have accepted as a flower, a folium, or a capillamentum indicating
the seat of the juniper berry that is to be. The pistillate or fertile
juniper flower is as far away as it is possible to go from having the
appearance of a flower at all. It shows even under a lens no
trace of style or stigma or ovary. It is so little different from the
minutest first rudiment of a merely vegetative twig, that an ex-
perienced botanist, even of these later times, may fail to recog-
nize it, though he search with a lens. It is improbable that there
is a man in the world to-day who, in the feeble botanical light of
the Theophrastan age, and without the aid of magnifiers, would
ever have found the pistillate flower of a juniper.

' Hist., Book iii, ch. 5.

2 "The flower of the fir is yellowish red, and otherwise beautiful." —Hist.'
Book iii, ch. 6.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREEXE 89

But what is fully as interesting as Theophrastus' failure to find
anything upon a juniper tree which he could demonstrate to be a
flower, is his recording the opinion of those who think differently.
"There are those who say that the juniper tree is of two kinds,
one that flowers and bears no fruit, and another that is flowerless
but fructiferous."1 The pronouncement is interesting as being
diametrically opposed to the Theophrastan doctrine that nothing
not in immediate juxtaposition to a fruit rudiment is to be re-
garded as a flower. It is a virtual contradiction of the opinion
that juli or aments can not be flowers. These people who held that
male and fruitless juniper trees have flowers, and that fertile ones
have none, were people who evidently regarded those small eva-
nescent yellow, dusty male aments of the juniper as true flowers ,
even the only flowers that any juniper ever has. If evidence were
elsewhere wanting to prove Theophrastus a true philosopher and
scientific man, devoted to the truth whatever that may be, rather
than to his .own theories, it is not wanting here. He publishes
this adverse opinion of his neighbors for the very reason that
it may possibly turn out to be the right opinion, concluding the
whole passage with the recommendation that investigation of
the subject be continued. "The matter should be looked into
further."2

Quite as briefly as he had indicated the distinction between leafy
flowers and capillary does Theophrastus give the suggestion that
the leafy flower in certain plants is made up of but a single leaf.3
It is practically classifying corollas as choripetalous and sympeta-
lous. He writes of what he calls the monophyllous flower as if
within the field of his observation it had been somewhat excep-
tional ; and he warns the reader that it is not always distinguishable
at a glance from the other kind. Viewed as to their periphery
they will seem to be made up of separate leaves, but at the center
or base they are seen to be monophyllous. In the morning-glory
(Convolvulus sepium, Linn.), however, the monophyllous character
is readily apparent, only a certain angularity of the periphery re-
maining in place of the appearance of separate leaves. Even
small flowers may be monophyllous. Such are those of the olive
tree. Lying on the ground under the trees they are readily seen
to be perforate. From his having cited the olive blossom, one is
assured that he held a corolla to be monophyllous even if the leaves
were united only at base. But one must guard against mentally

» Hist., Book iii, ch. 6. 2 Ibid. > Hist., Book i, ch. 21.

90 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

attributing to him any general recognition of all sympetalous
corollas as being such as that to which later generations have
arrived; for evident1 y he had not proceeded far along this line of
anthological research, but was only at the beginning of the subject.
Having so perfectly settled the monophyllous structure of the
small and quite choripetalous-looking olive blossom, we are disap-
pointed that he has not done as much for that of the elder tree.
It is a tree in which he has manifested a special interest, and with
which he has grown very familiar. The thin wood of its shoots
and branches, along with an extraordinary development of pith;
then externally the remarkably long internodes, and the foliage,
from watching the falling of which in autumn he seems to have
learned the very important classification of leaves as simple and
compound — all these aspects of Sambucus he has noted fully. Will
he not perceive that its flowers, like those of the olive, are of that
structure which he designates as monophyllous ? They are too small;
much smaller than those of the olive tree; even quite minute to
one who is without a lens; and Theophrastus may not have ex-
amined them very carefully as individual flowers. Either that,
or else, in condescension to popular usage, he permits the corymb
or umbel of small flowers to pass for a flower. And so he describes
the blossoming of the elder thus: "The flower is white, composed
of many small ones all white, the whole with the appearance of a
honeycomb, and attached to the summit of a shoot by a number
of stalks. " There is another type of monophyllous flower not as
small, which first and last remained to him an enigma. It was
the ovate, hollow, and pitcher-shaped corolla of Arbutus unedo, a
most common type among ericaceous plants. He says it is not
a leafy flower; an expression equivalent to the modern phrase
apetalous flower. He describes it as being in the form of an
egg-shell with one end cut off, leaving an aperture.2 He can
not have detected the five obscure recurved teeth at the orifice;
for they would have taught him that this, like the faintly
five-angled morning-glory blossom, is of five almost completely
united leaves.

One chapter of the Historia opens with a sentence like this:
" Flowers differ in respect to their origin and insertion. " 3 It is one
out of a number of Theophrastus' brief statements of significant
fact, any one of which would have rendered famous any herbarist
of the sixteenth century or the seventeenth who had been privi-

i Hist., Book iii, ch. 13. 2 Ibid., ch. 16.

3 Hisl., Book i, ch. 22.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 91

leged to announce it as a discovery of his own. In the most recent
and approved taxonomy of flowering plants, this point^in^ an-
thology, first indicated by the ancient Greek, holds a most con-
spicuous place. Let the Greek himself explain what he means
by the origin and position, or insertion, of the flower; always
keeping it in mind that with him the leaves and the thread-like
parts in their midst are all there is to a flower, the ovary be ng the
fruit. " Some produce the flower around the [base of the] fruit,
as do the grape vine and the olive tree. ... In the greater pro-
portion of plants the fruit thus occupies the center of the flower-
But there are not wanting such as support the flower on the sum-
mit of the fruit, as do the pomegranate, apple, and rose, all of which
have their seeds [ovules] underneath the flower. A few bear the
flower on the summit of the seed itself, such as the thistles, and
all that have their flowers in that manner crowded together."
It is a clear distinguishing between the hypogynous, perigynous,
and epigynous in floral structure; clear notwithstanding that the
one example brought forward to illustrate the epigynous insertion,
that of the flowers of the composites, was not from the modern
point of view well chosen; because then what he understood to be
the seed we regard as a fruit. If he had been accustomed to assign
names to what have proven to be his great discoveries in anthology,
he would have called this third mode of insertion the epispermatous.
He learned this springing of the "flower" from the top of the
"seed" to be characteristic of the whole family of the umbellifers,
and of the few rubiaceous plants that he knew, as well as of the
thistles and their kindred. It seems to me that what is more to be
wondered at in Theophrastan anthology than his distinguishing
of the hypogynous, perigynous, and epigynous modes of insertion,
is the fact of his having made out so positively, that the head in the
composites is not a flower, but that it is a dense cluster of separate
and distinct individual flowers, each complete in itself. Less than
three generations ago, eminent systematists were still writing up
the scales of such involucres as "sepals," the whole involucre as
a "calyx," and the circle of ray flowers as the "corolla." At this
juncture the sublime old Greek will appear to have lived before
his time by more than two thousand years.

In his study of flowers the arrangement of them was not un-
noticed. He observes that in most trees they appear as scattered
on all the branches, all appearing nearly simultaneously, so that
the flowering period of such is but short. In many herbaceous
and half-shrubby growths they are clustered together; and in

92 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

describing such plants as to their flowering he makes frequent
use of terms equivalent to spike, raceme, and umbel, though not
with such definiteness of meaning as they convey in modern
botany. In these clusterings it is observed that the flowering of
the whole cluster at once seldom takes place; that usually the
lowest flowers are first to expand, then those next above them,
this succession continuing in some plants so long that the seeds
from the basal flowers are ripe before the terminal flowers have
opened. The aromatic garden herb ocymum is named as a case
in point;1 but he mentions this kind of inflorescence repeatedly.
He also names one plant whose flowering begins at the top, the
succession of later bloom following downwardly. Thus is Theo-
phrastus again a botanical discoverer. He has distinguished
between the centripetal and the centrifugal in inflorescences. The
historian Meyer was surprised at this, remarking also that he knew
of no other botanist's having noted this distinction again until
the time of Link and Robert Brown.2 It is evident that Meyer
pondered the fine picture books of his compatriots of the sixteenth
century, Brunfels, Fuchs, and Tragus, to the neglect of the one
real botanist that there had been among them all, Valerius Cordus.

Fruit and Seed. Without fully appreciating the significance of
truit and seed as furnishing the best clew to plant affinities, Theo-
phrastus nevertheless studied them assiduously. Even flowers in
their beauty and fragrance, and by their multitudinous forms,
engaged him chiefly as being heralds of the fruit and seed. The
perfecting of fruit he alludes to here and there as being the culmi-
nation of the plant's existence. He notes it that even such vig-
orous and enduring things as trees and shrubs shorten their life
period by excessive fruit-bearing; that myriad annuals live but the
length of one summer season because they exhaust all their vitality
in the yielding of their one crop of seeds. Seeds were of very special
interest, in his view; and succeeding generations of botanists have
been with him in that opinion.

The scientific examiner of even commonest objects finds more
things in nature than there are names for in common language.
The investigator of things is therefore obliged to be the inventor
of new terms; and every science has therefore its vocabulary of
special terms, every one of them necessary to the science and to the
man of science, but to the world at large useless. In connection
with his study of seeds, Theophrastus was obliged to invent ne

i Hist., Book vii, ch. 3.

1 Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. i, p. 166.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 93

terms, and to give new meanings to old ones. Most seeds were
grown and perfected under some special covering formed to shelter,
contain, and nourish them until mature. For particular kinds of
such coverings particular names were in common use: pod, husk,
chaff, shell, and for succulent or fleshy coverings of seeds pome,
berry, acine, or more comprehensively, fruits. A general term which
should include all these coverings was needed, and the word peri-
carp was coined.1 This done he defines a fruit scientifically. It
consists of a pericarp and the seed or seeds which it encloses.
Henceforward, while in agriculture, gardening, domestic economy,
and the world's commerce a fruit is what it always was, in botany
the term has another meaning, a meaning at once more exact and
more comprehensive ; and it has this new meaning ' universally,
and from Theophrastus forward; for modern botany reiterates it
from him, unaltered by a syllable; and that of the future will do
the same. In practice he did not always rightly distinguish between
pericarp and seed. Lecturing upon the fruit, and having a mature
sprig of sage or other labiate in hand, he would have taught that
the four black nutlets are the seeds, and that the green calyx is
their pericarp. Or with a handful of spikes of wheat or barley
before him, he would have mistaken the grains for mere seeds,
and the chaff for the pericarps. Errors like these in the mere
application of his terms were inevitable. They could never have
been corrected without microscopically aided vision; and it was
indeed a long, long time after the invention of the microscope that
botanists first learned the structure of sage nutlets and wheat grains
to be that of fruits and not that of seeds.

About pericarps he seems to have observed everything that lay
before him within his own limited field. He notes the extreme
diversity of them, but, as usual with him, and doubtless for want
of time to correlate and classify he gives to the most distinctive
kinds little more than an informal mention. Only a single de-
duction does he Venture concerning pericarps in general as unlike
other organs, a deduction superficial, curious, geometrical: "No
pericarp shows a rectilinear or angular circumscription."2 Yet
the cursory reader of the main chapter on fruits — perusing it in the
Greek original — might well wonder with what justice or propriety
it can be said that the philosopher did not carefully and effectively
generalize about seed in relation to pericarp, when he finds him

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 3. wepiKapiriov was also in use with Aristotle. The
invention of it lies between him and Theophrastus.
3 Ibid., end of ch. 18.

94 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

using over and over again such exceedingly important taxonomic
terms as angiosperm and gymnosperm. The fact is, he employed
neither in anything like that breadth of meaning which they convey
as used in later botany; but both of them very restrictedly. He
used angiosperm only to designate one particular circumscription
of what are known with us as capsular fruits, namely, the sub-
globose or urn-shaped or vase-like kinds. The example given is
"that of the poppy and those like it." It is corrrelative with
Ao/ftoV, the Theophrastan name for all leguminous fruits. His
gymnosperms include nothing really gymnospermous in our
taxonomic use of that expression. By the examples cited, " cori-
ander, anise, fennel, cyminum, " and several others among kitchen-
garden plants, the gymnosperms were the umbellifers. They were
naked-seeded to him, because, as already noted, he had not recog-
nized any such organ as a calyx; one nowhere in all the plant
world more recondite than in the umbellifers. The only real
gymnosperms — according to our application of the term — which
he knew, were the conifers; but they do not enter, with the um-
bellifers, into his category of that name. He expresses distinctly
though modestly the idea as his own that, as to fruit and seed these
stand naturally aloof from all other groups, and thinks the view
may be tenable that cones are not fruits at all. " No trees bear
capsular fruits, unless you can call a cone a capsule; but it is pos-
sible to regard the cone as different from a fruit." Under the
head of anthology it was seen that the cone-scale at its flowering
stage was a flower-leaf in Theophrastus' understanding of it.
Logically, therefore, he would have regarded it in its maturity
as a sort of pericarp. But that he left the cones in a place apart,
as unclassifiable with other seed vessels — the types of what were
to be named gymnosperms twenty centuries afterwards — is yet
another evidence of the profound sagacity of the protobotanist.
After these things, it is no longer with any surprise that we read
his accurate descriptions— descriptions of them from center to
circumference — of such fruits as the drupe, the pome, the nut,
fig, pomegranate, and other types, and citing as he always does
familiar examples of each different kind. But that he should
have been as near as he was to a systematizing of the placental
attachment of seeds within the pericarp is again almost startling;
for when he records it that in many the seeds are as it were pro-
miscuously crowded within the pericarp, while in others they are
ranged in regular lines, or at least in separate groups — of which
latter he says the squash, cucumber, and apple are examples — we

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 95

know that he has been carrying on research in this direction, and
has been able to make this fair beginning at discriminating the
different modes of placentation.

The foundations of the whole philosophy of higher plant life and
form center in — are concentrated within, if one may so speak —
the seed. In botany no less than in zoology is embryology indis-
pensable to a right understanding of the interrelations of things.
From the minuteness of his researches into the structure of seeds
and the behavior of seedlings, it almost seems as if Theophrastus
may have realized this fact. He records many observations on
them in all, even their most familiar aspects, not neglecting the
diversity of them as to form and coloring. l In a few terse sentences
he gives the results of what may have been years of investigation
in his botanic garden, upon the subject of the different periods
of time required by the seeds of different plants for their germina-
tion. "Ocimum, blitum, eruca, and radish are most prompt of
all, for they come up on about the third day after the sowing;
lettuce on the fourth day; cucumber and squash on the fifth or
sixth; anise on the fourth, pepper-grass and mustard on the fifth;
beets sown in the spring, on the sixth, in the fall, on the tenth day,
orache on the eighth, cabbage on the tenth." Leek and shallot are
such close congeners that he evidently expected they would agree
as to the time required for their germination, but he finds the seed
of shallot coming up at the end of from ten to twelve days while
that of the leek takes nineteen or twenty. More than thirty days
must be allowed, he says, either satureia or origanum, and forty
for celery. After long experience he finds it remarkable that the
most favorable conditions as to the season of the year and the state
of the atmosphere do not shorten the usual time required for the
germination of any kind of seed, though a cold atmosphere, con-
curring with clouded skies retards it.2

These studies in seeds and seedling plants, though by chance
interesting and instructive to the gardeners of his time, are essen-
tially those of a great botanical philosopher, with whom not the
smallest fact relating to plant life is held unworthy to be placed
on record. And as he proceeds, the twentieth-century botanist
will be apt to read with amazement a passage like the following
as occurring in Theophrastus. " Some seeds in germinating put
forth their primary root and leaf from one and the same point;
others, the root from one end and the leaf from the other."3 Pre-

1 Hist Book vii, ch. 3. J Ibid., ch. i.

3 Hist., Book viii, ch. 2.

96 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

serving all the terseness and brevity of the original in this very
literal rendering, the statement of the fact may seem a trifle ex-
aggerated. The first roots issuing from a grain of wheat or barley
appear not quite from the base, but from near it, and the first leaf
appears from a point well toward the summit of the grain. The
two do not, as in dicotyledonous plants, come forth from the same
point. But thus early in the history of botany, even by this first
forefather, was given in these words, the first hint of a fundamental
distinction between flowering plants as dicotyledonous and mono-
cotyledonous. By way of further elucidation he continues:
:' Wheat, barley, rye, and all the grains sprout from both ends;
that is to say, the basal and thicker end of the grain puts forth
the root, the upper and narrower end the green herbage. The
two, however, are connected and continuous as one. But neither
the bean nor any other seeds of leguminous plants have this way
of sprouting. These put forth root and stem from the same point,
namely, that at which the seed was linked to pod, as if under that
point [the hilum of later terminology] lay the special seat of the
growing principle. In the case of seeds of this kind the root at
first appearing begins to show a downward tendency, the stem an
upward. The seeds of the frumentaceous and the leguminous
kinds are alike in this one particular of sprouting from the point
of insertion; but of certain trees, the almond, walnut, the oaks
and their allies, the seeds sprout from the opposite end." I have
omitted here one of the most important clauses; that in which
he indicates his having observed in the bean and lupine allies the
two cotyledons, joined to the hypocotyle.1 Later in the same
chapter he states without simile or comparison the same char-
acteristic. 'The seeds of all the latter," that is, of the particular
trees he has mentioned, and of the leguminous herbs, " are in a
manner two-parted." And again: "Wheat and barley make their
first appearance with but a single leaf, peas and beans with several" ;
from which it is manifest that he counts the cotyledons as leaves,
along with the one or two that appear in the plumule. Still other
facts and phenomena observed and recorded by him about ger-
minating seeds, and young seedlings, must enkindle toward Theo-
phrastus the wondering admiration of the most accomplished
modern botanist. He says that he finds it uniformly true, what-
ever the kind or the structure of the seed, that the "root" is first
to appear, after that the leaf or leaves; also that the cereals, while

1 In Latin the clause runs thus: "Id quod in quibusdam partis pudendae
refert formam, ceu in faba et cicere, sed maxime in lupino. "

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 97

as yet showing but a solitary primal leaf, exhibit quite a tuft of
roots, these all simple and equal, whereas the two-parted seeds in
their germinating exhibit several leaves and but a solitary "root."
Furthermore he notes that the grains with their multiple roots send
up culms that never branch, while the merely tap-rooted legumi-
nous herbs exhibit stems that branch freely and widely.

To the beautiful work of a Malpighi one gives somewhat, more
credit than is fairly due it, until one has read these chapters of the
ancient Athenian master. Then it is clearly apprehended that
the man of the seventeenth century may have received the sug-
gestions of his own work directly from the Greek philosopher; and
is almost ready to add that the beautiful drawings of sprouting
grain adorning Malpighi's folio might almost have been done from
the Theophrastan descriptions of the same. It must needs be
conceded that the botanic garden at Athens, founded by Aristotle,
and the earliest of which there is any record, was wonderfully
prolific of new botanical facts of profoundest import. What later
one has equalled it in supplying first principles to botany as a
science ? Or who since Theophrastus has used an opportunity of
that kind so immensely to the advantage of succeeding generations?

Anatomy. Immediately after having enumerated the principal
external organs of plants, and given the first outline of a system
based on these, Theophrastus takes up the subject of internal
structure. Two short chapters contain the simplest elements
of plant anatomy, as he is able to make them out. If these chap-
ters commend themselves to our most careful reading, it is partly
because they are the earliest in which such matter was discussed,
and partly for the reason that after the writing of them some
eighteen centuries elapsed before another botanist resumed the
topic.

Apparently having in mind all forms of plant life except the
lowest and simplest, he opens, the subject with the statement
that "plants are made up of bark, wrood, and pith when pith is
present."1 We of the present are accustomed to this as being
the structure of stems. Let none be disquieted by the fact that
Theophrastus does not limit bark, wood, and pith to stems; for we
are learning that he never writes a line carelessly; never indites
the simplest and most fundamental proposition without rigid
investigation and profound forethought. Possibly we shall find
that he thinks the substances of bark, of wood, and of pith all

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 3.

98 SMITHSONIAN' MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

occur in other parts besides stem and branches — in leaves, or even
in fruits.

Now if the history of plant anatomy is to begin as near its
true beginning is possible, those three Greek terms must be con-
sulted which come into our language as bark, wood, and pith.
The first two will not detain us. The bark and wood are, each in
many different ways, too indispensably necessary to primal man,
to have failed to be distinguished and named long before the
advent of the most primitive philosophies. Theophrastus took
the terms cp\oiog and £v\ov as he found them, ready to hand
and well suited to his use. It was otherwise with the term which
he selected by which to indicate the pith of plants. This part
was not well known. Primal man, in quest of only the obvious
and the useful in nature, may have been unaware of the existence
of it. Woody growths, in that mature condition in which they
supply the savage and the half-civilized with timber, fuel, bast,
and dye-stuffs, show no pith. But that enlightened and philosophic
inquiry into nature's obscure things, which Greeks had begun to
pursue before Theophrastus' time, had brought to notice this part
of plants which was not bark, neither wood. The philosophic must
have discussed the substance, perhaps had written about it, for
they had attempted to name it. This we have from Theophrastus
himself, who says that some called it the heart of plants, others
called it the marrow.1 In this connection he did what with him
is most unusual, almost timorously conservative man that he
was; he declined to accept either "heart" or "marrow" as a
suitable name for this part of a plant. This can mean nothing
else but that he himself had taken the pith under special in-
vestigation and thereby had reached a new conclusion ; had found
that it was in no important point analogous to marrow, and
farther still from corresponding to the heart in animals. AVe
know enough about Theophrastus' temperament to warrant the
assertion that he would have been the last of men to reject two
names already in use for a thing, until he was able to prove that
both were utterly false to nature. The new name which even-
tually he offered is one which can not have suggested itself from
any study of the substance in that dry, whitened, imponderous,
and effete condition in which it is seen in mature stems and branches,
in which condition alone we of to-day call it pith. As philosopher,
and as one whom we, if he had lived in our time, should have

' Hist., Book i, ch. 4.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 99

known as a "scientific botanist," what he wished to ascertain was
the function of this substance in the economy of plant life. This
he certainly did discover; but he never could have done so had he
confined his investigations to the pith as no longer vitalized and
operative; therefore he must have sought it in its young and
growing state, when of all parts of the plant this is most tender,
replete with sap, and a strong center of vital activity, really the
matrix within which are generated both bark and wood. The
new name which he gives it is [.u'/Tpat, the word mother, nt'/typ,
somewhat altered, and in earlier Greek the womb, the mother of
life.1

Theophrastus never records his processes of investigation; but
when he selects the word metra, matrix, to be the appropriate name
of the pith of plants, we see at once that it does not really apply
to it in its white, imponderous, and devitalized condition, and that
he must have named it in reference to its earlier state, that of
living parenchyma. We may well divest ourselves of the prejudice
that the beginnings of a scientific and sound plant anatomy were
not made until after the invention of lenses and microscopes.
This man of antiquity, he who had progressed so far in plant em-
bryology as to have made out even the seed distinctions between
•exogens and endogens, could just as easily discover, in the cross-
section of a large and very tender shoot of elder or of maple, the
first traces of the several fibre-vascular bundles standing in a circle
midway between where the pith was to be and the place of the bark.
Successive cross-sections made at intervals would reveal to him
the gradual hardening and widening of those bundles, their final
apparent meeting and coalescing into the cylinder of hard wood
intervening between the central pith and the now formative bark.
It is undoubted that Theophrastus had thus seen, in young shoots,
the early stage at which bark and pith are all one in form and
substance, and that from it, even within it, both wood and
bark are gradually generated; and that because of this he called
the juicy soft living pith the metra, the matrix. In reality, while
searching to find what pith would be like in its living state, and
what in that state its function might seem to be, Theophrastus
had discovered living parenchyma.

Such a conclusion, when we have been driven to it in order that
the man's words may not be meaningless, needs no further support;
and yet there is one other circumstance which would confirm it

1 Just as in certain European languages still spoken there is no one word
for womb, but the phrase "mother of life " instead.

1OO SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

were confirmation called for. Hitherto I have conformed to
usage, very ancient as well as modern, of writing bark, wood, pith,
in just that sequence. It seems natural. It is at least a geo-
metrical succession of the terms, and therewithal not inelegant.
Even the translators of Theophrastus from Greek into Latin have
made him out as having named first the bark, then the wood, and
lastly the pith. Unwittingly they committed an inaccuracy, and
have misrepresented him; for Theophrastus wrote it thus: bark,
pith, wood. This sequence is not geometric, but it is biologic.
It would be illogical and awkward, were it not more exactly truthful
than the other and merely geometric succession of the terms. As
he placed them, the story is told again of how in early stages of
development bark and pith are substantially identical. Therefore
in their most widely differentiated conditipn they are next of kin,
more nearly related each to the other than either one is to the
wood.

This biologic investigation of the pith led to the detection and
segregation of other elements in stem structure; discoveries that
are all his own, for he expressly says of these elements that they
have no names. He thinks that he can not do better than apply to
each the name of some analogous part of the anatomy of animals.
The whole fabric of stems he makes out as consisting of what he
calls veins, nerves, and flesh. They are new uses of these terms
and he defines the botanical use of each, premising first of all that
vein and nerve are substantially one, differing scarcely otherwise
than as to dimensions, nerves being smaller than veins; adding
also that in plants these are simply elongated and do not branch.
The universal mark of the fabric which is composed of them is,
that it splits, and is not otherwise readily divisible. Flesh has
the very different quality of being divisible with equal readiness
in all directions, like a lump of earth. 1 Here, quite as we had been
prepared to expect from his new naming of the pith, and his indi-
cating its consanguinity with bark rather than with wood, we see
plainly that Theophrastus discovered and distinguished well what
in post-Malpighian times we have learned to know as parenchyma
and prosenchyma. He is now able to add a new chapter to plant
anatomy, for he can name the elemental constituents of bark, of
wood, and of pith. Wood, he says, is composed of nerve and
moisture; although some woods, such as of the palms and of ferula,
are of flesh ; such however in mature and dry condition show that
the flesh has been partly converted into wood. When he cites

' Hist., Book i, ch. 4.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE IOI

the wood of palm and umbellifer, we realize the expression of the
popular notion of wood as being that which the bark of any tree
encloses, without regard to density or ponderability. His language
here nevertheless evinces plainly his having taken full cognizance
of the fundamental difference between the wood of palms and
that of all exogenous trees. To pith he attributes flesh and sap
only. Bark is composed of all three of these elementals in most
cases, as in the oak, poplar, and pear tree, though in some, the
grape-vine, for example, of nerve and sap only — that is to say,
without flesh, or what we call parenchyma.

The structural elements of the leaves of exogens he apprehended
as substantially identical with those of the bark. The stalklet,
and therewith the fibrous framework of the blade, are of that which
he designates as nerve, or sinew.1 Next to this he names the
epidermis, and after that, what he callsthe flesh, known to us as the
mesophyll. In the leaves of palms and reedy or grassy plants he finds
no flesh at all, and thinks these are composed of fibre and epidermis
only. The edible fruits of trees and shrubs are composed mostly
of flesh, with little or no fibrous tissue; while, on the other hand,
some pericarps consist of a rind or skin only. He has so clearly
distinguished these two or three elementals of the plant fabric
that he is able to trace and point them out in every plant organ
from root to fruit.

Phytography. In descriptive botany there are two different
methods by which it is undertaken to convey by means of language
the image, so to speak, of some tree or other growth which the
describer has seen, and the reader is supposed not to have seen.
That two distinct methods in phytography exist is something of
which I have seen no mention either with any botanical author,
or with any historian of botany ; but a suggestion of them has been
made very recently, with also a good account of Theophrastus'
phytographic method, in an excellent treatise on some parts of
Theophrastan botany by Dr. Hugo Bretzl. Let me for con-
venience designate the methods as the natural and the artificial.
They may, however, quite as fitly be named the comparative and
the positive methods of plant description. Of the two, one is very
ancient, the other strictly modern; and the artificial or positive is
doubtless the more perfectly adapted to its purpose, though only
for such writers and such readers as are competent to use it; for
it requires the mastery, on the part of both, of a very extensive
vocabulary of special terms; in reality, the learning of a new

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 17.

102 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

language. What I have designated as the natural method of
describing plants vindicates its right to that title by the fact of its
primitive universality. If I speak of it otherwise as the method
of comparisons, in allusion to what it chiefly exacts of him who
would use it: that is, first, familiar acquaintance with certain
specific types as standards of comparison, and second, the ability
to construct a mental image of the unknown by means of the
describer's telling in what several particulars it differs from the
given type known to both. By way of illustration, an untaught
woodman, familiar with junipers, reports to a botanist that in a
new region to which he has wandered there are trees in all respects
like red cedar, or juniper, except that instead of yielding berries
they bear round cone-like bodies approaching the size and form of
smallish walnuts. The botanist at once pictures in his own mind
cypress trees, and assures his informant that his new trees are
cypresses. Such is the method of comparison in phytography;
and it may quite as aptly be called the natural one, for it is that
invariably used by the primitive and untaught; not, however,
always very well and successfully. Being the primitive method,
it is therefore that of Theophrastus ; not, however, to the complete
exclusion of a number of absolutely definitive terms such as are
now in use and always have been. The Greek observed that,
taking the plant world as a whole, the leaf is the most endlessly
diversified of organs, and also that within the limits of a species
its form is constant; from which two conditions it follows that no
other organ is so readily available in making distinctions between
different plants. Now as to the art of plant-description by the
method of comparison, it is very necessary that the types to be
used in comparing be chosen considerately. There seem to be
indications of his having thought upon this matter, though he has
not explained, or even didactically set forth his scheme. It is only
by a certain order and fitness in the scheme itself that one infers the
author's having studied it out. The most common types of leaf
outline are perhaps the lanceolate, ovate, oblong, and suborbicular.
He knows nothing of any such terms; but when he wishes to say
that which would express what modern botany expresses by the
term lanceolate, he says the leaf is that of the laurel, i. e., Laurus
nobilis. A leaf that we should describe as oblong, unless it be
much too large, is with him that of the olive tree. A leaf that is
of rounded contour and nearly as broad as long is compared by
him to that of the pear tree. For the ovate in outline his type
is the leaf of the ivy, Hedera Helix, in respect to which one must

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 103

not fail to note that it is the leaf peculiar to the mature and fruiting
ivy bush, not that of the rooting and climbing young plant; for
the leaves of this are too broad to represent the ovate, and are
angularly lobed.

Note now certain points of agreement among these four leaf-
outline types, (i) All are leaves of trees; for few herbaceous
plants display such uniformity of foliage as to the individual speci-
men. There is apt to be one form and size of leaf near the base of
such a stem, and another widely different description of leaf at the
summit, with intermediate forms up and down between base and
summit. With some notable exceptions — of which the Greek
takes advantage here and there — leaves of herbs do not answer
the purpose. (2) The trees are all selected from among such as
are most universally and familiarly known; every one of them
common in cultivation. Every civilized Greek of three thousand
years since knew the sweet bay. the olive, the pear tree, the ivy.
(3) The leaves of them all have a certain firmness of texture, either
leathery, or approaching it. By this prevision any soft herbaceous
plant having lanceolate entire foliage may be described as to its
foliage by merely saying that its leaves are like those of the laurel,
but thin. (4) The leaves of all four of the types are entire : whereby
the leaf that is of lanceolate cut, coriaceous texture, and entire
margin, no matter in what genus it may occur, may be described
by simply saying that it is the leaf of the laurel. Supposing,
however, that a tree is to be described the leaves of which are
lanceolate, coriaceous, but with margin serrated, then its descrip-
tion as to leaf will be, that it is like the laurel leaf, but •Serrated.
And this selecting of types that have entire leaves is manifestly
better than it would have been to have selected serrate leaves for
types. In such a climate as that of the Mediterranean, evergreen
trees and shrubs predominate, all of them with coriaceous foliagei
the kinds with entire leaves being very notably in excess of those
having toothed or serrated leaf-margins; therefore the choosing of as
many entire-leaved types as he could was natural to a man in Theo-
phrastus' place and environment, as well as making for economy
of time and space in describing things. It was by no means acci-
dental that this descriptive botanist selected the olive, the sweet
bay, the myrtle tree, and the box as patterns of leaf outline to be
referred to in his phytographic work. 1

How well such a system of morphologic types is adapted to the

1 See also Dr. Hugo Bretzl, Botanische Forschungen des Alexander zuges,
pp. 8-22.

104 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

purposes of description may best be shown by quoting a few
examples. A wild elm tree that inhabits the mountain districts
he says has "leaves like those of the pear tree, but longer in pro-
portion, with serrated margin, and a rough rather than smooth
surface."1 This makes it plain that Theophrastus' first purpose
in choosing leaf types was that of imparting ideas of general out-
line. To begin the account of an elm leaf by affirming it to be like
that of a pear tree is awkward and even mischievous, upon any
other supposition than that by such phrase he alludes to size and
general circumscription only; which also the expressions im-
mediately succeeding prove; for he who had pictured in his mind
at first a pear leaf for an elm leaf must now proceed, under direction
of the describer, to alter it by giving it a very distinctly saw-
toothed margin, and after that a roughness of surface, of which
there is no trace upon the pear leaf. What he now sees mentally
as a leaf of the little known wild elm is like a pear leaf in nothing
save its general contour. The elder tree, Sambucus nigra, Theo-
phrastus seems to have taken pleasure in describing rather minutely,
although the tree was no rarity, but rather familiarly known. But
it seems to have been this which taught him the existence of such a
thing as a compound leaf; and he gives a particular account of the
species from root to fruit. When he comes to the lanceolate
individual leaflet he says it is like the leaf of the sweet bay but
larger, relatively wider in the middle and at base, more pointed
at summit, serrated all around, and the whole more soft and pliable
in texture.2 To one acquainted with the sweet bay and the elder,
I do not know where, in even the most recent botany, he will find
a, more complete description of the elder leaflet. The leaves of
maples, mostly wildwood trees and less familiarly known, are com-
pared with those of the omnipresent plane. The maple leaves are
also ample, cleft somewhat after the same manner, but not to the
middle as in the plane, Platanus orientalis, longer in proportion to
their breadth, of a more delicate texture, and not rough to the
touch.3

This system of leaf describing by comparison with types is both
natural and not ill adapted to the purposes of phytography. Had
it not been so it would not have remained in vogue for two thousand
years after Theophrastus. Greek authors after him, as well as
Pliny and other Latin writers, knew no other method of leaf

1 Hist., Book iii, ch. 13.

2 Ibid., Book i, ch. 13.

3 Ibid., Book iii, ch. n.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 105

diagnosis. The number of the indicative types was gradually
augmented, and the use of them was universal even with the
fathers of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century botany; nor has any
later generation wholly ceased from the usage ; though it is perhaps
chiefly conspicuous nowhere but in nomenclature, where such
specific appellations as salicifolia, alnifolia, betulijolia, delphini-
folia, and a hundred more, though ostensibly figuring but as names,
may chance to be the best part of the diagnosis, at least in the
estimation of any not well versed in the post-Linnaean descriptive
terminology.

It is not to be inferred from anything here said, that the Greek
knew nothing of any geometric terminology of leaf forms. In that
chapter in which he treats of leaf forms in general he names the
orbicular, the oblong, the angular, and some others1; but they
lack definiteness of meaning, at least such definiteness as the
exigencies of plant diagnosis call for; though terms that bear upon
differences of apex, margin, and base as well as the superficies of
the leaf are of more fixed and certain meaning.

It will be observed that even flowers are described by Theo-
phrastus comparatively, the less known being brought into con-
trast with the well known; and the same rule applies, of course,
in his diagnoses of fruits and seeds. He was not particularly
given to describing plants. A great proportion of those which he
discourses upon were well known to all who would become his
readers. The common things of the gardens, of the cultivated
fields, of orchard and vineyard and of academic grove, were so
familiar that the mention of the name was sufficient. But when
he undertakes the description of any herb or bush or tree, he is apt
to give more than a rude outline of it; very often a good word
picture of it; and he who does this is a master of phytography,
without question about the age in which he has lived, or the method
he has employed. In the case of a number of Asiatic and African
trees unknown to Theophrastus except by report of travellers, he
so carefully gleans all that others have said about them, and with
such consummate art sums up the whole, and draws up his own
description, that in reading it one finds it not easy to realize that
the author of it never saw the tree. The books of botany that
were composed by Greeks and by Latins within three or four
centuries after Theophrastus show that the authors of them copied
his descriptions whenever such were available, and in other cases
made his the model of their own diagnoses. When we come to the

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 16.

106 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

era of strongly renewed scientific activity in the sixteenth century,
we shall find botanical authors of the time employing many
of Theophrastus' descriptions of plant species without altera-
tion of any kind; some, like Brunfels, Tragus, and Cesalpino and
their class, formally crediting each such diagnosis to its ancient
author, others without making such acknowledgment. But
they of this period who ventured upon new descriptions of
plants which Theophrastus had described of old seem to have
exposed themselves to public censure, as needlessly, perhaps ir-
reverently, supplanting or amending the excellent work of the
father of phytography.

Taxonomy. To teach, as it has been taught and is still taught,
that Tournefort (1694) first ranged the members of the plant
world under genera, that Linnaeus (1753) first clearly distinguished
species and varieties, and that Adanson (1763) first proposed
the grouping of genera into families — all this is to inculcate fable.
It has been already suggested, and forcibly enough, that plant
taxonomy was not invented in any school, or by any philosopher;
that it is everywhere as old as language ; that no plant name is the
name of an individual plant, but is always the name of some group
of individuals, and that all grouping is classifying. Botanical
taxonomy began at whatever time far off and prehistoric men
began to give names to plants; and it increased with the recog-
nition and the naming of new groups — always groups, never single
plants. Had some earlier Theophrastus appeared upon the
scene some thousands of years earlier than this one did, in this
particular at least he would have found himself in the midst of a
like environment. He would have found some hundreds of kinds
of cultivated plants familiarly known, spoken of always under
group names. In other phrase, he would have found a certain
taxonomy ready to hand, such as answered the needs of those
who had to do with plants industrially.

The real Theophrastus, entering the field, not in the far-off age
of Homer, whose poems are full of tree and plant lore, but many
hundred years later, had much to do in the first place in acquaint-
ing himself with the vast sum of knowledge, of theory, of poetic
fancy, and of superstitious fable that was then extant concerning
plants. All this he accomplished, as his pages plainly show,
and that with the occasional expression of something like the
scientific man's impatience of the superstitious and the fabulous.
As distinctively a nature student, however, exploiting the realms
of nature from the philosopher's viewpoint rather than from that

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE

of the economist, it would not have been strange had he invented
some new taxonomic scheme of his own, and then, thrusting aside
all the commonly accepted plant groupings, had sought to install
an entirely new system of taxonomy in place of the old.1 He did
nothing of the kind; and if he did not, it may have been for the
excellent reason that that already in vogue, when duly examined,
to a great degree commended itself to the philosophic judgment
as having been deduced from nature, and that in as far as it had
progressed, was often well enough done. Parts of it could not be
amended, and, we may now say confidently, were destined to accept-
ance as sound taxonomy as long as the world of plants should
endure, or a botanist remain to study it; at many points it might
be amended or added to, and the whole must be extended and
variously improved.

We may assure ourselves by a study of Theophrastus, that
something very like this was the task to which he addressed himself
as regards the classification of plant organs and the systematization
of p ants themselves ; and the careful reader of his chapters will
note often his great conservatism — his manifest aversion to startling
the good public by pronouncements that are new, and that will
openly antagonize them as assailing their old doctrines and their
deeply ingrained prejudices.

All these things being true, one ascertains with difficulty, if at
all, what the historian is most in need of knowing, namely where
this writer of the first book of botany is recording points of tax-
onomy that are of prehistoric discovery and universal traditional
acceptance, and where he is introducing some amendment or
improvement of his own. For example, in a very early chapter
of his work Theophrastus ranged all the plants that he had ever
seen, or heard, or read about, under the four primary groups of tree,
shrub, half-shrub, and herb — Sivdpov, Octavos, (ppvyavov, Ttoa.2
It is one of the most classic pieces of plant taxonomy; one that
stood the test of all the ages and is immortal. Nothing that by
any means could be elicited from out the hazy past would be of
deeper botanical interest than information as to whether this
fine piece of taxonomic work had been handed down in its com-
pleteness to Theophrastus, or whether as he gives it it represents
much augmentation, or condensation, or finishing and perfecting
accomplished for it by himself. We have met with like pro-

1 This is almost precisely what Tournefort undertook to do in the seven-
teenth century, and Linnaeus again in the eighteenth.

2 Hist., Book i, ch. 5.

108 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTION VOL. 54

blems before1 ; to the full solution of this I am incompetent. For
this, the botanist's best skill would need to be supplemented by
the erudition of the specialist in Greek philology. Nevertheless the
following hints may make it plain that SevSpov, Qd^vog, tppvya-
vov, noa, is a piece of classification that was studiously wrought
out by Theophrastus himself. In the Greek of his time there
were at least two words for tree, devdpov, and vX?], the former
more particularly designating such as were cultivated; the fruit-
bearing, nut-bearing, and such as were planted for shade or orna-
ment; the latter applying more specifically to wild trees used as
timber; almost the equivalent of our English terms woodland,
forest, timber-tree, etc. We have elsewhere remarked upon the
Theophrastan classifying of all growths as tame and wild. The
idea was deeply seated in the Greek mind; and for trees in general,
wild as well as domesticated, he could not well have chosen any other
term than dsvdpov, though it was more properly the appellation
of the civilized, contingent of arboreal growths. Similarly da^vos,
at least etymologically, signified a densely compacted woody
growth, — and not necessarily of low stature. The full-grown olive
tree was sometimes called a Qd^vo^, on account of the bushy
density of its head. Also as looking to the distinction between
bushes of cultivation and a wildwood thicket, the latter was also
v\ri sometimes, if not even usually. Thus again as with dtvdpov
the botanist selects for extended use that which signifies the cul-
tivated and better known.

Coming now to the class of suffrutescent plants — the half-
shrubby, half-herbaceous kinds — it appears to me no less than
certain that Theophrastus was first to discover, indicate, and name
this particular category. There seems to have been no word for
this kind of thing in the older Greek; for (ppvyavov meant nothing
more than a bundle of faggots, dead and dry branchlets and twigs
of trees which, either as windfalls or as left behind by the wood-
chopper, were laid lengthwise and tied into bundles for fuel. There
was, however, the old word 6 d prior, which one almost wonders he
did not adopt for his category of the half-shrubby. It is but a
diminutive of 6 a pros and means a little bush or small shrub. At
second thought one perceives that it would not well answer the
purpose. It gives no intimation of the true characteristic of the
suffrutescent growths, which is this, that the lower and woody
part represents a shrub, while the upper portion, that which bears
more scattered foliage together with the flowers and fruits, is

1 See page 66 preceding.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 109

herbaceous — that is, dies back every autumn after the fruiting
and is renewed again in the summer. In late autumn and early
winter, while the dead or half- dead upright and parallel summer
branches are still present, surmounting the shorter tuft of truly
woody lower branches, the bush would vividly enough recall a
faggot bundle. Even where abounding, as such growths do on
open plain or stony mountain slope throughout all half-arid regions
of the world, they must have been used as faggots always. He
who knows familiarly such ancient garden plants as the lavender
and sage and rue, and the wild half-shrubby artemisias and other like
composites of all dry climates, will perceive readily that (ppvyavov,
the faggot bundle, lent itself to Theophrastus' scientific purpose in
this instance. He might have created a new term; but the con-
servative prefers to make new use and application of some old and
familiar term. The public never takes kindly to new names.

In distinguishing the category of the suffrutescent, the Greek
had proceeded analytically. In establishing upon all herbaceous
plants one comprehensive group under one name, his procedure
was synthetic. It was not indicating a single new group hitherto
unrecognized and naming it. It was the synthesis of a number
of groups long recognized and separately named ; the putting
together of such, to constitute a single more comprehensive assem-
blage, and under one name.

A glance at the actual situation in which we English-speaking
people find ourselves as to our terminology of the herbaceous will
help us to apprehend clearly the Theophrastan standpoint. We have
no single word by which we venture commonly to designate the
aggregate of things herbaceous. If in our fundamentals of botany
we still follow Theophrastus in writing or speaking of tree, shrub,
and herb, that is at once the beginning and the end of our using the
term "herb" thus comprehensively. Thenceforward we ignore it and
write or speak about "herbaceous plants"; this for the manifest
reason that "herb" used by itself has almost universally a special
meaning of which it seems impossible to divest it. An herb is some-
thing, neither tree nor shrub, which is either medicinal, aromatic,
or culinary. The other terms in common use for subordinate
groups of herbaceous plants are vegetable, weed, grass, and worst
of all the word "plant" itself; for this, as first introduced into our
English speech, and as almost universally employed down to our
day, signifies only things herbaceous, yet not all; for neither weeds
nor grasses are commonly called plants, in our tongue, except
technically. Thus our category of the herbaceous includes the

IIO SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

segregates herb, vegetable, weed, grass, plant. And the endeavors
of our English scientific forefathers to make any one of those
terms serve as the name for herbaceous growths in general have
been unsuccessful. Theophrastus had been in the same pre-
dicament as that which became theirs. In his mother tongue
there was g)vrovt the herbaceous plant of cultivation, at least
as to its most primitive signification; there were haxavov, the
kitchen-garden vegetable, fiordi'i], the weed, and noa, the grass,
the forage herb. The first of these terms tyvrov, the herbaceous
thing that men plant and transplant and cultivate, was a term
that he himself appears to have rendered unavailable. He had
made it to include the whole vegetable kingdom from oak and
pine to seaweed and fungus. The name that to him seemed most
reasonably available for designating the sum of all things green —
herbaceous — was the common name of the grasses and fodder plants,
noa. When I say reasonably available, my thought is that the
selecting of the term grass rather than the term herb for expressing
the aggregate was most natural to any one who, like Theophrastus,
had thought the matter over. The grasses form by far the greater
proportion of that low-growing verdure which, outside of the
forests and thickets, covers the whole earth in all temperate lati-
tudes during half the year. It was therefore more true to nature
— more scientific — to take up that term which came so near being
synonymous with verdure. The term herb is comparatively unfit, as
suggesting a much smaller aggregate, and that also of plants marked
by odors, flavors, and other qualities which the eye can not detect.
There are even modern languages in which the word for all green
herbage is the correlative of our word ' ' grass ' ' : languages in the
botanical vernacular of which, what we call herbaceous plants are
known only as " grass." This was strictly true of our English
of only a few centuries ago.1 Thus again how plain it is that the
forefather of all botany produced this primal outline taxonomic
only after the most careful weighing and considering of every
point involved. Nor must our attention be called away from this
first chapter of Theophrastus' classification without our having
observed the sequence of the groups. Why does he begin with the
Grand Division of the trees and proceed downward to that which

1 There is a familiar sacred verse that attests this: "All flesh is grass, and
all the glory of man is as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the
flower thereof falleth away. " — I Pet. i, 24. At the date of this translation
gramineous plants were regarded as flowerless. Therefore in the minds of
tfte learned translators even showily flowering herbaceous plants were a
part of "grass. "

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE III

will include such phytologic ambiguities — for such they were in his
day and for ages afterward — as lichens and fungi? There is no
room for doubt that one consideration was the very rational
one, that botany may not safely begin at any point where doubt
may arise as to what realm of nature the subjects of study belong
to. The title of trees in general to be regarded a part of the plant
world is secure; that of no other growths more so; while judged
by his own criteria of phytologic rank, the very highest place must
be accorded to trees. In his view they were the most perfectly
organized of all.

Inasmuch as the fourth and last Grand Division noa, the Grass
Plants, i. e., the Herbaceous, is the largest of all as to numbers
both of individuals and of species and as regards their almost
universal prevalence, it will naturally be here that we shall look
for further expression of taxonomic idea; suggestions of grouping
subordinate to that of noa, the herb.

The most comprehensive of his subordinate groups is that which he
denominates Haha^GoSi]?^ which comes into Latin as Arundinaceae;
its type being that superb grass Arundo Donax. In an author
so primitive one does not look for any rigidly formal diagnosis of
a group. Calamodes in itself is diagnostic. It will include all
plants that recall calamus, that is, Arundo Donax. In one place
he has written that the leaves of this, and other things which he
cites, seem to be made up of nerves only, comparing them with
those of the grape and fig, which he says have not only nerves but
also flesh and epidermis in their make-up.2 The interpretation
of this is that he has become aware of the differences of anatomical
structure subsisting between the leaves of endogens and exogens.
His group Calamodes — better written, after the usage of his Latin
translators, Arundinaceae — embraces Arundo and the cereals
Triticum, Secale, Hordeum, Oryza, and others; that is, he names
these as types. By their leaf characters all other gramineous
plants cultivated and wild, known or unknown, fall within the
lines circumscribing his Arundinaceae. And what else besides the
true grasses? In one place he names as among the arundinaceous
certain plants the leaves of which in so far depart from the typical
as to present an angular cross-section, and these seem to him as if
made up of two leaves joined by their edges to something like a
keel. It is the conduplicate and keeled leaves of such things as
Cyperus and Sparganintn, as any botanist would know from the

1 Histt, Book i, ch. 10.

2 Ibid., ch. 17.

112 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

description of them, even without Theophrastus' having named
those particular genera, adding that other denizens of marshy
grounds have such foliage. Even the palms — of which he knew
only Phcenix, pinnate-fronded — he cites by name as being arundi-
naceous.1 Such reeds and rushes as to him seemed quite leafless
would still vindicate to themselves places within the group by
virtue of their altogether pithy or else hollow stems or culms. We
are sure, then, that this assemblage of the Calamodes embraced all
true grasses, all sedges, besides the juncaceous, typhaceous, spargan-
iacous, plants, and palms. It will be observed that all are mono-
cotyledonous ; that the group embraces by far the greater proportion
of such; only the showily spathaceous and the really petaliferous
genera being left out. Recalling here the circumstance that in all
early taxonomy roots figure very conspicuously, it becomes inter-
estingly significant that into this great class of the Calamodes, —
a group which, as regards the number of species, comes near
being the equivalent of our endogens — not a genus is admitted
that has either bulb or corm. Every member of the vast assem-
blage has copious fibrous roots ; these in moiety of the species sup-
plemented, as Theophrastus might have worded it, by that which
he had chosen to name the jointed root, i. e., the slender rhizome;
a single sedge, Cyperus esculentus, bearing nut-like protuberances
as if at the ends of some few of the root fibres. There is not
the shadow of a doubt that this pristine plant anatomist and
systematist recognized the structure of leaf-stalk and flower-stalk
of Arum and Colocasia as at full agreement with that of half his
Calamodes; and the same must have been familiar to him in the
case of the grassy-leaved crocus and its allies; and the "roots" of
these must have excluded them from taxonomic consociation with
the rest, in all probability, even had their flowers been leafless and
less in contrast to those of grass and reed and sedge. The aggre-
gate of bulbous and cormose plants, the araceous I think excepted,
were known and spoken of by him as poXficodijs — the Bulbaceae.
As a group it contained, first of all and typically, the onion and its
several congeners, even the leek, a plant that though alliaceous is
not bulbous ; after these the bulbous Liliaceae, Amaryllidaceae, and
the cormose iris allies. With the types and several of the species
of all these he was familiarly acquainted.

There are other natural families not a few of which Theophrastus
apprehended with precision, even assigning names to several of
them. Such are the Umbelliferae, for an example, to which as a

i Hist., Book i, ch. 16.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 113

family he gives the name vapQrfxoadrjs, which in the Latin versions
had to be written Ferulacsae, from ferula — in Greek vaptft/S, a
stalk of fennel or of ferula — commonest umbellifers of the Mediter-
ranean region. Plainly the thistles and their natural allies were
accepted by him as constituting another such family group; for
he often refers to them under the collective name of acHavOcoSijz, and
twice mentions that all of them are prickly-leaved herbs whose
flower consists of a head of florets, each floret sitting on the summit
of a seed.1 In Latin versions these are the Acanaceae, fromCmcws
Acarna, Linn., one of the most common thistles of Greece and
Italy. Into this family Theophrastus admitted Dipsacus, the
leaves of which are not prickly, as he concedes, but on account
of its answering to the thistles in this, that its florets crown each
its seed. And Eryngium also, and not unnaturally, with its
spinescent foliage and capitate inflorescence, finds place among
the thistles rather than with the umbellifers. The numerous
cichoriaceous genera, with their peculiar habit, milky juice, and
sameness of character as to flower and fruit, formed also a family
with our Greek, who called it Hix^pioad^,2 which the Latins
wrote Cichoraceas. These for examples of his having given to
groups of genera class names and family names. Others need not
be cited; but it should be mentioned that the family relationship
of small groups of genera is in many an instance clearly seen by
him when no group name is used. The pines, fir, spruce, and larch
are discussed in a place by themselves; the various poplars, to-
gether with alder and birch, occupy successively another place,
and the same is true elsewhere in the dendrological chapters of the
book. The intimate relationship between the poppies and the
pond lilies was so clearly perceived by Theophrastus that, while
in general he seems to Hke to group things ecologically, the aquatics
in chapters apart from mesophytes, he nevertheless proceeds with-
out a halt from the papaveraceous plants of the grain fields to their
kindred of the lakes and rivers.3 He perceived upon them all, thi
marks of one and the same family.

It is again very interesting to note here and there a question:
raised as to the extent of some family; whether such or such a
genus is or is not of the same family with such another, for ex-
ample: "Some affirm that cucumbers and squashes are as closely
interrelated as radishes and turnips are; others deny it."4 The

i Hist., Book i, ch. 22. 3 Ibid., ix, ch. 13.

3 Ibid., vii, ch. u. * ibid., vii, ch. 4.

114 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

passage reveals gardeners and botanists of remote antiquity in
debate about the affinities of genera; and the man whose word of
authority might or might not have ended the debate, diplomat that
he is, as well as philosopher, expresses no opinion ; though none who
have studied him well can doubt that he had one, and the correct one.
This outlining of families of plants and giving them family
names entails one extremely important logical sequence, which
one must not fail to indicate. His Arundinaceae, Bulbaceae, Ferula-
ceae, Acanaceae, Cichoriaceae, and all the rest, as established on
certain organologic characters, are each and all logically and com-
pletely subversive of that distinction which he formally keeps up,
between things cultivated and things wild; for each such family
necessarily includes both. The few historians who have not shrunk
away from the time-consuming task of studying the Theophrastan
volumes, have been perplexed by his seeming approval of ancient
Hippon's theory about the origin of cultivated plants, which
seeming approval is at once followed by a feeble argument or two
against the theory. Here is what Meyer says, referring to the
primary divisions of tree, shrub, half-shrub, and herb: "Each of
these four is subdivided into the groups of the Cultivated and the
Wild. Hippon's pronouncement, that every plant is at first wild,
and then by cultivation made tame, is thus in a general way ap-
proved, though Theophrastus immediately adds that certain
wild plants are not at all amenable to cultivation, while others
take to it readily, whence it will follow that such a. distinction is
not altogether untrue to nature."1 This historian's difficulty
arises through his having missed two items important to the
understanding of the man Theophrastus. First, that the illus-
trious Greek was as successfully a student of human nature2 as he
•was an investigator of the plant world; and that he studied to
avoid opposing with needless directness the prejudices of the
multitude. If he should pay no respect to those time-honored
categories of the tame and the wild, but should jumble them
all together, and openly, forty-nine out of fifty among his readers
would adjudge him not only a bold innovator, but perhaps also
a godless heretic; for, as elsewhere intimated, the staple plants
of agriculture, even in ancient paganism, were viewed as special
•creations of the gods — their immediate gifts to men. Old Hippon

1 Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. i, p. 162.

2 See his Characters of Men, a work completed, as he tells us, in his ninety-
ninth year.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 115

the rhizotomos had been an outspoken heretic of this stamp.
Theophrastus quotes his bold theory. In his secret soul he believes
it sound; yet for the sake of avoiding scandal to the forty and
nine or the ninety and nine, he veils his belief by admitting that
some wild plants refuse to be tamed ; a fact which may innocently be
construed as against Hippon's idea. The other fact which the
historian failed to apprehend is that the Greek outlines, and gives
names to, a half-dozen or more of large natural groups, every one
of them embracing without discrimination plants domesticated and
wild. He thus completely nullifies that distinction, yet it is all so
quietly, and as regards the superficial reading so covertly, done as
to escape the notice of the forty-nine out of fifty of his readers;
even also of our latter-day botanical historians, learned men and
able, yet with mental vision impaired by the strong light of those
typographic pedantries — convenient and helpful, certainly — which
the botany of the nineteenth century had as a legacy from that of
the eighteenth; affected by a sort of botanico-literary dysopsia
which is slow to perceive that such a name as ferulaceae is as per-
fectly the name fof a natural family of plants as when printed
FERULACE^.

The recognition of genera — using the term in a modern sense — •
is as informal with Theophrastus as that of families. However,
when we come to the word itself, yevos, genus, it is employed
variously — that is, with several different degrees of comprehensive-
ness. Indeed every natural group is with him a " genus," whether
it be of the whole assemblage of herbaceous growths, or a family
group, or a genus in our sense, or a species, or a variety merely.
It seems to be the exact equivalent of our English expression " a
kind " ; and because such use of the word " kind " is not yet obsolete,
at least surviving in rural districts, it will not be difficult to make
plain its meaning. If a gardener or farmer of the present day
mention to a botanist that he has in cultivation a strange plant of
the squash, cucumber, and gourd kind, the latter understands
perfectly that this is something belonging to the family of the
Cucurbitaceae, though he can go no further. But if it now be said
in rustic phrase that the plant is something in between the squash
kind and the gourd kind, he has used the word in a different and
much more limited sense; for now the skilled botanist at once puts
out of mind seven out of the eight primary divisions — subfamilies
— of the cucurbits, or, in other words, dismisses from his thought,
we will say, sixty or more of the seventy genera of this family ; for
he clearly understands the farmer to have that in view which must

Il6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

lie close to the two nearly related genera Cucurbita and Lagenaria.
Now for a third manner of using the word "kind," with a most dis-
tinct third meaning, the farmer shall say that he has a new kind
of squash. The botanist now has not the least doubt that the
genus Cucurbita is meant ; whether a species or a variety he can not
tell; but the expression "kind of squash" at once translates itself
into the school-taught expression, " species or variety of Cucurbita."

These three distinct old-fashioned uses of the word "kind"
illustrate well the different ways in which ancient Greeks and
Latins employed their word "genus." It is not a usage that makes
for that perspicuity which a science calls for. For three meanings,
three words are better than one. Nevertheless there is seldom
room for doubt in Theophrastus' writings as to whether by " genus "
he means such a group of species as we receive under that name,
or a more comprehensive, or a less comprehensive group; any more
than one well read in English fails to get the meaning of each of
the uses I have brought forward of the equivalent word "kind."
But the modern botanist who innocently should read into the
term genus of an ancient author always the meaning which it has
in modern botany would soon reduce his own mind to a state of
utter bewilderment as to the ancient author's meaning. I have
therefore been at the pains of making this attempt at an explana-
tion. Upon this and many another important matter of termin-
ology the historians have been silent.

Employing now the word ' ' genus " quite as used in modern botany
the genera of Theophrastus are numerous; most of them obtaining
acceptance and holding their places in the systematic botany of
the present, most of them also bearing the same names under which
they were written about by him. This will be best shown by a
few examples, which I select from under the letters A and C of any
Latin index to his work:

Abrotonum Calamagrostis

Acanthus Calamintha

Aconitum Cedrus

^gilops Celastrus

Agrostis Cenchrus

Aira Cerasus

Alopecurus Ceratonia

Althaea Cercis

Anchusa Chelidonium

Anemone Cissus

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE I 17

Anethum Colutea

Anthericum Coriandrum

Antirrhinum Coronopus

Aparine Crataegus

Aristolochia Cycas

Arum Cydonia

Asparagus Cyperus

There must be more than a hundred Theophrastan genera the
names of which are as familiar as these. A very considerable
proportion of them were then known only as consisting of a single
species, and are therefore of the kind which we speak of as mono-
typical; others wrere made up of from two to several, and the
species are mentioned by name at least, when not described. If
he establishes no new genus, and all of them which he enumerates
or describes were of common recognition, and under those same
names, even before he had penned a line on botany, this fact of
itself will demonstrate anew the truthfulness of the proposition
that the perception of genera and the naming of them are older
than history, and that plant names, generic and specific, are a part
of human language always and everywhere.

As to the grouping of his genera, almost the whole story has been
told, at least by implication. There were the genera of trees, the
genera of shrubs, etc., in places apart; and there were ecological
groupings of wild plants and particular assemblages of genera of
things cultivated in field and garden; as to these last, the mere
retention of antiquated popular groupings which, in deference to the
cultivators, he was unwilling to ignore or displace.

There occur in Theophrastus a number of passages which seem
like forecastings of a system based more particularly upon flowers
and fruits; a system the development of which was of course im-
possible then, or even at any later period preceding the invention
of the microscope. But the very impossibility of his having been
able to develop such a system is something which makes his few
and faint adumbrations of it interesting and remarkable. I shall
cite but two or three.

Commenting on the cylindric spicate inflorescences of certain
cereals and grasses, he recalls that those of the plantains are so like
them and even the flowers so similar, and thinks it might not be
presumptuous to regard them as being interrelated.1 To the
average botanist of to-day the idea of any consanguinity as sub-

1 Hist., Book vii, ch. 10.

Il8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

sisting between Plantago major and an Alopecurus or a Phleum
will seem crude enough; and this partly because parallel- veined
leaves do not indicate to a certainty that a plant is an endogen
and therefore more or less allied to grasses, and partly because we
with our hand lenses and microscopes perceive between the small
apetalous flowers of Plantago and Alopecurus marked differences
that were impossible of discovery by Theophrastus. But the one
thing noteworthy is that the Greek thus makes flower and inflor-
escence the criterion of natural relationship. He does not positively
affirm it. It was but a pointed suggestion; and the suggestion
passed unheeded during seventeen centuries.

The true hellebore and the veratrum are not more closely allied
than are alopecurus and plantago, but as to their flowers and more
particularly as to their follicular fruits, there is a strong likeness
between them. It may have been this circumstance which, along
with their powerful medicinal qualities, led to their being named
as of the same genus, Helleborus.1

More signally indicative of his regard for fruit characters as
sometimes taxonomically outweighing the vegetative, is the fact
of his having associated the yellow water lily with the poppies,
rather than with nelumbo. Having given account of the wild
poppies of the grain fields and stony uncultivated lands, he who
is so apt to treat of plants in ecologic groups proceeds now to speak
of the poppy "that is called nymphaea."2 Evidently its milky
juice, the generalities of its floral structure, and above all the
external form and the inner structure of the capsule, as well as the
seeds themselves, constrained him to think of this and the poppies
as congeneric. Also when this same chapter ends with an account
of Aristolochia, the capsules of which are so much like those of
poppies, one can assign no other reason for it than that by their
fruits he guessed that Papaver and Aristolochia were interrelated.
Other like instances need not be cited; though it should not here
be lost sight of that his families, the Umbelliferse and the Carduacese,
were in his mind characterized each by marks of flower and fruit.
And so, when the antho-carpologic doctrine of affinities is traced to
its beginning, one no longer may think of it as having originated
with Cesalpino. The idea had been suggested to his mind, and
most impressively, by Theophrastus.

Nomenclature. No such thought as that of botanical nomen-
clature finds expression with the Greek. When he wrote of any

1 Hist., Book ix, ch. n.

2 Ibid., ch. 13.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE lip

tree or shrub or herb he used that name by which it was known
in the everyday speech of Greeks. It does not appear that it ever
occurred to him that a living thing, or any group of living things,
required to be named otherwise than as commonly designated in
his mother tongue. When in reading his books one encounters
batrachium, erigeron, lithospermum, leucoium, myriophyllum,
myrrhis, narcissus, and a hundred more as familiar, it is because he
knew no other names for them. Nevertheless Theophrastus has
great part in what is now come to be received as the scientific
nomenclature of the genera and species of plants; and if this has
come to pass without forethought or purpose on his own part, it
is still natural and was inevitable. During some two centuries
next succeeding the writing of it, this was almost the only treatise
on botany that was extant, and the names of plants therein written
about obtained by that very fact great prestige. When at length
the Latins began to study plants, and would write about them,
they had to learn Greek in order to be able to read the works of
Theophrastus, for that was the one supreme treatise on plants.
All well-known plants were therefore known to Latins by their
Theophrastan and Greek names, as well as by their Latin names
when they had such. Pliny, the supreme Latin writer about
plants, in translating Theophrastan texts by the hundred into
Latin for Roman readers, made use of familiar Latin names in place
of the Greek names when there were such, e. g., instead of the
Greek itea he wrote salix; in place of drys, quercus; Latin ulmus,
sambucus, and ranunculus in place of Theophrastan ptelea, acte,
and batrachium. There were still many scores of plant types
which were known to Latins by no other names than those that
had been assigned them in Greek; another evidence that Theo-
phrastus by his books had been the one teacher and authority
upon botany to Latins as well as Greeks. Platanus, cerasus,
rhamnus, anemone, thalictrum, delphinium, helleborus, paeonia,
and a host of other such remained the only names of the genera,
whether one spoke or wrote botany in Latin or in Greek; and so
during some seventeen centuries most of the plant names in use
were quoted from Theophrastus. The popular fable about
Linnaeus as first nomenclator of botany is not yet a hundred years
old, and will need to be perpetuated for sixteen centuries yet to
come if the years of his nomenclatorial fame are to equal those
during which Theophrastus held the prestige.

Early in the sixteenth century, when new impulses moved men
everywhere to scientific research, Latin had now long been the

I2O SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

universal language of the educated. Theophrastus had been
translated into Latin for the convenience of those who had not
learned Greek; but still, as to botanical nomenclature Greek held
its prestige fully. When in the course of their herborizings the
botanists found plants in no wise answering to any descriptions in
the ancient books, and therefore adjudged new and nameless,
under the conditions then prevailing it would have been the most
natural thing in the world if all new plant names of the period had
been made in Latin ; and this indeed often happened, e. g., Pulicaria
and Fragaria, Brunfels (1531), Digitalis, Fuchs (1542), Sanicula,
Tragus (1552), Bidens, Cesalpino (1593): yet Latin names for new
genera are somewhat exceptional even for that period, Greek-
made names being commonly preferred. The reason was simply
this. The greater proportion of plant names then in use, even in
Latin botany, was Greek, and that by unbroken tradition from
the Greek father of all botany; and Greek-made names for new
types were more in harmony with the general tone "of botanical
nomenclature than Latin names. Thus has it come to pass that
even down to our twentieth century the favorite etymology for
new generic names is Greek. Such very modern names as Cal-
liandra, Chimonanthus, Ckionanthus, Ckionophila, Chionogenes,
Epigcea, and hundreds like them, all very modern, attest the
perpetual influence of Theophrastus upon botanical nomenclature.
In botany as elsewhere the genus presupposes species. A genus
may consist of many species, of few, or of one only. Theophrastus
had very many monotypic genera, at least as they were then known.
The specific representative of a monotypic genus has with him but
one name, commonly a one-worded name; that is, the one species
constituting such genus lacks a specific name. It really has no
need of any. Where there is but one thing of a kind, there is never
in ordinary speech a second and qualifying name. If neither men
nor things existed but in monotypes, language would not need
adjectives, and there would be none. Had there been but one
race of men on the earth, the name of that race would have been
man simply, and the adjectives Caucasian, Mongolian, African,
etc., would not have existed. The Theophrastan nomenclature of
plants is as simply natural as can be imagined. Not only are
monotypic genera called by a single name; where the species are
known to be several, the type species of the genus — that is, that
which is most historic — is without a specific name, at least very
commonly, and only the others have each its specific adjective
superadded to the generic appellation. The situation may best

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 121

be shown by examples. In giving these it seems advisable to
present the Theophrastan Greek names in Roman type.

Theophrastan Modern

Clethra Alnus oblongata.

Melampyron Melampyrum arvense.

Dolichos Phaseolus vulgaris.

Ostrya Ostrya vulgaris.

Peuce Pinus picea.

Peuce Idaia Pinus maritima.

Peuce conophoros Pinus pinea.

Peuce paralios Pinus Halepensis.

Mespilos Mespilus Cotoneaster.

Mespilos anthedon Crataegus tominalis.

Oxyacantha. Mespilus Pyracantha.

Syce Idaia Mespilus Amelanchier.

Aria Crataegus Aria.

Cydonion Pyrus Cydonia.

Coccymeles Prunus domestica.

Spodias Prunus institia.

Cerasos Prunus Cerasus.

Pados Prunus Padus.

Oie Sorbus domestica.

The first four names above are those of genera known to Theo-
phrastus as consisting each of a single species. It is evident he
saw no occasion for any second and qualifying name in any case
of that kind. To have given such second names would very
certainly have exposed him to the criticism of having abandoned
the attitude of the philosopher, the man of literary taste and
scientific brevity, and having assumed the role of the pedant. Why
do botanists of a recent time invariably append the needless
second name to every monotype ? I ask the question but to em-
phasize this point in the history of biologic nomenclature. I recall
no instances of the assigning of the useless specific adjective to a
generic monotype until well toward the time of Linnaeus; and
despite the weight of his authority in favor of it, the nineteenth
century was on the dawn when there were no longer eminent
botanists standing out against the practice. The assigning a
species name in these instances is, of course, previsional. The
monotypic genus may cease to be such; but even then, according
to Theophrastan usage, the generic name alone might stand as that
of the original and typical specific member; but that is too pro-

122 SMITHSONIAN" MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

vincial. Theophrastus' work, in as far as relates to taxonomy and
nomenclature, is provincial; not a universal flora, but a somewhat
local one. It was not a perfect pattern for the universal. There
is also a certain lack of uniformity in a system of nomenclature
which fails to provide every species with a distinctively specific
name; and it was nothing more than the desirability of uniformity
which brought about the modern usage. But, as we shall see,
this question was long in controversy, and was settled late.

Matters of nomenclature and taxonomy are almost inseparably
connected. The name itself is but the expression of a taxonomic
idea. Excepting those rare instances in which an individual
historic tree has received a proper name, every plant name that
ever was, in any language, is the name of a group. Naming is
classifying. The Theophrastan names for pomaceous and dru-
paceous genera have been above placed in close succession, and
opposite them Linnaeus' disposal of the same type. By comparing
those several names it is readily seen that the eleven species are
distributed to five genera by Linnaeus, whereas by Theophrastus
they had represented nine. In what may be called the average
twentieth-century classification of them, — as far as the century
has proceeded, — the same eleven species are ranged under about
eight genera, namely Amelanchier, Cotoneaster, Crataegus, Cydonia,
Sorbus, Cerasus, Padus, Prunus. If we of the present are correct,
the mean between Theophrastus and Linnaeus is the happy one;
and this in any case must be admitted, that every revulsion against
the Linnaean taxonomy of these fruit trees is a step in return
toward the Theophrastan. The same sort of departing and then
returning finds illustration in the naming of water lilies as that was
done formerly, and has been done over again of late.

Theophrastan Linnaean Recent

Nymphaia Nymphaea lutea Nymphaea lutea.

Sida1 Nymphasa alba Castalia alba.

Lotos Nymphaea Lotus Castalia Lotus.

Cyamos2 Nymphaea Nelumbo Nelumbo speciosa.

The Greek, it is thus seen, received the four species as representing
each a genus. With Linnaeus the genus of them all was one ; while
recent systematists have well-nigh completely returned to the
Theophrastan view, in all save the names of the genera ; and the

1 Linnaeus, suppressing the white water lily genus, daringly transferred
its name to that of a genus of insignificant malvaceous weeds.

2 Sir J. E. Smith, most ardent Linnaean though he was, restored Cyamus
instead of Nelumbo, insisting on its right of priority.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 123

restoration of even these will follow, under the law of priority.
The shortcomings of Theophrastan nomenclature as to uni-
formity have not all been indicated. There is one other. While
something like half his plant species have but a single one-worded
name and that the generic, there are not a few of his genera that
are invested with a double — that is, a two-worded name. It is
highly important that this be fully understood. This kind of
name is frequent with every botanical author that I am acquainted
with, between Theophrastus and Linnaeus; and with this fact
overlooked there is no understanding any single pre-Linnsean
author's plant names either generic or specific. Nor have I found
any writer of botanical history making so much as a passing
reference to this. I subjoin a very few such Theophrastan genus
names as samples; giving, as usual, their equivalents, with also the
specific names as now in use.

Theophrastan Modern.

Calamos Euosmos Acorus Calamus.

Dios Anthos Agrostemma Flos Jo vis.

Dios Balanos Castanea vesca.

Carya Persica Juglans regia.

Syce Idaia Amelanchier vulgaris.

Ampelos Idaia Tamus communis.

Most of the names in the left-hand column have exactly the
form and structure of ordinary generico-specific binaries, one term
being a noun, the other a qualifying adjective. Their respective
equivalents placed over against them demonstrate beyond cavil
that these particular binaries are not of the usual meaning of such
two-fold names, but are purely generic. To take up the first on the
list: Theophrastus has a genus Calamos, the great reed-grass arundo
its type, phragmites also being included in the genus. It is not
imaginable that a botanist of Theophrastus' ripe experience and
great attainments should think those large grass-plants and the
sweet-flag to be of the same genus. Beyond doubt, however, that
name Calamos euosmos did originate in the notion that arundo and
acorus are next of kin; for, however unlike they are as to size,
foliage, and other particulars, there is a remarkably close similarity
in their rootstocks, these being of almost the same size, form, and
color in the two. The gatherers of roots and herbs, as we know,
looked first of all to the "roots" of things, and these were their
first criteria of plant relationships. To these it would be perfectly
natural to place the sweet-flag alongside arundo, the true

124 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLLECTIONS VOL. 54

by its closely imitative "root," and then on account of the aro-
matic properties of that root to call the plant ndXai^iog ivoff^og.
It is equally incredible that Theophrastus should have adjudged
the service tree which grew on Mount Ida to be a kind of fig tree.
The country people who found the sweet fruits in some way sug-
gestive of figs must have been the creators of that name GVHIJ 'Idrna.
But the author who desires to conciliate the public will use great
reserve in the matter of suppressing, altering, or even amending
established and familiar names; and Theophrastus left plant
nomenclature as he found it. And what reasonable objection
could have been raised against such binary generic names? It
can hardly have entered his mind that it made any difference
whether such name were one-worded or two-worded. Outside
the domain of our Latin-worded technicalities it makes not the
least difference to any of us to-day how many words go to the
making of a generic name. Ivy is a generic name, and as certainly
such are Ground Ivy and Poison Ivy. Pine, Ground Pine, and
Princes' Pine are names of three genera in no wise interrelated.
The same may be said of the five following, Pink, Moss Pink, Squaw
Pink, Mullein Pink, and Pink Root. We having no fault to find with
such generic names as Star of Bethlehem, Lily of the Valley, Grape
Hyacinth, Jerusalem Artichoke, Indian Turnip, American Cowslip,
and some scores of others like them. We are a living illustration
of Theophrastus in this regard, except that we have two languages
for our botany, whereas he had but one. We have two languages
in which we use botanical names, with a separate set of rules for
each. Into our Latin nomenclature we do not admit any of these
two-worded generic names which we use so freely and so readily
in our vernacular. In this we differ from a very long and illus-
trious line of our own botanical ancestry. It is less than two
hundred years since what we know in English as Dogtooth
Violet and in Latin as Erythronium was in all Latin botany the
genus Dens Canis, Taraxacum was Dens Leonis, Convallaria was
Lilium Convallium, Glechoma was Hedera Terrestris, Helianthus
Flos Solis, Drosera Ros Solis, Centaurea was Centaurium Majus,

%

and the little gentianceous genus Erythrasa was Centaurium Minus.
By the same token, Chelidonium was the genus Chelidonium Majus
and Ficaria was the genus Chelidonium Minus. In a word, Latin
botany for more than seventeen centuries admitted two-worded
generic names as freely as the simpler kind ; and all after the ex-
ample of Theophrastus and the prehistoric nomenclators.

This is not the place in which to give the history of the elimina-

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 125

tion of binary generic names from Latin-written botany. But it
was imperative to show that such names are common with Theo-
phrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny, and thenceforward for well-nigh two
thousand years. Without knowledge of this fact the ancient
names can not be understood. Without understanding of names
as applied during such period, its taxonomy is an enigma, and the
setting forth of the history of taxonomy is impossible. To read
into that ancient Greek name Aster Atticus, as has been done
lately, the character of an ordinary binary plant name of the nine-
teenth century, l — to fail to recognize in that a mere two-worded
generic name — seems to evince a condition of bewilderment as to1
the whole subject of botanical nomenclature with ancient Greek
and later Latin authors. That the term Aster is generic and
Atticus specific can not well be believed to have been in the mind
of Dioscorides; for the genus was monotypic, and they did not then
give specific names to monotypes.2 Nevertheless, in genera of
several species generico-specific binaries quite like Aster Atticus as
to form were very frequent with Theophrastus; though he applied
them to species and to varieties indiscriminately,3 as the subjoined
Latin versions of some of his binary names will show:

Salix alba Triticum agrigentinum

Salix helix Triticum africum

Salix nigra Triticum assyricum

Papaver rhceas Triticum egyptium

Papaver nigrum Triticum siculum.

Papaver corniculatum Triticum thracium.

Origanum album Olea domestica.

Origanum nigrum Olea silvestris.

Origanum creticum Phlomis alba.

Origanum heracleoticum Phlomis nigra.

Ecology. Among forecastings of method with Theophrastus,
that of the natural associations of plants in particular places is
very definitely presented. That which we have learned to desig-
nate as the ecologic he accepts as being a very natural kind of
grouping. "All are distinguishable as either terrestrial or aquatic,
just as we also primarily distinguish animals; for there are some

1 E. S. Burgess, Memoirs of Torre y Club, vol. x, (1902), pp. 57 et seq.

2 Sixteenth-century botanical scholars knew this well. Cesalpino wrote
the name always as one word, Asteratticus, or else Asteracticus.

3 It was the usage of nearly all authors down to and including Tournefort
in the year 1 700. A binary name meant either a genus, a species or a variety.

126 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

plants which grow nowhere but in the sea; small ones in our sea
(i. e., the Mediterranean), larger ones in the Red Sea. Others
affect only marshes or other very wet places. Some can not live
in very wet ground, but restrict themselves to dry ground. Certain
others are littoral only. A few trees thrive in either moist land
or dry; such are the myrtle, alder, and willow. " 1 In another place,
having wild trees and the diversity of them under consideration,
he affirms that they differ according to the different nature of the
localities in which they grow. "There are lands that are over-
flowed by water, there are marshes, and there is dry ground ; there
are rocky places and smooth pasture lands and harder soils, besides
other diversities. There are depressions in the landscape where
all is tranquil, and there are elevated and wind-swept exposures;
which varied conditions tend to the production of many different
things." Hereupon follows a considerable catalogue of trees
which in Macedonia he says occur nowhere but in the mountain
districts: fir, wild pine, spruce, holly, linden, hornbeam, beech,
box, arbutus, juniper, yew, wild fig, alaternus, phillyrea, walnut,
chestnut and holly-leaved oak. Then there is given a list of such
as are common to mountains and lowlands: tamarix, elm, poplar,
willow, cornel, alder, oak (Q. robur), wild pear, wild apple, privet,
hop-hornbeam, ash, hawthorn. As to these denizens of both high-
land and plain he says that ' ' in general they are of larger dimensions
and more comely form on the plains, but of better timber and
better fruit in the mountains. To this rule the wild pear and
wild apple are exceptions, both being of better timber and better
quality of fruit on the lowlands ; for in the mountains the trees are
gnarled and thorny. Even as to the peculiarly montane sorts
of trees, those inhabiting the lower valleys are both the largest
and the most copious; and on the highest summits everything is
in its most stunted condition, excepting such as by nature require
the cold."3

Reminding ourselves of this, that Theophrastus treats mainly
of field and garden plants, giving much less space to the unculti-
vated, it becomes particularly noteworthy that in one place eight
successive chapters are given up to locating and describing aquatic
and other hydrophilous growths ; 4 all of them, of course, wild plants.
Without any formality of naming the distinctions, yet in practice

1 Hist.,' Book i, ch. 7.

2 Ibid., iii, ch. 3.

3 Ibid., iii, ch. 4.

4 Ibid., iv, chs. 7-14.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 127

he distinguishes (i) marine aquatics, (2) marine littoral plants,
(3) plants that grow in deep fresh waters, (4) plants of shallow
lake shores, (5) those affecting the wet banks of streams and rivers,
(6) and those of marshes. His marine herbaceous plants are mostly
algae. The submerged trees, resembling in mode of growth and
branching oaks, fig-trees, the palm, and the vine, and attributed
to the Red Sea, are mostly corals; organisms that were still con-
sidered to be plants, denominated lithophytes, until within the last
two hundred years. The author, in describing the marine oak,
marine fig-tree, etc., is careful to inform his readers that their
resemblances to the trees of the land are only those of mode branch-
ing; that they are smaller than their terrene analogues and have
no leaves. In stagnant fresh waters several cubits deep thrive
nelumbo, nymphaea and trapa. Along the shores, in shallow
water are reeds, rushes, the papyrus, sparganium, and typha.
The banks of running streams suit the poplar, alder, and willow,
the roots of which only are laved by the flowing waters. In wet
sandy soil not far from streams thrives the cyperus with nut -like
edible roots.

That ecology should have formed a sort of taxonomic basis for
Theophrastus in his treating of wild plants was most natural.
Such pronouncedly hydrophilous growths as reeds and rushes,
coarse sedges and the largest grasses, phragmites and arundo,
besides typha and sparganium — all are at agreement not only
ecologically but in many respects also morphologically. They
all have upright, smooth, and simple stems, filled with pith when
young, some of them hollow when mature, but none ever woody-
solidified; their foliage long, narrow, entire, never with any trace
of the network of veins. Moreover, every one of the group was
what would have been called flowerless, by all save Theophrastus and
his students; because they had no flower-leaves. Other aquatics,
such as nelumbo and the water-lilies, colocasia and sagittaria, were
like the rest structurally except as to foliage, the leaves being large
and ample, rounded rather than narrow-elongated, with radiating
veins if any, and some of them with large flowers made up of showy
leaves. The Greek, I say, might have written such a diagnosis of
his aquatics as a group viewed morphologically. That he saw these
marks none will doubt who reads his descriptions of the species.

In the vegetation of the mountains he again lists the trees that
grow on the exposed and sunward slopes, and those that flourish
nowhere but upon cold northward declivities, and such as inhabit
only the frigid summits.

128 SMITHSOXIAX MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Dendrology. Almost an undue proportion of Theophrastus'
space is given to the consideration of trees. He appears to have
been a great lover of them ; and his knowledge of them is presented
with so much system that at least a considerable dendrological
paragraph becomes a necessity if one is to convey any adequate
notion of his botanical work as a whole. He classifies them (i) as
cultivated and wild. This is one of his general divisions of all
kinds of plants ; one that has already been sufficiently discussed in
another place. Trees are (2) deciduous or evergreen. Their
diversity as to tenure of foliage is so thoroughly discussed, and
withal so judiciously, that the more than two millenniums that have
passed seem to have recorded but few and unimportant additions
or amendments to the principles of this chapter as he left it. 1 Ad-
hering to his classification of all things as cultivated and wild, he
gives two lists of trees that are evergreen; the olive, palm, sweet
bay, myrtle, the cypress, and our pine among the domesticated;
for the wild, the fir and spruce, wild pine, certain kinds of oak,
holly, box, and the arbutus tree. The last, he says, sheds the
foliage from its lowest branches, while the head of the tree remains
evergreen. This distinction of evergreen and deciduous he regards
upon the whole as quite natural and valid, despite reports he has
heard, and readily accepts as probably true, that in the warmest
climates grape vines and fig trees shed their leaves so tardily as to
seem almost evergreen. He has observed that, among perfectly
familiar species, some regularly divest themselves of all foliage
in earliest autumn, others later, while a few habitually retain it
until winter has begun. He can therefore credit those who assert
the existence, in other lands, of kinds that do not cast their old
leaves until near the time of the development of the new in spring.
He has even found out that the most strictly evergreen develop
one new set of leaves, and as invariably lose one old set, every
year. Upon deciduous trees and shrubs he seems to have kept
phenologic records. He relates that certain kinds come into leaf
early, others late; also that such as are first in leaf in the spring
are not the first to shed their foliage in autumn, and it is equally
established, that those latest in leaf do not retain them longer than
others. He has likewise learned that trees in a moist climate and
soil retain their foliage for the longest period, while deciduous
things of a dry soil and poor shed their leaves earliest of all; and
finally, that a young tree keeps its foliage until a later date than
does an old one. The foliage of evergreens is usually narrower

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 15.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE I2Q

than that of deciduous trees, is of a firmer texture, and in a much
greater proportion of species is fragrant or aromatic.

In respect to their modes of branching, trees are (3) regular or
irregular. If at any time before having studied Theophrastus
I had been asked who first taught the distinction between the ex-
current and deliquescent in the forms of trees, I should have attrib-
uted it by guess to some dendrologist of about the middle of the
nineteenth century whom I could not name. Therefore nothing
that I have come upon in this author of antiquity has more sur-
prised me than his lucid setting forth of these two modes of tree
dsvelopment. The differences seem to have forced themselves upon
his notice while studying the fir tree. At least, he gives fir as the
best type of what we call the excrescent; and the oak is his ex-
ample of the other mode as to branching. The distinction (4) of
flowering and fiowerless in trees did not imply the recognition of
such as in modern botany are called cryptogamous. It was but
a matter of the author's success or failure to find what he would
have allowed to pass for flowers. And the classifying them as
(5) fructiferous and sterile is not at all the equivalent of the flower-
ing and flowerless division. There is one kind of sterility that is
manifestly accidental only ; a consequence of something unfavorable
in the environment. The palm is sterile in Greece; yet if trans-
planted to Babylon from Greece, it becomes as fruitful as the
Babylonian.1 Peach trees are sterile in Egypt. The wild sorbus
of Greece, transplanted from its mountain habitat to the fervid
low country, though flowering copiously in the new situation,
never fruits there. The reason is plain to him. Its nature re-
quires the cold climate of the mountains. But when he alludes
to the black poplar of the island of Crete as sterile when introduced
on the mainland, one may suspect that to have been owing to the
possible circumstance of only male trees having been brought
over. I do not think Theophrastus ever suspected the fact of
dicecism in any plant or tree, however often we may find him
speaking of them as male and female. Of this I have more to
say in another place. Again individual trees according to their
species have (6) certain of their branches fructiferous, certain
others always sterile.2 He has observed that some, like the vine
and the fig tree yield fruit on no branches but the newest, those
of the season; that almond, apple, pear trees, and many more
fructify upon no other branches than those that are one year old;

1 Hist., Book ii, ch. 3.

2 Ibid., i, ch. 23.

130 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

some like the carob (Ceratonia Siliqua, Linn.) produce their fruits
both upon those of this season and the season before, with also
a few at the same time upon old and thick branches. Some kinds
are fruitful on none but their topmost branches; others are fruit-
less at summit, and only fruitful on lateral branches. Another
distinction is that of (7) the location of fruits in respect to foliage.
Some trees bear their fruits beneath the leaves; on others it is
borne above them; while in some, like the sycamore fig tree (Ficus
Sycomorus, Linn.), >it grows down on the naked trunk.1 From
our point of view this is a useless distinction ; but not so with Theo-
phrastus, who seems to have been unable to attribute to the foliage
of trees any more important function than that of a protection
to the young and growing fruit or seed.

Trees are extensively treated of (8) as to their ecology and
geographic distribution. There are trees peculiar to mountain
districts, and others confined to lowlands and plains. As of the
former habitat he names the fir, wild pine, spruce, holly, box,
walnut, chestnut, and many more. A still greater number of
different kinds are of the plains only; among them are one of the
elms, the ash, maple, alder, willow, poplar. A few kinds are common
to mountain and plain.2 Among the montane some, like the wild
pine, luxuriate on slopes that look southward, and will hardly grow
at all in any other places, while the fir, on the contrary, attains
perfection on the cool and shady sides, and if ever seen elsewhere,
has an inferior growth and is unlike itself. The tallest and largest
firs known occur in a deep valley in Arcadia where they say the
sun never shines. He notes it as a general rule that the kinds of
tree affecting shady and cool places are tall and straight, their trunks
not forking or parting into subsidiary trunk-like branches ; but that
arboreal growths of this latter description are those of open and
sunny places. Certain trees are wont to grow nowhere but along
watercourses ; and certain others belong exclusively to the highest
elevations of the mountains near perpetual snow.

It is evident that in those coniferous and hardwood trees belong-
ing to cold northward slopes of southern mountains Theophrastus
sees a sort of fringe, so to speak, of the great almost unknown regions
of Europe northward; for what reports have been brought from
that direction indicate that there, even the lower lands are clad
with forests of fir, pine, oak, chestnut, and others known at the
South only on the mountains; and he thinks it may be reasonable

1 Hist., Book i, ch. i.

2 Ibid., iii, ch. 4; also iv, ch. i.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 131

to infer that the whole North has no other silva than that thus
indicated. He has not been able to learn that it has kinds of
trees peculiarly its own. 1 Southward, however, across the Mediter-
ranean, and away up the Nile, are very different kinds of trees;
many that can not be successfully transplanted from that dry
and heated climate into regions where the/e are rains and cold
weather at the winter season. There, in some localities where it
never rains, the palms attain their greatest dimensions and their
best quality of fruit; not, however as indicating that they have no
need of moisture. On the contrary, wherever a grove of wild
palms occurs water is sure to be found at no great distance below
the surface of the ground, though it is usually subsaline, a circum-
stance which, he says, has taught the cultivators to use a little
salt with advantage in growing dates in other than their native
soil.2 In Phoenicia and in Syria there are various kinds of palm;
because these like other trees differ according to differences of
region and climate as well as according to the culture given them.
The palms as a group interest him deeply ; they are in many ways
so very unlike other trees, in their best known type bearing every
thing — leaves, flowers, fruits — in a single terminal tuft, the cau-
dex being without a branch. Now, with Aristotle, father of
biologic investigation, and with those of his school, there was
much and serious inquiry into the question of a soul, and some
particular seat of life in plants. The latter was hard to locate;
so many are the trees which, as susceptible of propagation by mere
cuttings, thereby proclaim it that their seat of life is everywhere,
so to speak. But these palms were different. Cut off the leafy and
fructiferous summit of the tree and the whole is killed, just as one
kills an animal by decapitation.3 He was near thinking that in
this kind of tree that one terminal part is the seat of life; but he
knows of a smaller palm, native to the islands of Sicily and Crete
(Cham&rops humilis), which, if the top be removed, or if even
the whole tree be cut down to the ground, renews itself by shoots
from the root. He has grown from seed the few kinds of palms
available at Athens, knows all about their germination and early
stages of development; finds no distinction of bark, wood, and pith
in the structure of their trunks;4 recogni7,es in them the only

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 6.

2 Ibid., li, ch. 8.

3 Theophrastus had heard that at Babylon there were palms of some sort
the top of which could be made to root and grow again. Hist., Book ii, ch. 2 .

* Ibid., i, ch. 9.

(32 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

plants of which he dares to say that they exist in the two sexes,
a male that flowers and is fruitless, and a female thit is Powerless
but bears fruit 1 ; but a special seat of the vegetal soul, or life,
evades him even here. That he admits trees into the alliance
of the palms on vegetative characters alone, when the fruits are
not in the least date-like, is seen in two instances. One such is
so described as to have convinced some authorities that what he
had in view must have been the cocoa-nut palm of the farther
Indies ; but it is now no longer doubted that it is the Hyphcrne cor-
iacea, and not Cocos nucifera. He also knew, and well described the
type of the Cycadacese, Cycas circinalis, as a kind of palm.

Theophrastus, like an ancient Humboldt, or Grisebach, takes
pleasure in making comparisons between certain of those trees
of arid northern Africa and certain others of southern Europe
with which all his readers are well acquainted. There is the persea,
as he calls it (Cordia Myxa, Linn.), which in some ways suggests
to him the pear tree, a large and very handsome tree, in its mode
of branching, its foliage, flower, and fruit externally resembling
the pear; but it is evergreen and ripens fruit at all seasons, the
fruit however possessing a nut at its core like that of a prune, etc.2
There are other Egyptian trees so unlike any known to his un-
travelled countrymen that he can not contrast them with any
familiar kinds ; but the competent botanist of t'o-day will recognize
the genera and species of some of them by his descriptions. About
Memphis are trees frightfully armed with thorns in every part
except the trunk. It; is the arid subtropic region of several gum-
bearing acacias and their allies. He attributes to all of them the
leguminous fruit, napno? e AAo/Jo,, says the pods are gathered
and employed as a substitute for galls in tanning leather, and also
used medicinally. One kind he calls white thorn (Acacia Senegal,
Willd.). To this he attributes flowers beautiful and fragrant,
so that they make garlands of them. Another he denominates
black thorn (Acacia Arabica, Linn.). Quantities of gum are gath-
ered from this kind. It exudes from the trunk where incisions have
been made, or even spontaneously without incision of the bark.
In the vicinity of Thebes there are extensive forests of these trees,
and that far away from the river, where they are never irrigated.
Such pen pictures of foreign dendrologic scenes are not rare in
Theophrastus; and they are always so vividly drawn that the
reader inevitably thinks of him as writing from the very midst

1 Hist., Book i, ch. 22; also Book ii, ch. 8.

2 Ibid., iv, ch. 2.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 133

of the things he is describing, whereas it is quite certain he is only
compiling from travellers and historians. To this picture of
Egyptian dendrology he will add yet another member of this same
alliance of trees, and this the most remarkable one. Forbiddingly
spinescent or thorny like the others, it has a more delicate foliage,
like that of a fern. Whenever a branch of this tree is disturbed
by a touch, all the leaves upon it seem very suddenly to wither
away and collapse; then after a little time they revive and return
to their former condition. This quaint description of what has
been called sensitive foliage is probably the oldest extant. The
species that was described by Theophrastus is doubtless Mimosa
polyacantha. These and as many more kinds of tree and shrub
he mentions by name and short description as "peculiar to that
region."

In succeeding chapters he dwells at some length upon the ligneous
growths of the Arabian deserts, where it rains no oftener than once
in four or five years, and trees are scarce and all of them spinescent 1 ;
and describes the varied and often luxuriant silva of the more
distant Indies.2 It is to be remembered here that Theophrastus
was contemporary with Alexander the Great, whose expedition
to the farther Orient was the first of its kind in all history to in-
clude among its officials learned men whose duty it was to write
up the geography, climatology, and even the zoology and botany
of the regions traversed; an enlightened thought of Alexander's,
beyond doubt suggested by his boyhood's illustrious tutor, Aristotle ,
father of all nature study.3 To the manuscripts brought back
by this scientific staff of Alexander, Theophrastus was indebted
for all that he knew of the farther Oriental plant ecology and
geography; and all that remains of those reports is what the phi-
losopher quoted from them. The originals were long since lost.
In these chapters of Theophrastus we have the earliest, and very
interesting and faithful accounts of the banyan tree (Ficus Ben-
galensis, Linn.), citron (Citrus medica, Risso), the cactus-like
euphorbia (E. antiquorum, Linn.), the oleander (Nerium Oleander,
Linn.), the tamarind (Tamarindus Indica, Linn.), a tree which they
reported to possess the singular faculty of folding up closely its
pinnated leaflets at nightfall and going to sleep for the night;

Book iv, ch. 8.

2 Ibid., ch. 5.

' See Bretzl, Botanische Forschung des Alexander zuges; also an excellent
abstract of the same by Dr. F. Fedde inAbhandl. des Bot. Verein Branden-
burg for 1903, pp. 97-109.

134 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. $4

the earliest record in botany of the phenomenon now known as
nyctotropism.

The Historic*. Plantarum is not without its chapters on the
diseases of trees, and the influences of the seasons upon them1 ;
the proper seasons of the year for felling timber of different kinds2 ;
qualities and special uses of wood of different trees3; but space
must not here be given to comment on these economic aspects of
the subject. A more philosophic interest attaches to questions of
longevity in trees.

Under the caption of duration (9) he records a number of curious
facts, and discusses briefly a question that may arise in reckoning
the age of certain trees. He certifies that it is common with
orchardists and vine growers of his time to renew, as it were, an
old and moribund tree by cutting it down near the ground, and
then training up in its place one of the new shoots that are thrown
up from the base of the stump. How, he asks, is the duration of
the tree upon this spot to be estimated? Do the old and new tree
constitute two individuals or only one? If the main trunk be
essentially the tree, then the new trunk is that of a new individual;
and he adds that the very roots of the original tree perish, event-
ually, and that the new one now has none other than its own.4
Yet individual grape vines the continual growing and fruiting of
which during two centuries is perfectly authenticated have in this
way been renewed by the cultivator's art, several times over
within the two centuries. He finds it a prevalent opinion in the
rural districts that all wildwood trees are long-lived and all the
domesticated of short duration. This the philosopher does not
think well grounded. It is true only in a very general way, and
with many exceptions. Some kinds of forest trees live very long,
others do not ; and the same may be said of the domesticated, though
these, upon the whole, have a shorter period. And, universally,
those that fruit copiously have a shorter time of life than the
unprolific ; also the kinds of wild trees that affect low and wet land
are shorter-lived than those occupying dry and barren ground.
Even sweet-fruited and aromatic trees live longer than the sour-
fruited kinds, he has observed. On the reputed great ages of
certain individual trees still living in his day as well as carefully
preserved and religiously venerated — such as the olive tree at

1 Hist., Book iv, chs. 16, 17.

* Ibid., Book v, ch. i.

J Ibid., chs. 2, 3, 4, 5.

4 Ibid., Book iv, ch. 14; De Causis, Book ii, ch. 15.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 135

Athens said to have been planted by Hercules, and the Caphian
and the Delphic planes, both believed to have been planted by
Agamemnon — he is somewhat incredulous. The traditions as to
their origin have come down by some who also wrote fables. It
might be well to investigate. He thinks it quite certain that olive
trees and planes, as well as many other kinds, live a very long time.
Beyond this platitude he will not go; but it is manifest that he is
not in sympathy with the mind of the credulous multitude as to
the extreme age of this or that individual and historic tree. He
was rather skeptical on the subject, and probably would not have
believed it possible that northward in Europe far beyond the
Mediterranean oaks sometimes lived through ten or a dozen cen-
turies ; nor that on another and unknown side of the world there were
conifers1 of considerable dimensions then living which would be flour-
ishing still, after the passing of twenty-two or three hundred years.

Transmutation. In this twentieth century of our era there are
farmers in the world, and not unintelligent, who believe that to
some seed of wheat or barley after it has been sown in the field
something may happen by which it comes to sprout and grow up
into a plant of what they call chess, or cheat; a plant known to
botanists as Bromus secalinus; this name itself now apparently
destined to perpetuate forever that old opinion — older than his-
tory, no doubt — that a grain of barley, secale, may become the
parent of a plant of chess.

The seemingly indicative facts upon which this transmutation
theory appears as if it might have established itself in the minds
of prehistoric grain growers were several. Neither chess nor
darnel grew commonly elsewhere than in the low wet parts of
grain fields. In these spots only very few, depauperate, and almost
infertile were the stalks of wheat or barley, though the seed of one
or the other had been sown there copiously. The explanation which
a very primeval and elementary philosophy could offer was, that
the grains of wheat, debilitated to the verge of decay by unusual
cold and dampness, became unable to generate a better plant than
the small-grained and worthless chess, or cheat, as the farmers
still call it. Even Nature herself had taught them with what ease
she can, and how every year she actually does effect more mar-
vellous transformations, at least in the animal kingdom. The
fish-like creatures that swim about in pond and pool in the spring

1 The conifers were favorite subjects of study with Theophrastus ; and if
some of our Sequoias are rightly estimated to be twenty-five centuries old,
they were not small trees in our philosopher's time.

136 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

months, they had seen come forth in summer, changed to such
things as frog and toad. In their simple life, lived very much out
of doors, the observingpand intelligent had taken note of how under-
ground grub and tree caterpillar by and by assume a larval state,
rest in that for months together, and then suddenly are born again,
the one as beetle, the other as butterfly. In his environment, the
primeval nature student would not doubt the easy possibility, or
the apparently strong probability, of some kind of sudden trans-
formation in the world of plants; and the well-known frequent ap-
pearing of chess in wet ground instead of wheat where only wheat
had been planted might be evidence enough of such transmutation.

That the supreme philosopher of antiquity, the father of animal
biology, who knew so nearly everything about metamorphosis in
lower animals, also must have investigated the case of the sup-
posed transmutations of plants, appears most probable. For
this department of botanical history it may be thought partic-
ularly unfortunate that Aristotle's botanical writings have not
survived.

Theophrastus does not formally and didactically discuss this
question, though he makes a number of references to this changing
of one plant into another as something universally believed in his
day. I shall reproduce a number of them.

Recording in one place the usages of his time as to the different
seasons of the year and the several methods of sowing cereals, as
well as giving a long list of leguminous plants that he names, he
concludes the chapter with a remark like this : " None of the
above are liable, on account of a bad condition of the seeds, to
change into other plants except wheat and barley, which people
say may change into darnel (lolium) ; more particularly wheat,
and this being said to occur as the result of wet weather, and in
muddy places of the fields."1 In the same connection he records
it that "Some think flax also changes into darnel." Quotations
like these read much as if the author had been unwilling to take
the responsibility of either affirming or denying the proposition.
"People say" that such metamorphoses occur. But in another
paragraph, one relating to different kinds of wheat as imported into
Greece from other parts, he affirms that from Pontus, from Egypt,
and from the island of Sicily grain-growers of his time obtain seed
wheat which matures crops free from lolium; though that from
Sicily comes up infested by a different weed called melampyrum,

1 Hist., Book viii, ch. 6.

2 Ibid., ch. 7.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 137

i. e., black wheat.1 In this report about certain of the imported
seed wheat as immune from changeability into lolium, one almost
reads between Theophrastus' lines that he regarded the absence
from or presence of darnel in wheat fields to be due to the absence
or presence of darnel seed in the seed wheat at its sowing. There
is another passage in which the philosopher by implication seems
to question the wheat-darnel metamorphosis. With the ancient
husbandmen as with the modern it was usual to sow wheat either
in autumn or in spring. Theophrastus records this, and also
says that lolium always germinates in the autumn. He has
investigated the case, and gives some points of diagnosis by which
young plants of lolium may be distinguished from young plants
of wheat.2 This autumnal germination and winter growing of the
lolium almost forces upon the thoughtful reader the inference
that if lolium occur in a field of wheat that was sown in spring,
it was already up and growing at the time the wheat was sown.
But there is one phase of this popularly credited metamorphosis
doctrine of which Theophrastus is so impatient that he openly
denies it. "Some say that barley changes to wheat sometimes,
and wheat to barley, and that in the same field. Such statements
are to be received as fables. Changes of that kind would be without
a cause. It is diversity of condition that induces change."

However skeptical Theophrastus may have been about all such
pretended metamorphoses, he had doubtless the usual prudential
reason for declining to assail them openly at every mention of
them. The belief in them was universal; and the time for the
elimination of such belief from even thoughtful minds was yet far
distant. We find it persisting with men of intellectual attainments
as late as the seventeenth century; at which time Scaliger, a most
learned commentator on Theophrastus, avers that he himself has
witnessed the transformation of wheat into barley and inti-
mates that the Greek might have done better than to discredit
the phenomenon.4

If it was the metamorphosis attending the development of the
individual reptile, and the insect, which helped to elevate to the
dignity of a quasi-rational belief the superstition about the change-
ability of wheat into lolium, it must be allowed that the reasoning
was not very cogent. The cases are not parallel. One is that
of the changes in an individual between youth and maturity. In

« Melampyrum arvense, ace. to Sprengel, Hist. Rei Herb., vol. i, p. 96.
2 Hist., Book i, ch. 7. 3 Hist., Book ii, ch. 3.

* See Stapel's edition of Theophrastus (1644), p. 78.

138 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

the other it is the seed of one species which, ".between the sowing of
it and the germination, mysteriously changes to that of another
species.

There is, however, a phase of transformation in plant life that
runs parallel to the metamorphoses of lower animals. This has
become generally known only recently, and by means of the com-
pound microscope as applied to the making out of the life histories
of ferns, liverworts, and other flowerless plants of lower organization.
As illustrated in these plants, this kind of individual metamor-
phosis could never have become known to the nature students
of antiquity, or even to those of the earlier modern epoch, owing
to their lack of the necessary optical aids. But somewhat analo-
gous metamorphoses take place in the individual life histories of
certain higher plants, even of trees; and this fact is not so com-
monly known as it ought to be. In the family of the Mimosaceae
there is a considerable list of trees which only in the state of seed-
lings of a few years old exhibit the usual delicate fern-like doubly
pinnated foliage of their family. Before the trees are old enough
to flower they have divested themselves of every trace of that
kind of leaf and are clothed instead with very narrow, simple,
entire, firm and almost leathery organs, in cut somewhat recalling
willow leaves, or perhaps better compared to those of mistletoe.
Now it will not be in the least to the discredit of a circle of ex-
perienced and quite skilful botanical amateurs of the Northern
Hemisphere if, placing before them two branches of such an acacia,
one from the ferny-leaved young tree, the other from the mature
tree with its stiff phyllodes like mistletoe leaves, and stating that
these two branches represent one and the same species of Australian
acacia, the whole circle of them suspect at first that I may be
jesting. Some of the Australian eucalyptus species undergo as
complete a metamorphosis in the individual, with this difference
that the adult tree, at least in the earlier stage of maturity, ex-
hibits both phases of branch and foliage ; the lower and flowerless
portion of the head of the tree seeming to represent one genus, the
middle and upper branches — those that have the flowers and
fruits — seeming as if they must be those of another genus, or even
of another family. It is quite as if the tree at a point just below
midway of its axis, had become by grafting from that point upwards
a tree of another genus.

Of \hese changeable acacias and eucalypts the ancient Greeks
of course knew nothing; but they were familiar with a similar case,
that of what is known in very modern botany as Hedera Helix,

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 139

the English ivy. This, as they well understood, is most commonly
seen as a trailing or climbing shrub, the stems rooting everywhere,
all the foliage leathery, of angular outline and dark green. In this
phase the plant may pass the whole of its existence and remain
flowerless. Occasionally, when very old and having climbed by
wall or tree trunk to sunlight and upper air, a new thing happens.
Out of the summit of this dark-green creeping ivy mass an upright
bush appears; its branches not rooting, firm, independent, bearing
leaves not leathery in texture, not in the least degree angled, and
even of a decidedly light green; and this bush up at the top of the
ivy will in course of time bear flowers and fruits. The ancients
before Theophrastus had no difficulty in explaining this phe-
nomenon. Their firm belief in all sorts of transmutations as taking
place in nature saved them any perplexity. They held these two
phases of the ivy to be generically distinct, and had their fully
established names for the two genera: Helix for the rooting and
climbing plant of dark angular foliage, Cissus for the upright bush
of the pale thin ovate leaves, that into which the Helix sometimes
in old age transformed itself.

| Again Theophrastus fails to be satisfied with the popular
philosophy, and suggests one that he thinks more rational. If
every plant of Helix under the right conditions and with fair
opportunity would develop a Cissus bush at summit in maturity
or old age, which he says some agree to as being probable, then
he would be of the opinion that the distinction between the two
is not a generic one, but only a matter of the age of the individual.1
He who has taken note of this philosopher's way of advancing his
most revolutionary propositions with urbane reserve will under-
stand him as here pronouncing against the time-honored doctrine
of a generic change from Helix to Cissus, and as averring that these
are but the young and the old phases of one species. It was the
inductive philosopher, the scientific botanist, undermining as it
were by stealth an ancient botanical superstition, because he had
a truly scientific proposition to put in place of it. In this instance
Theophrastus was, as usual, far in advance of his own time. For
centuries after him men still held to the bigeneric ivy. I should
confidently expect to find this pre-Theophrastan view surviving
still among the peasantry of some parts of Europe where Hedera
Helix is common and well known.

Living in the midst of a time when a thousand superstitions
prevailed everywhere concerning plants, their origin, magic powers,

1 Hist., Book iii, ch. 18.

140 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

and their often grotesque metamorphoses, it is greatly to the credit
of Theophrastus that he should have risked something of his own
popularity as a teacher and author by expressing, even covertly,
some of his own doubts and disbeliefs; even as to some, the truth
of which seemed so probable that the belief in them is not yet in
our time obsolete.

Recapitulation. Certain opinions that are completely groundless
respecting Theophrastus' merits as a botanist, opinions quite
opposite to any that had ever before been expressed, and such as
no man who had read three chapters of that author could have
entertained, have been widely disseminated during the last thirty
years. One such statement of opinion is before me and reads
thus: " Greek authors built their views of the philosophy of botany
on very weak foundations; scarcely a plant was known to them
exactly in all its parts; they derived much of their knowledge
from the accounts of others, often from dealers in herbs. From
this scanty material, and from various popular superstitions had
Aristotle formed his views on the nature of plants; and if Theo-
phrastus possessed more experimental knowledge, he still saw facts
in the light of his master's philosophical doctrines."1 Such
reckless writing as that, betraying innocency not only of Theo-
phrastus' work, but also of that high opinion of it which had
been expressed by most accomplished botanists of the eighteenth
century and the nineteenth, has been widely read by botanists -of
the present generation. In view of this, it seems more than de-
sirable that there be presented briefly and synoptically something
like an enumeration of those items, or elements, of universal
botany of which Theophrastus appears to have been the discoverer
and first promulgator.

In this recapitulation I shall employ a few modern terms, such
as petal, corolla, and andrcecium, unknown to ancient Greek
botany, that I may thereby both more clearly and more briefly
express the fact of the Greek's having recognized, though under
other names, the things themselves.

1. He distinguished the external organs of plants, naming and
discussing them in regular sequence from root to fruit ; the natural-
ness of which sequence was afterwards pointedly denied; but in
modern botany it stands everywhere approved.

2. He classified such organs as (a) permanent, and (b) transient;
a division of them which may yet be shown more scientific than the
modern distinguishing of them as (a) vegetative, and (b) reproductive.

1 Julius Von Sachs, History of Botany, English edition, p. 16.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 141

3. The existence of aerial roots, as being of the nature of roots,
and thus different from tendrils and other prehensile organs, was
discovered by him and has never since been disputed.

4. He remarked upon the inconsistency of retaining in the
category of roots certain enlarged, solidified, jointed, and otherwise
peculiar underground parts ; a suggestion which lay unheeded during
two thousand years of botanical history, and has only recently led
to the open recognition of the category of subterranean stems.

5. He recognized, by differences of size, solidity, and other par-
ticulars of structure, three classes of stems : the trunk, stalk, and culm.

6. By never speaking of calyx and corolla as peculiar and
separate organs, but always referring to their parts as leaves
merely, it is evident he regarded the flower but as a metamorphosed
leafy branch ; to which forgotten Theophrastan philosophy of the
flower1 neither Goethe nor Linnaeus had but returned, when each
supposed himself the discoverer of a new anthogeny.

7. He divided the plant world into the two subkingdoms of the
flowering and the flowerless.

8. The subkingdom of the flowering he again saw to be made
up of plants leafy-flowered and capillary-flowered; really the dis-
tinction between the petaliferous and the apetalous; one the deep
import of which was first realized and taken advantage of by the
systematists of some two centuries ago.

9. He indicated the still more important differences of the hypo-
gynous, perigynous, and epigynous insertion of corolla and andrce-
cium.

10. He distinguished between the centripetal and centrifugal in
inflorescences.

11. He was first to use the term fruit in the technical sense.
as applying to every form and phase of seed encasement, seed
included; and gave to carpology the term pericarp.

12. He- classified all seed plants as (a) angiospermous and (6)
gymnospermous .

13. Respecting the texture and duration of their parts he
classified all plants as tree, shrub, half-shrub, and herb; also noted
that herbs were of perennial, biennial, or annual duration.

14. He indicated with clearness several of those differences
in the structure of stems, leaves, and seeds by which the botany of
later times separates plants monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous.

15. He described the differences between the excrescent and
deliquescent in tree development.

1 Reaffirmed and somewhat improved by Cesalpino in the year 1583.

142 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

1 6. He knew how the annual rings in the stems or trunks of
certain woody growths were formed.

17. Theophrastus, with natural vision unaided by so much as
the simplest lens, and without having seen a vegetable cell, yet
distinguished clearly between parenchyma£ous and prosenchym-
atous tissues; even correctly relating the distribution of each
to the fabrics of pith, bark, wood, leaves, flowers, and fruits.

This list of facts botanical which Theophrastus saw, and in
the main discovered, is not complete, but it embraces well-nigh
all the first rudiments of what even to-day is universal scientific
botany. It illustrates superabundantly the fact that Theophrastus,
and no man of any later time, is the father of the science as we now
have and hold it. And in the light of the above partial recapitu-
lation of his discoveries, what possible remark could be more inane
than this? "If Theophrastus possessed more experimental know-
ledge [than Aristotle], he still saw facts in the light of his master's
philosophical doctrines. " When a man has firmly laid the foun-
dations of a science, and then has added the suggestions of almost
the whole superstructure, what faintest shade of pertinency can
there be in asking what his philosophic doctrines were ? As reason-
ably might one leave any scientific work, alive with new facts,
quite unexamined because its author's philosophy was that of a
school unpopular, or his creed unorthodox.

The most generous interpretation of the words quoted would
seem to be, that their author, having no knowledge of Theophrastus,
thought to absolve himself from the task of acquiring it by trusting
that the Greek would never again be found worth studying.

To me it seems not improbable that historians of the future,
learning to know this great founder's mind better than it is yet
known, may agree in some judgment not unlike this: that all that
has been added' to the understanding of plant life and form — to
morphology, anatomy, physiology, perhaps even to taxonomy —
within the last three centuries has been due to the inventions of
the opticians, and to the increased number of students and inves-
tigators, rather than to the appearing on the botanical horizon,
within the modern period, of any one mind in powers of observa-
tion, penetration, and sagacity superior to Theophrastus of Eresus.

Plumier (1703) sought to commemorate Theophrastus in a newly
discovered genus of West Indian shrubs, yet was so inconsiderate
as to name the genus ERESIA. This Linnatus (1740) changed to
THEOPHRASTA.

CHAPTER III
GREEKS AND ROMANS AFTER THEOPHRASTUS

LEAVING Theophrastus, and going forth in search of the next
landmark in the progress of our science, we seem at once to enter
an almost boundless pathless waste. Or, as the outlook has been
described by another: "If history be a connected succession
of events, botany from Theophrastus forward to the sixteenth cen-
tury has no history. Only isolated pieces of information, like
bits of wreck half buried up and down stretches of seaside sand
are left. These are connected with certain names; but, beyond
that, are hardly of historic import. Of written monuments of real
botany in the Greek language after Theophrastus there remains
not one. For the small volume of Nicolaus Damascenus, known
to us only by a translation into barbarous Latin, perhaps might,
and possibly might not, have been reckoned such a monument."1

What is here understood is, that a great multitude of scattered
fragments, together with several completed pieces of writing about
plants that, out of the literature of antiquity, have been preserved
do not afford material for the history of botany for so much as one
only of the ten centuries that next succeeded the times of Aristotle
and Theophrastus; and that this is true partly for the reason that
the pieces and the fragments that have reached us are from men
who were not botanists after the order of Theophrastus, but
writers on medical, agricultural, and horticultural botany.

That the whole number of Greeks who wrote of plants in one way
or another was very great there is evidence enough. As many
as three hundred and fifty years ago the learned botanist, zoologist,
and bibliographer, Conrad Gesner, gave out a printed list of more
than one hundred names of Greeks who, in his day, were known
to have written more or less botany.2 Of ancient Latin authors of
botanical works similar to those of the Greeks in kind, the same

1 Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, i, 202.

2 This in one of the several valuable papers that are prefatory to Hierony-
mus Tragus' De Stirpium Historia, 1552.

144 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

distinguished bibliographer enumerates ten or twelve; but does
not seem to have quite finished that catalogue. As considerable
a number of Arabian medical botanists of a less ancient period
is also given.

The best of those botanical fragments, gathered in as it were
from the wreck of ages, were what really inspired the first begin-
nings of modern botany in the sixteenth century. From the time
of the establishment of universities and better schools of medicine
in the middle ages, the best text-books of pharmacy were those of
the ancients, Hippocrates, Nicander, Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen,
and as many more less celebrated than they. The remedies in
use were almost wholly vegetable, as were also the poisons and their
antidotes ; and the old authors' books were the topics lectured on in
every school, and their plant descriptions were trusted to for the
correct identification of plants alimentary, medicinal, and poisonous.
And so, not even from the simplest outline of botanical history
may all mention of the old Greek, Roman, and Arabian agricultural,
horticultural, and medical botanists be omitted. We are not indeed
able to construct out of their literary remains' a botanical history
of their period; but we know that they became at last, and inci-
dentally, the inspirers of a new epoch which dawned upon botany
a thousand years or so after the last of their line was dead. Sketches
of the life and work of a few of them, and only such as came after
Theophrastus, will here find place.

NICANDER OF COLOPHON. — This Greek grammarian and poet
flourished in the second century before the Christian era; was
native of a small village, Claros, close by Colophon in Ionia, and
was anciently known as the Colophonian Nicander by way of
distinction from others of the name of Nicander. He was of great
renown as a poet, and his topics were mostly such as invite to
the consideration of the living things of field, forest, and wilderness.
Evidently Nicander was a naturalist, also learned in pharmacy and
toxicology, and chose to express himself in poetic measure. That
which may have been his most elaborate work has been lost, that
is, the Georgica, a versified treatise of agriculture praised by
Cicero,1 and extensively quoted by Athenaeus,2 whose quotations
are all that remain of the poem. Among these remnants, there is
a long passage on flowers and other ornamental plants, an account
of the Egyptian nelumbo, a dissertation on poisonous fungi — the
earliest on record — and even another on the cultivation of edible

1 Cicero, De Oratore, Book i.

3 Athenaeus flourished some three centuries after Nicander.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 145

mushrooms, besides many things relating to various other food
plants. 1

The only works of Nicander that have reached our time are two
poems, under the somewhat lugubrious titles Alexipharmica, a
treatise on poisons in general and their antidotes, and Theriaca,
on poisonous animals. The first of these, according to Meyer,2
who appears to have read both of them carefully, is of 630 verses,
and has under discussion 21 different poisons, of which 2 are mineral,
8 animal, and n vegetable products; and the remedies for them are
with hardly an exception vegetable. The account of the symptoms
of different poisonings is said to be both true to modern experience
and vividly drawn, but the plants themselves, whether poisonous
or antidotal, are hardly more than named, never described, and the
book as a whole is devoid of matter properly botanical.

In the Theriaca, a more extensive work of 958 verses, botany,
as well as zoology, fares somewhat better. After a preliminary
statement of means of frightening away poisonous animals or
keeping them aloof, together with certain precautions to be ob-
served by such as sleep out of doors at night, there follow some
descriptions of certain more common and dangerous kinds which
are often drawn with remarkable exactitude and faithfulness to
nature. And here again, the bites and stings of these have always
their remedies in certain plants, of which also in most cases only
the names are given, though sometimes a few hints are given as to
how the plant may be identified. The three particular plants,
centaurea, aristolochia, and trifolium, are together efficacious
against every poisonous animal's bite or sting. The identity of
Nicander's centaurion is uncertain. It may have been Hypericum
olympicum, but that of Theophrastus, whom Nicander often quotes,
is Ferula opopanax more probably. The aristolochia is that of
modern botany, the species either A. rotunda or A. longa or both.
The only trifolium known to the Greeks was our Psoralea bitumi-
nosa. In the two poems thus adverted to Meyer counted the names
of 1 2 5 different plants. 3

Sprengel gives a list of some thirty species of Nicandrian plants
which, though not in all cases identifiable with certainty, seem
to have been first mentioned by this writer. 4

Adanson in 1763, resolving to dedicate a genus of plants to

1 Haller, Bibliotheca Botanica, vol. i, p. 54.

2 Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. i, p. 247.
i Ibid., 248.

4 Sprengel, Hist., vol. i, p. 129.

146 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Nicander, doubly distinguished himself in so doing; for NICANDRA
not only commemorates a worthy name in old Greek plant lore,
but the type that was to bear the name was with an exquisite
sense of fitness chosen from out the family of the nightshades.

MARCUS PORCIUS CATO (B. c. 235-150). — An illustrious Roman
of vigorous mind and great originality, serving the public in the
most exalted and responsible offices with great acceptance, affluent
as to means, he lead a life of great simplicity, temperance, and
frugality, delighting in nothing else so much as the training of his
children in virtue, and cultivating flowers and fruits. Practically
a philosopher indeed himself, Cato held in abhorrence the philoso-
phies of the Greeks, was strongly averse to the introduction of Greek
art and Greek customs into Rome, apprehending the destruction
thereby of Roman valor and simplicity, and recalling his son from
the study of Greek. Later in life Cato must have fallen captive
to the charms of Greek erudition; for he himself mastered the
language, and on a visit to Athens addressed a concourse of the
people in their own tongue ; and it is observed that his own writings
have quotations from Greek authors.

The literary monument that immortalizes Cato the Censor is his
De Re Rustica, a treatise on farming, gardening, fruit growing
etc. It is the oldest book of its kind in Latin literature, and therefore
is of botanical interest. We learn from its pages that almost every
method of propagating choice varieties in use with twentieth-century
pomologists and vineyardists was practised by Cato long before the
beginning of our era, even to the different modes of grafting; and
there is no intimation that any of those methods were other than
ancient at that time. The number of named varieties of things
which they had and were careful. to perpetuate is also sufficiently
interesting to merit such exemplification as I here subjoin, culled
from Cato's book:

Brassica crispa Myrtus alba.

Brassica erratica Myrtus nigra

Brassica lenis Myrtus conjugalis.

Brassica laevis Ficus marisca.

Olea albiceris Ficus Africana.

Olea Colminiana Ficus Herculana.

Olea conditiva Ficus hiberna.

Olea Liciniana Ficus Saguntina.

Olea Salentina Ficus Telana atra.

Olea Sergiana Vitis aminea majuscula.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 147

Pirus Aniciana Vitis aminea minuscula.

Pirus cucurbitina Vitis Apiciana.

Pirus mustea Vitis gemina.

Pirus sementiva Vitis helvola.

Pirus Tarentina Vitis helvola minuscula.

Pirus volena Vitis Lucana.

Vitis Murgentina.

All this would pass readily for good twentieth-century botanical
nomenclature ; but these names are easily two-and-twenty centuries
old.

No fewer than five genera dedicated to Cato have been proposed,
by as many different botanical authors, each apparently unaware
of the attempts of the others. The CATONIA of Patrick Browne
(1756) has priority.

MARCUS TERENTIUS VARRO (B. c. 117-27). — In so far as the
mastery of human learning gives distinction, Rome had in Varro
the most distinguished personage of all whose names adorn the
pages of her ancient history. One Symmachus, who lived four
centuries later, and whose letters are extant, wrote to a friend:
"You know the writings of Terentius, not the comedian, but the
Reatine, the father of Roman learning." r This Terentius was
sometimes called the Reatine in allusion to his birthplace, which
was the small village of Reate — now Rieti — some ten miles north
of Rome. The family was plebeian, but there had been gifted scions
of it before this one, and there were others after him. A century
before him there had been a consul Caius Terentius Varro, chosen
by the tribunes of the people for the reason that he was of the
common people.2

Concerning the childhood, youth, and even the early manhood
of Varro, and under what conditions the passion for learning was
developed, nothing seems to have been recorded; and we seem to
obtain our first certain view of him as in the public service under
Pompey in the war against Mithridates; but he is then fifty years
of age. Also at seventy he is still a naval commander. Being
a man of great wealth, owning extensive landed possessions in
several provinces, and having acquired so costly a thing as a great
library was at that time, the fact of his having devoted his energies
to the military service of the Pompeys and Caesars for so long a
period has not seemed easy to account for. In these chances of
war certain of his richest estates were confiscated, and his library

> Quoted by Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. i, p. 356.
a Livy, vol. xxii, chs. 34, 35.

148 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

was plundered, this event entailing the loss of not a few of his
own writings. And all the while his own tastes and preferences were
for the life of quiet study, with rural avocations for his pastime.

Varro was more than seventy years of age when Julius Caesar,
returning to Rome as the great victor, recognized him as the most
learned man of his time, and charged him with the work of collecting
and arranging a great library; a noble scheme which Caesar's
assassination a year or two later brought to naught. After that,
under the triumvirate of Antony, Augustus, and Lepidus,
Varro's name was placed on the list of the proscribed; but by help
of his friend Calinus, who concealed him in his own villa, his life
was saved until this storm was past. The remainder of his life
was given undisturbedly to literary work. His industry as an
author has made Varro a wonder to succeeding generations. He
wrote long treatises on Antiquities, a History of Literature, another
of Philosophy, another of primitive Rome, a History of Religion,
a volume on Education, a Latin Grammar, a book on Navigation,
and unnumbered other treatises, all, or nearly all, long since lost,
though referred to by many contemporaries. His treatise on
Agriculture, in three books, almost alone of all his writings, has
survived. He tells us in the first chapter of the work that he
begins the writing of it in his eightieth year. It is replete with
learning of all kinds, and is still a practical treatise ; yet also evincing
the author's familiarity with those Greek authors who, like Aris-
totle and Theophrastus, wrote on the theories of plant life and form.

As compared with Cato, the list of Varro's cultivated plants is
not as long, and he does not enumerate as many varieties of Brassica,
Pirus, Myrtus, and other genera. The choice varieties of cultivated
cherries, long known in Pontus, Varro adds to the list of Roman
fruits.

He is first among Roman authors to take note of certain phenom-
ena of plant life, such as the growth and development of leaves
and flowers, and also certain movements. The leaves of the
olive, white poplar, and willow, whitened underneath, are apt to
become inverted so as to show the lower face, and this at about
midsummer, which phenomenon they take for a sign of the arrival
of the solstice. The flowers of heliotrope follow the course of the
sun from morning until nightfall; and there are other kindred
observations, with even a hint that there is a physiology of such
things that it might be interesting to know something of. In
a passage on cattle raising one of Varro's interlocutors is represented
as saying: "The thing is so, but why it is so, that is your affair, you

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 149

who read Aristotle."1 By such tokens is Varro more a botanist
than Cato. True, he has derived every one of these ideas from the
Greeks, not one of the observations being original with himself;
but it was something to have been first to call the attention of
Romans to them.

Patrick Browne (1756) sought to establish a genus VARRONIA.
It seems that the name is untenable; the same genus having been
named Cordia more than a half century earlier.

PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS MARC (B. c. 71-19). — Virgil, who has often
been designated the prince of Latin poets, was born at Andes, a
small village near Mantua, some seventy years before the beginning
of the Christian era. His early years were passed at Cremona,
where his father had valuable landed possessions. These were
among the lands which, after the battle of Philippi, Augustus
Caesar confiscated, distributing them to his veteran soldiery.
On this occasion the future poet was near losing his life through
attempting to dispute with the soldiers, the possession of his
fields. He escaped by swimming across a river, and then
Virgil with his father repaired to Rome. It was .the beginning
of his greatness. His presence, manners, and accomplishments
recommended the young man to the great Mascenas, the power
behind the throne of Augustus, and the latter soon restored
to Virgil his lands; and the emperor's reward for this kindness
was the ten pastoral poems (Bucolica) composed in the course of
the next three years, and dedicated to the imperial benefactor.
After these followed the Georgica, accounted the most perfect
and finished of all Latin compositions.

The simple narrative of the poet's career at Rome, and elsewhere
until his rather early death, is one of the most fascinating and
beautiful chapters in all history, but for several reasons must not
here be presented anew.

The Georgics, by which Virgil is even more favorably if less
universally known than by his unfinished epic, the ALneid, treat
of agriculture and gardening; but also again one must refrain
from anything like a botanical analysis of the poems. It may
suffice to indicate how prolific a field for botanical research the
poems of Virgil long have been. The following list of works on the
Virgilian botany is doubtless incomplete.

(i) Virgilii Georgicorum Libri IV. The Georgics of Virgil.
With an English translation and notes by J. Martyn. London,
1741, 4to.

1 Varro, De Re Rustica, Book ii, ch. 5.

150 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

(2) Virgilii Bucolicorum Eclogce X. The Bucolics of Virgil.
With an English translation and notes, by J. Martyn. London,
1749, 4to.

John Martyn was a physician, and Professor of Botany at
Cambridge, the friend of Sherard, Sloane, and Dillenius, and was
the first to establish the fact of this poet's profound knowledge of
plants. Both the works named were in so great demand among
men of erudition as to have been several times reissued, and in
octavo form. A German translation of Martyn's edition of the
Georgica was published at Hamburg in 1759. 1

(3) Flora Virgiliana. Eller forsok at utreta de waxter som
utforas i P. Virgilii Maronis Eclogae, Georgica och Aeneides. Jamte
Bihang om Romanes Matwaxter, by Anders Johan Retzius. Lund,
1809, 8vo.

(4) Flore de Virgile. Composu pour la collection des Classiques
Latins, by A. L. Fe"e. 1822; also again in 1837.

(5) Osservationi sulla Flora Virgiliana, by M. Tenore. Napoli,
1826.

Although Virgil was by profession a man of letters and a poet,
he nevertheless exceeds the other agricultural writers of Roman
antiquity in the number of different plants which he knows, and
of which he makes mention; for Cato (B. c. 235-149) knew 125
kinds, Varro (B.C. 117-27) mentions 107, Virgil (B.C. 70-19) 164.
Yet the sum total of the plants of these Romans, 245, is only
about half the number that had been known by Theophrastus
some 300 years earlier.

The celebrated Lamarck (1793) dedicated to Virgil a new genus
of African trees under the name VIRGILIA.

Lucius JUNIUS MODERATUS CoLUMELLA. — This very celebrated
Latin writer on agriculture and horticulture nourished in the
next generation after Virgil, during the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
and may have been in the midst of his years at the opening of the
Christian era. He was a native of Cadiz in Spain, and was educated
by his father, whom he characterizes as having been a man of
erudition and also an experienced practical farmer. 2 The son
declares himself to have been what one would now call an omnivo-
rous reader, and before settling in Rome had travelled somewhat
widely in Greece and Syria.

Columella is the most voluminous of all the classic Roman
authors on rural topics. There are thirteen books, and these

» Haller, Bibl. Bot., vol. i, p. 68.

2 Columella, De Re Rustica, Book ii, ch. 16.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 151

aggregate some two hundred and sixty chapters, mostly long ones,
and if none of the chapters are very strictly botanical, the whole
work is a treasury of information about ancient husbandry, and
the treatment of cultivated plants and trees. From him we have
the earliest account of the device called a hot -bed, heated from
beneath by a mass of fermenting manure, and protected from the
rigors of winter weather by panes of glass. He reports that by
these means Tiberius Caesar raised cucumbers all the year around. i

To Columella we are again indebted for a complete account of the
methods of grafting as practised by the ancients.2

Sprengel has given a considerable list of plants and trees that are
first brought to notice by this author.3

Near the end of the eighteenth century two distinguished botan-
ists almost simultaneously bethought themselves of the propriety
of consecrating a genus to Columella. The COLUMELLIA of Ruiz
and Pavon (1794) appears to have the priority.

PEDANIOS DIOSCORIDES (about A. D. 64). — If to have written
the most practically serviceable book of botany that the world
of learning knew of during sixteen centuries were the best title
to botanical greatness, to Dioscorides would readily be conceded
the absolute supremacy over all other botanists, not only of antiquity
but of all time. Concerning the duration and the absoluteness of his
supremacy Sprengel has the following : ' ' During more than sixteen
centuries he was looked up to as the sole authority, so that every-
thing botanical began with him. Every one who undertook the
study of botany, or the identification of medicines swore by his
words. Even as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century
both the academic and the private study of botany may almost
be said to have begun and ended with the text of Dioscorides."4

Almost volumes have been written in controversy as to the
time when Dioscorides lived; though the extremes of opinion do
not assign him an earlier date than B. c. 30, or a later than A. D.
98 5 ; and the most probable seems to be that which locates him
in about the middle of the first century of our era. That he lived
in the time of Nero is inferred almost to a certainty from remarks
of Tacitus and of Galen. 6

1 De Re Rustica, Book xi, ch. 3.

1 Ibid., iii, ch. n.

1 Hist. Rei Herb., i, 149-151.

« Ibid., p. 151.

s Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, ii, 96-100.

« Sprengel, Hist. Rei Herb.t i, 152.

152 SMITHSONIAN' MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Though in relation to this author biographic dates fail us,
the land of his nativity does not. It is well established that
he was a Cilician Greek, his native city being Anazarbos; for in
order to distinguish between him and others named Dioscorides,
eminent writers referred to him as Dioscorides Anazarbaeus, the
Anazarbean Dioscorides. It is clear also from his own writings
that he was a learned physician and practised medicine; also that
he had travelled widely to study plants, and obtain knowledge
of other than vegetal remedial agents. In these travels he came
to know many plants before unknown to Greek and Roman physi-
cians, and was at the pains of describing many such; that is, of
indicating not only their qualities and remedial effects, but also
something of their aspects and morphology as living plants ; describ-
ing their roots, stems, foliage, and even sometimes their flowers;
and the number of plants and plant products of which he gives
account is about 600. Such a list of merely medicinal and alimentary
plants is by more than 100 greater than the sum of all plants
known to Theophrastus three centuries before Dioscorides. And
it was because he had described so many, and often so well, that
in after ages he came to be regarded as the supreme botanist.
The usefulness of his medical botany, from the phytographic point
of view, was not only fully realized, but also enthusiastically
somewhat overestimated. The scientific botanist among the
Greeks was Theophrastus ; and there is no comparison between him
and Dioscorides, whose theme was medical botany; but, quite as
usual, the man of "applied science" was the one to meet with
general appreciation and approval.

So highly esteemed was Dioscorides during the middle ages, that
early after the invention of printing, his work, though in Greek,
obtained an editor and a publisher at Venice as early as the year
I499-1 This edition must have obtained a ready sale, for in 1518
it was repeated. A third Greek edition appeared at Basle in 1529.2

Latin being the universal language of the schools, Latin versions
of Dioscorides were in demand, and early became rather numerous.
The very first of these, a book rare and obscure, purports to bear the
date I478,3 thus antedating the first Greek prints. But from the
year 1516, when the first excellent translation by Ruellius appeared,
Latin versions became numerous ; and for a whole century thereafter
the most voluminous and most useful books of botany were in the

1 See Pritzel, Thesaurus, 2d ed., p. 84.

» Ibid.

3 Said to bear the name of Petrus Paduanensis; see Pritzel, ad ed., p. 85.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 153

form of commentaries on Dioscorides. Such in large part are the
works of Anguillara, Matthiolus, Maranta, Dodonaeus, Cesalpinus,
Fabius Columna, and the Bauhins. In several of these the annota-
tions and comments quite exceed in bulk the Dioscoridean text, and
are replete with new botany; that is, they contain the names and
descriptions of many plants which the commentators are con-
vinced Dioscorides did not know, and which they therefore judge
to be new. One may fairly say that the greater part of all the new
botanical matter published during the whole of the sixteenth
century, and a part of the seventeenth, came out in the form of
annotations upon the text of Dioscorides. Thus it appears that
the Greek, who only meant to provide medical students with a full
compend of remedies, and of the marks by which to know them,1
became incidentally the first master of phytography ; the one every
line of whose plant descriptions has been more attentively studied
word by word, and that by a greater number of erudite men than
any other book about plants that has yet been written ; unless one
should possibly be obliged to make an exception of Bauhin's Pinax.
But even that is, first of all, a compend of Theophrastan and Diosco-
ridean phytography, together with such augmentations and im-
provements as in the year 1623 were found necessary.

Latin editions of Dioscorides are too numerous to be given a
reckoning; and almost the same may be said as to early translations
of him into modern tongues; for between the years 1555 and 1752
there were at least twelve Spanish editions, as great a number in
Italian, and there were editions in French in 1553, 1559, and 1580.
There was one translation into German as early as 1546, another
in 1610, and this last appears to have been issued again in 1614. i

Little in the way of botanical taxonomy will be looked for in a
work on pharmacy that is nearly nineteen centuries old. The
most comprehensive of his groups are formed according to properties ;
thus his Book I is devoted to the consideration of plants that are
of merely aromatic rather than medicinal qualities; growths that
furnish oily, gummy, or resinous products, such as enter into the
composition of salves and ointments; and after these follow the
trees that yield fleshy fruits of grateful though not specifically
aromatic flavors. Book II, beginning with animals, and animal
products that are of dietetic and medicinal use, ends with the
cereals, the leguminous, malvaceous, cruciferous, and other garden
herbs. Then Books III and IV deal with a vast number of plants
more distinctively medicinal.

1 Pritzel, Thesaurus, 2<d ed., pp. 86, 87.

154 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

It is to be observed that he does not treat first of herbs consecu-
tively, then of shrubs, then of trees. That would have been the
formal adopting of a piece of regular taxonomy even in his day,
as we have seen, already long established. There are merely
spicy things that are trees, others that are shrubs, and some that
are herbaceous; and the same is true of things alimentary and of
things medicinal. This qualitative classifying is better suited to
his purpose. But that even the more strictly botanical taxonomy
may now and then gain a point by ignoring herb, shrub, and tree as
fundamental divisions, comes out interestingly in Dioscorides'
chapter on Sambucus. 1 He has two species, one of which is only
an herb, the other woody and almost a tree. We shall see later
that, after the revival of botany, at a comparatively modern
period, such a hold had been gained by the old distinction between
the herbaceous and woody that in deference to it systematists
almost with one accord divided Dioscorides' Sambucus into two
genera and separated them widely, Sambucus being located among
the trees, and Ebulus among the herbs; and that hardly after
Bauhin as late as 16232 had followed Dioscorides in writing them
as one genus was the botanical world of that time ready to accede
to a proposition so subversive of what was deemed fundamental in
taxonomy, i.e., that a tree and an herb could not be congeneric.

Subordinately to the more general and qualitatively outlined
divisions of the work, Dioscorides recognizes all the more familiar
natural families of plants; that is to say, within each Book there
is a line of labiate genera, another of the leguminous, another of the
umbelliferous, and the succession of cognates is not often interrupted
by the intrusion of a genus not of such natural alliance. Even
among the composites Anthemis, Parthenium, and Cotula are in
close conjunction on his pages, as are Anchusa, Lycopsis, and
Echium; and the succession of the representatives of five or six
genera of solanaceous plants is only broken by the intrusion of
Cardiospermum. Examples of this need not be multiplied. It
is propagating fable in place of history to affirm that natural families
were first recognized and indicated by any Linnaeus, or Adanson,
or Jussieu of the eighteenth century.

The whole subject of Dioscorides as a taxonomist merits a fuller
development. A thorough study of his text might show that
classification had progressed somewhat during those three centuries
that had then elapsed since Theophrastus.

» Diosc., Book iv, ch. 155.

J C. Bauhin, Pinax, pp. 455, 456.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY —GREENE 155

The services of this next to the last of great Greek physicians to
botany are well commemorated in that fine generic type DIOSCOREA
dedicated by Plumier in the year 1703.

CAIUS PLINIUS SECUNDUS (A.D. 23-79). — Two venerable cities
of Italy contend for the honor of having been his birthplace,
namely Como and Verona. But wherever he was born, the elder
Pliny lived in Rome and called himself a Roman. He is known
as Pliny the elder, to distinguish him from a nephew of his who
bore the .same name, and is also an author of some note. But
the elder Pliny is one of the remarkable men, and among the most
voluminous authors, of ancient times. His character, his manner
of life, and his rather early martyrdom to knowledge, were written
of after his death, by his nephew and namesake in a letter to a
friend :

"I rejoice exceedingly that thou readest so eagerly my uncle's
books, that thou wishest to obtain a complete set of them, and
makest inquiry concerning all of them. I will serve you in the
capacity of an Index, and shall even indicate to you the order in
which they were written; for to know that is a matter of interest
to the learned. Spearcasts of the Cavalry. One Book. He wrote
this while in command of a company of cavalry, where his leader-
ship was marked equally by courage and prudence. The Life of
Pomponius. Two Books; a tribute to the memory of his best
friend. Twenty Books Of the German Wars, embracing a full
account of all our wars with the Germans. He undertook this
work while in military service in Germany, and it was suggested
to him in a dream. Three Books of The Student, so comprehensive
as to fill six volumes, wherein the aspirant to oratory is advised
and directed from the cradle forward. Eight Books on Hesitancies
in Public Address. These were written under Nero, when anything
like bold or unrestrained writing was unsafe. Thirty-one Books
supplementing the (historic) Work of Aufidius Bassus. Thirty-
seven Books of Natural History; a work as comprehensive,
learned, and many-sided as nature itself. Thou wilt wonder how
a man of so many business affairs could bring to completion so
many volumes, and on such difficult subjects. You will be still
more surprised to learn that for a long time he was a busy lawyer,
that he died in his fifty-sixth year, that he had been much occupied
with the duties of the most responsible public offices, and that his
time had also been heavily taxed by the exactions of the friendship
of princes. The explanation is, that he was of the keenest intelli-
gence, and his economy of time something almost beyond belief,

156 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

even to the reducing of his hours of sleep to the shortest limit. In
the winter, he was accustomed to work until between one or two
o'clock in the morning, or at the shortest until midnight. He could
fall asleep at once, no matter at what hour; sometimes even at
work he wrould fall asleep for a few moments and awake again.
Before the break of day he would go to the Emperor Vespasian
— for he too used to work at night — to receive his orders or to
fulfil some commission. Returning home he would study until
breakfast time. After a light breakfast, if it was summer, and
he had a little leisure, he would lie down in the sun and have
a book read to him, taking notes and extracts; for he read
nothing without making some excerpts, being accustomed to
say that no book was so bad as not to contain something useful.
After sunset he would usually take a bath, then recreate and sleep
a little. After that, as if another day had dawned, he studied
again until dinner time. Even at this principal meal a book was
read, and comments written, and this without interrupting the
reading. I remember that once upon a time one of his friends pres-
ent checked the reader, who had given a wrong inflection, and had
him read the line over again. ' But you understood the meaning
at the first reading, did you not?' my uncle interposed; to which
the other nodded assent. 'Why, then, did you call for the repeti-
tion? We have lost the time it would have taken to read ten lines,
by this interruption.' So avaricious was he of time. He arose
from the dinner table, whether while it was yet daylight in summer,
or when in winter it was after dark, always with the same prompti-
tude, as if compelled by law. This was his manner of life amid
the business and turmoil of the city. In the country the only
respite he allowed himself was that of the daily bath; and when
I say that I mean the actual time of the bath; for while the drying
and dressing was going on he was either listening or dictating.
On his journeyings, as if putting out of mind all business cares, he
did nothing else but that; keeping always close beside him a rapid
penman, a book, and a writing tablet. . . . For the same purpose
even in Rome he had himself carried from place to place in a sedan.
I remember well how once in meeting me when I was walking he
said: 'You ought not to lose these hours'; for he reckoned all
time lost that was not given to study. It was by such exertions
as these that he brought all those volumes to completion." l

We have from another letter by this same kinsman annalist — a
letter to the historian Tacitus — an account of the circumstances of

1 Pliny the younger, Book iii, Epistle 5.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 157

Pliny's untimely death.1 The facts must here be presented in brief.

In the summer of A.D. 79 Pliny had command of the Roman
fleet, then in the Tyrrhene Sea, at anchor behind what is now
known as the Punta di Miseno. On the 226. of August of that
year, at about noonday a terrific earthquake and rain of ashes
accompanied that frightful eruption of Vesuvius which buried
the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. A cloud in the shape
of a huge Italian pine, with straight trunk and horizontal branches,
seemed to arise from the crater of the volcano. Immediately, on
a small and light sailing vessel Pliny set forth in the direction
of the mountain to gain a nearer view of the phenomenon. Soon
discovering that by the dread progress of the eruption the lives
of the whole population along the mountain's base were imperilled,
and that they had no way of escape but by sea, he ordered the
larger ships to sail to the rescue, and \vent with them. At one
time, wThen a shower of stones and ashes was falling on his ship, and
the sailors were trembling in mortal terror, the commander was
seen to be quietly dictating his own observations to the amanuensis.
They made land at a point where some friend of Pliny had a country
seat. The villagers were found already provided with the means
of escape by sea, only a strong contrary wind prevented embarkation;
meanwhile the dangers of remaining on land increased with every
hour. Pliny, when nightfall came, as if to inspire courage in others,
took his bath as usual, then dined, and composed himself as for a
night's rest; but the inhabitants of the place remained awake.
Towards morning the fall of stones and ashes so increased, and
the earthquake shocks became so much more frequent, that the
people awakened Pliny, fearing the closing up of the porch on
which he had made his bed. The demolition of buildings appeared
imminent, while out of doors the stones fell still more thickly.
People bound cushions and pillows about their heads and rushed
down to the beach; but winds and waves are still high and there
is no boarding the ships. It is now daytime, but the blackness
of night is still over land and sea, interrupted only by flashes of
lightning or flames bursting forth now and then from the fissures of
the earth. The people rush to and fro in the frenzy of despair.
The fumes of sulphur threaten to suffocate them. Pliny, helped by
two slaves, arises from his couch, and falls dead.

The Historia Naturalis is Pliny's monument; no other work of
his having survived. The following outline of the contents of the
work may be useful here. Book II, Cosmology and Meteorology;

' Pliny the younger, Book vi, Epistle 16.

158 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Books III to VI, Geography; Book VII, Anthropology; Books VIII
to XI, Zoology; Books XII to XXVII, Botany, in the main agricultu-
ral, horticultural, and medical; XXVIII to XXXII, Zoology again,
but in relation to medicine; as also in connection with aquatic
animals some paragraphs on the remedial efficacy of certain
waters; Books XXXIII to XXXVII, Mineralogy, more especially
as applied to medicine, painting, plastic art. Book I of the work
is prefatory and introductory to the work as a whole.

At first thought it may seem extraordinary that so vast a work,
filling so many volumes, should have escaped the fate of many
hundreds of less voluminous things, and should have reached
modern times in its completeness. The probable explanation has
been suggested by the historian Meyer, who thinks that its very
voluminousness was its safeguard. The copying of the complete
Natural History by hand wras a large enterprise, and the manuscript
when done was very costly. Men take care of that which is worth
much money. 1 In the middle of the nineteenth century, an excellent
authority reported the existence of more than sixty manuscripts of
Pliny of greater or less antiquity. 2 Since the invention of printing
more than eighty different editions have been printed of which
number as many as eighteen appeared in the fifteenth century,
and more than forty in the sixteenth.

The high prestige held by Pliny throughout mediaeval times
was due to the fact of his having written in Latin. All the other
authors of greatest importance as to natural history had written
in Greek; and Latin was the language of the middle ages. The
work was also extensively, if not mainly, a compilation, and was
made up in large part of translations into Latin from the greater
Greeks, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Nicander, and Dioscorides, and
so had much the character of a compend of all natural history.

As a Roman among Romans, Pliny was of the utilitarian bent
of mind; even a subscriber to the dogma, then antiquated, that all
things that are upon earth are here for the sake of man; not that
he so holds it as piously to praise nature for universal benignity
or generosity; for in one of his earlier volumes he says: "If
nature appears to have produced everything for the sake of man,
still man is often obliged to pay rather dearly for her gifts ; so that
it is not so easy to decide whether she has more the character
of a benign mother than of an unkind stepmother."

' Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. ii, p. 125.
L* Julius Sillig, quoted by Meyer, Ibid.
\Pliny, Hist. Nat., Book vii, ch. i.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 159

Whatever nature may or may not be to man, it is impossible to es-
tablish any natural order and sequence of things on those utilitarian
principles ; and he who looks into Pliny's botanical volumes for any-
thing like what we understand by taxonomy will be disappointed.
Here is what a distinguished botanical systematist of the eighteenth
century said of the Roman's plant classifying: "Pliny, the inde-
fatigable compiler, published in fifteen books all that Theophrastus,
Dioscorides, and their predecessors had said about plants. But
he treats this matter in a manner so strictly historical, although
in such flowery language, that one may well say of the whole that
it is in beautiful disorder." *• True it is that Pliny begins his history
of plants with the discussion of trees. The philosophic Theo-
phrastus had done so; but it was for the reason that trees seemed
to him to claim the first place as being the most highly organized
type of plants. Pliny begins with trees because he judges
them to be, on the whole, more useful to man than herbaceous
plants. Similarly everywhere in his writings the thread of the
economic rather than the philosophic is that by which one is to
trace whatever of system there is in his treatment of plants and
plant lore.

It has been claimed by some, and disputed by others, that
Pliny was more than a compiler, and that some of the facts which
he records were from his own observation. A renewed and thorough
study of all his botanical books, with such a question foremost, is
still called for; but rather unusual accomplishments are also
demanded on the part of the investigator; those of the ripe classical
scholar and of the master botanist combined. Adanson, who if I
mistake not had for his thesis inaugural a study of Pliny, accredits
him as discoverer of the distinction between growth buds and
fruit buds in trees, and says that he named the former kind germen,
the latter gemma.2 It was a botanical discovery of high rank,
whoever first announced it ; but I should suspect it of having been
made anterior to Pliny.

As if to crown Caius Plinius Secundus with a wreath of myrtle,
Plumier (1703) dedicated to him a genus PLINIA belonging to the
family of the myrtles.

CLAUDIUS GALENUS (A.D. 130-201). — In respect to natural
endowments, wealth of information acquired by study at home
and travels abroad, and fertility of able and learned authorship,
Galen was one of the great celebrities of antiquity; as a physician

1 Michel Adanson, Families des Plantes, Preface, p. vii.
1 Adanson, Histoire de la Botanique, p. 94.

160 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

ranking above all others figuring in the early history of medicine
except Hippocrates.

Galen was a Greek, born at Pergamos in the year 131 of our era.
Ancient annalists take note of the fact that Pergamos was the seat
of the most celebrated of- temples to ^Esculapius; therefore of good
augury as the birthplace of predestined physicians. Nico, the
father of Galen, was skilled in philosophy, geometry, and astronomy,
and was an architect; also evidently interested in plant life from
the philosophic point of view, for the son reports it that Nico,
as if doubting about the transmutability of one species into another,
made some experiments with grain sowing, the result being the
removal of all doubt concerning the changeability of certain grains
into chess, or darnel.

The career of the son seems to indicate that the architect Nico
was a man of wealth ; for the child received most careful education
under the best masters at Pergamos. At the age of seventeen
years, having chosen the profession of medicine, he was sent upon
his travels, and continued them until the age of twenty-eight. He
spent several years in ^Egypt, with headquarters at Alexandria,
passing thence into Bithynia, Palestine, Thrace, Macedonia, Italy,
and the islands of Crete, Cyprus, and Lemnos, these all noted in
that early time for the wealth of drugs, and the good quality
of them, that were imported from them into all the cities of the
then known world. The high distinction to which he afterwards
attained attests the improvement made of those rare opportunities
that wealth had afforded him. One object of these prolonged
journeyings had been that of profiting intellectually by converse
with learned men, and the most noted physicians of every land.
He was reputed also to have mastered all the dialects of Greek, as
well as the Latin, Persian, and Ethiopian tongues. Also every-
where he sought the most perfect knowledge of every plant any-
where in use remedially. It was not enough that a given remedy
might be purchased from any druggist. The physician ought to
know all about the plant, even as living and in its native soil, and
thus become qualified to distinguish pharmacologically between
the false and the genuine, and to detect adulterants.

Galen's years of travel were concluded by a considerable sojourn
in ^gypt, at Alexandria, then the world's greatest center of art
and erudition; and thence he returned to his native Pergamos,
where for some years the surgical and medical care of the gladiators
was committed to him. In the year 164, when he was about
thirty-three years of age, a revolutionary disturbance in his native

LANDMARKS OF BO'TANICAL HISTORY — GREENE l6l

city was the occasion of his be aking himself to Rome. Here he
now practised medicine with distinguished success, and gave lectures
on anatomy; all this, however, to the arousing of a storm of jealousy
on the part of the native Roman physicians, to whose unrelenting
sallies, or else to a malignant outbreak of the plague, or to both
forces combined, he yielded at the end of three years and once again
returned to Pergamos. The stay there was this time short, for
the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, with his imperial brother
Lucius Verus, going to war with the Quadi, Parthians, and Marcom-
anni, desired his services as their physician on that expedition.
The plague broke out in the country of the attempted conquest,
the expedition became a failure, and the imperial majesties with
their Greek physician began a retreat to Rome. Lucius Verus,
stricken with apoplexy, died on the way, and the imperial philosopher
and Galen reached Rome in safety. Here the latter now engaged
actively and industriously in medical authorship during a number of
years, and when in the year 172 Marcus Aurelius set forth on a second
attempt to go and conquer the Marcomanni, desiring Galen to
accompany him as his physician, the latter interposed, piously,
that the god of his native city, the revered ^Esculapius, to whom he
was under solemn vows, had decreed otherwise. The excuse
availed, and gave no offence to the pious Aurelius; so that Galen
continued in Rome, as physician to Commodus, son of Marcus
Aurelius and heir to the empire, then very young. Later, and
at a date unknown, Galen returned to his native city, where he
ended his long, laborious, and most distinguished career, at the
age of 70 years, or, as some authorities say, at 90.

Some idea of Galen's industry as an author may be conveyed by
a note or two on editions of his works issued since the invention of
printing. One published at Basle in the year 1538, and containing
the Greek text only, fills five folio volumes. l An edition given
forth at Leipzig between 1821 and 1833, embracing both the Greek
text and a Latin translation, is in twenty octavo volumes.2 And
such editions do not include certain of his works the Greek originals
of which have been lost, and only the Latin versions of them have
been handed down from ear'y times; much less others which have
been lost altogether. Even in Galen's lifetime certain books of
his, kept in the Temple of Peace at Rome, were destroyed in a con-
flagration of that building and were never reproduced.

i Edited by Cossaeus, Fuchsias, and Gemusseus.

* Claudii Galeni, Opera Omnia. Editionem curavit C. G. Kuhn, Lipsiae,
Tom. i-xx. 1821-1833.

162 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

A man of as profound erudition, and of such high attainments
inr botany as the celebrated Albert Haller, conceding the supremacy
of Galen as a man of genius, and a great master of everything
relating to the healing art, seems to deny that he was anything
of a botanist, affirming that almost all his botany is borrowed
from his predecessors, and chiefly from Dioscorides.1 This criticism,
in as far as it is adverse, touches the writings of the man as a possible
contributor to botanical knowledge. It does not — or if it does it
ought not to — stand as an impeachment of his knowledge of plants.
It is incautious to pass judgment against any man's attainments
in a subject until he has at least in some way expressed himself
on that subject. To know many plants familiarly and well
is to be something very like a botanist, whether one ever write a
paragraph of botany or not. A familiar knowledge of many
plants Galen not only urged upon the whole medical profession;
he claimed that he himself possessed such knowledge. "In as
far as possible the physician ought to know all plants, and if
not all, the greater proportion, and those most useful. . . . He
who knows the different kinds in all their states from young and
small to fully grown, and can so distinguish between them, will in
many places find certain useful plants, as I have done in various
parts of Italy, where he who knows them only in the dead and dry,
would never recognize them whether in the young state or the
mature. There is no quacksalver who does not readily identify the
herbs that are imported from Crete by their fruits; but that some
of these selfsame things might be gathered on the outskirts of Rome
they do not know, because the season of their herborizings does not
correspond to that of the maturity of these plants. But that time
is well known to me, and I go in quest of Chamaepitys, Chamaedrys,
Centaurium, Hypericum, Polium, and others of that kind, at just
the right time, and gather them in their perfect maturity, neither
waiting until they are past that, and are sunburnt, nor going
too early, that is, before the fruit is well formed." It has well been
observed by one of the historians of botany, that " The man who
wrote thus must have been either a consummate charlatan, or else
a man of deep and thorough knowledge, and a charlatan Galen
was not." 2

When one reads in Galen over and again such commendations
of an intimate knowledge of many living plants, and when it is
remembered that he made long journeys by sea and land in the

* 'Ra\\er>Bibliotheca Botanica, vol. i, p. in.
2 Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. ii, p. 191.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 163

endeavor to familiarize himself with the medicinal plants of different
climes, and when one has marked the keenness of his powers of
observation everywhere, it is impossible to agree with the learned
Haller that in botany Galen was inexpert ; nor can it reasonably be
questioned that had he betaken himself to phytography, he would
have laid all botanical posterity under deep obligations to himself.
Now, that he did not describe plants, but was accustomed to give their
names only, or but little more, one might have been disposed to
charge to the fact of his having flourished in the very next century
after Dioscorides whose 600. species, embracing the whole vegetable
materia medica, may have been for the most part well identified
at Galen's period, so that the mention of a name only would suffi-
ciently recall a species. But such apology for Galen would be super-
fluous. The truth seems to be that he had next to no faith in
phytography at all. He takes openly the ground that " The identi-
fication of plants is better accomplished by the actual observation
of them under the help and guidance of a teacher, than by that
method which may be likened to the attempting to learn to navigate
the seas by studying books on navigation."1 This, then, is the
main reason why Galen almost abjured plant description.

The passage is luminous with historic information about the
study of botany in the Rome of eighteen centuries ago. We know
already that at this period the occupation of a well trained physician
is lucrative. There are many of them; therefore the candidates
for the profession are not few. The remedies in use are almost
all botanical, and they all study botany; quite otherwise, by the
way, than botany is studied in twentieth-century schools of medi-
cine, and less perfunctorily. Unless in their practice of medicine
they are to be at the mercy of the unscrupulous among herb gather-
ers and drug vendors, they must know the marks of the genuine
thing. Therefore important among their regular exercises is that
of identifying plants, the book open before them, the specimen it
may be a withered and shrunken root or rootstock, not improbably
supplemented by a fresh one newly brought in from its native soil,
or from some drug garden. The standard botanical work, descrip-
tive and pharmaceutical, is Dioscorides — its author hardly a
century dead — and there are others. The descriptions are mostly
brief and often inadequate, so that mere guesses at the identity
of things frequently pass instead of certainty, and about the
identity of some that are of remedial importance the whole fraternity
— Galen himself perhaps excepted — is wrong. At all events none

1 Galen, ed. Kiihn, vol. xi, p. 96.

164 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLLECTIONS VOL. 54

but he is so discouragingly aware of the multitude of errors that
have originated through placing dependence on descriptive botany.
He thought there was a better way; but this proposal of his seems
to imply on his part an overweening confidence in the perpetuity
of things. He did not foresee a time when the race of capable
phytognosts would fail, and when in default of such teachers
for the identifying of plants there would be no other dependence at
all but the old and often imperfect descriptions.

Men follow great leaders when the leaders are in the wrong, about
as faithfully as when in the right; and if, during several centuries
after Galen, lesser lights continued to mention plants hardly more
than by their names and remedial qualities, it was after the example
of his authority as supreme. In such manner may the most expert
man of science chance to antagonize the best interests of that
science, and heavily impede its progress along one line while advanc-
ing it in a different direction.

His indifference to phytography notwithstanding, Galen has
been credited with having made some few additions to the list of
known plants by new name, and by some sort of description.

Michel Adanson attributed the discovery and the naming of
two new genera to Galen. They are Lycopersicon 1 and Arctostaphy-
los.2 Both names are now in use for genera, but it is impossible
to identify either one with the type which Galen had in hand;
but from such description as the Greek gave out, his Arctostaphylos
would be V actinium Arctostaphylos rather than Arctostaphylos wua
ursi.

• In the year 1737 Linnasus dedicated a genus GALENIA to the
memory of Galen.

1 Adanson, Families des Plantes, vol. ii, p. 572.
J Ibid., p. 165.

CHAPTER IV

INTRODUCTORY TO THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN

FATHERS

/

THAT long course of ages intervening between the last decline
of the Roman empire and the revival of learning in the fifteenth
century is chiefly distinguished botanically by what we do not know
about it. Even the historians of botany, with hardly more than a
single exception,1 instead of making intelligent and unimpassioned
use of the scattered fragments of botanical record for the period,
have done what they could to perpetuate their own hereditary
prejudices against the whole period. 2

However, he who is in quest of landmarks chiefly will be absolved
from the task, interesting though that would be, of following the
vicissitudes of botany through the middle ages. The period has
not apparent landmarks of botanical history.

/The tenor of the German waiting of its history is, that the science
of botany was born again, as it were, in the year 1530 and in
Germany, by the publication of Otho Brunfelsius' folio entitled
Herbarum Viva I cones — Living Pictures of Herbs. The Germans
have always been and are the chief historians of botany. I pay
full tribute of acknowledgment to their supremacy in this field of
high endeavor when for the heading of this chapter I adopt what
is become their own favorite caption. All of them use it: Kurt

1 Meyer alone (Geschichte der Botanik, vols. iii and iv) has treated the
subject of botany in the middle ages with impartiality.

2 Emphatic examples of this kind of writing in the name of history are
in Sprengel's Historia Rei Herbarics, vol. i; particularly his chapter on
"Monastic Botany," pp. 222-228, and on the " Latinobarbarous Age,"
pp. 274-299; wherein even concerning the botanical volume of Albertus
Magnus he says, "Let him read it who has time to throw away"; though
Meyer, only a half-century after Sprengel, and as much an antimonachist
as he, devotes seventy serious pages of his history to the merits of this
same Albertus of the middle ages.

165

{66 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Sprengel, 1 Ernst Meyer,2 Emil Winckler,3 Julius von Sachs.4 All
of them name Brunfels, Fuchs, and Tragus (Bock) as the fathers of
the new botany of modern times.

It has been indicated in a preceding chapter of these Landmarks
that the real father of botany as a science was Theophrastus of Ere-
sus. If he is the father of the science he is the father of even
modern botany, though not of those developments of it that have
been the peculiar achievement of modern botanists. Science is
truth. The foundations of a science are its fundamental truths, and
so the foundations of a science once laid are laid forever. These
things are self evident.

We shall not be able to realize in how far the "German Fathers"
contributed to the superstructure of modern botany until we have
examined with great care and diligence their best works; and this
is something which, I shall make bold to say, not even the German
historians have been at the pains of doing; though Sprengel, first
of their lineage, did much and well in this direction, while also
leaving very much for others to accomplish. Julius von Sachs, the
latest in the line, copied Sprengel's caption " The German Fathers,"
etc., but knew next to nothing of their works, even rating as
unimportant Valerius Cordus,5 who was immeasurably the greatest
of them all.

The four now named represent two rather distinct kinds or
grades of botanical work. Brunfels and Fuchs busied themselves
almost wholly with medical botany. It is a rare thing with
either of them to mention a plant of unknown or even uncertain
medicinal or alimentary qualities; and their plant descriptions are
almost as uniformly either compiled or literally copied from authors
of centuries and even almost thousands of years before them. The
books of Tragus and of Cordus abound in new and original descrip-
tions. These demonstrate that these two men examined plants
with their own eyes, and for the love of them as plants, and that
they saw many things about the structure and the behavior of them
to which the other two men, and even all botanists before them,
had been blind.

There is another contrast. Brunfels and Fuchs, realizing the
defects of many of the ancient descriptions, sought to render the

• Historia Ret Herbaria, 2 vols., 8vo, 1807-1808.

2 Geschichte der Botanik, 4 vols., 8vo, 1854-1857.

3 Geschichte der Botanik, i vol., 8vo, 1854.

« Geschichte der Botanik vom 16 Jahrhunderl bis 1860, i vol., 8vo, 1875.

* Geschichte der Botanik, p. 31.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 167

identification of remedies more easy and certain by supplying
engravings of ths plants. This idea was very far from being
new; indeed, it was almost as old as botany. Pliny knew as many
as three Greek authors who, before the Christian era, had illustrated
their manuscripts by paintings of the plants.1 The traditions of
still others have been brought to light. In the middle ages early and
late rare manuscripts of old botanical authors illustrated by draw-
ings or paintings of plants were known and referred to. The most
noted of such ancient manuscripts, now some thirteen centuries old,
has been reproduced photographically, and in this way actually pub-
lished since the beginning of the twentieth century.2 Even forty or
fifty years before these fathers of plant iconography, there were
printed copies of the Hortus Sanitatis,3 and of its German version,
Gart der Gesundheit, illustrated by some five hundred wood engrav-
ings of plants. Doubtless the wretched character of those first
printed plant pictures, along with the fact of the great popularity of
the books containing them, were what moved Brunfels to undertake
the production of the Herbarum ^riv& Icones; and the success
of his enterprise stimulated Fuchs to inaugurate a larger one.
These two might worthily have been styled Fathers of Plant
Iconography, but to name them the German Fathers of Botany
is superlative ; for it will have to be admitted that the mere publish-
ing of plates of plants, with names of said plants and their uses,
is not in itself the setting forth of any scientific principles beyond
the few taxonomic ideas which the mere grouping of the plates
may chance to indicate. What are plant picture-books for? In
the case of the authors of them, they may be the refuge of those
who can not describe, or, with such as can describe, they are
a condescension to such as can not read; also to others who are

1 Plin., Hist. Nat., Book xxv, ch. 2; see also Meyer, Geschichte, vol. i, 250.
The names of the ancient painters were Cratevas, Dionysius, and Metrodorus.

2 A celebrated Greek manuscript of the Materia Medico, of Dioscorides,
known as the Codex Anicics Juliana, in which each plant is represented by
a painting of natural size. The manuscript dates from the sixth century
and was done at Constantinople. It has long been in the Imperial Library
at Vienna. The whole has lately been reproduced photographically. The
title page of the published work has the following:

" Dioscurides. Codex Aniciae Julianas picturis illustratus, nunc Vindo-
bonensis Med. Gr. I. photographice editus. Moderante J. Karabacek. Pre-
fati sunt A. de Premerstein, C. Wessely, J. Mantuani. Lugduni Bata-
vorum, A. W. Sijthoff, 1906."

3 For some account of these earliest specimens of printed books of popular
medicine chiefly botanical, the reader is referred to Pritzel's Thesaurus,
ad ed., pp. 364-368; also Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. iv, p. 189.

l68 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

incapable of mentally imaging a thing from the verbal description
of it. By the large picture-books of Brunfels and of Fuchs all
sorts and conditions of men, lettered and illiterate, could identify
some hundreds of useful plants ; a thing which never had happened
in the world before that day. For this they deserve only praise.
Nevertheless, had no books of botany been issued in the sixteenth
century essentially different from those of the two authors named,
it is difficult to see how botany could have progressed a single stage
within that century.

In the works of Tragus and of Valerius Cordus we have books
in character essentially different from those of the two aforenamed.
Both these were deeply interested in plants of all kinds ; were given
to examining their organs minutely and marking the behavior of
certain growths at different stages, and all this before ever having
thought of writing books thereon. Also when they betook themselves
to writing it was without any purpose of calling upon artists to
make pictures remedying the defects of their descriptions. They
were under the inspiration of a new idea in botany, namely,
that plants might be so described as to be identifiable by description.
Galen's dream about a kind of apostolic succession of living teachers,
one generation of whom should forever teach the next to know the
medicinal plants by their right names1 — all that had proven a very
idle dream. Thirteen changeful, turbulent centuries had now
passed since Galen. The succession had been obsolete a thousand
years, and the world botanical was far at sea as to the true identity
of many important plants. There must be descriptions; and they
must be better than those handed down from ancient times. I should
not venture to credit the erratic and garrulous Tragus with having
known the history of botany so well, or having planned the opening
of a new era in descriptive botany. We shall probably see, by
the perusal of his book, that what he achieved here, and it was
not a little, was but the spontaneous outcome of his admiring
curiosity about plant structures. On Cordus' part, it is un-
mistakable, there is the deliberate plan of creating a new phy-
tography. Therefore, and by a study of the men and their books,
I think we shall perceive that in the Germany of the first half of
the sixteenth century, there were two fathers of plant iconography
and two fathers of descriptive botany.

1 See page 165 preceding.

CHAPTER V
OTHO BRUNFELSIUS, 1464-1534

FIRST in point of time among the German botanical reformers of
the sixteenth century, Brunfels is also easily first in rank respecting
those educational and literary qualifications which go to the making
of what one calls a scholarly book. In this particular his one
botanical treatise, the Herbarum Vivas I cones, is peerless among
the several books of botany that appeared in middle Europe within
the first half of the sixteenth century. Others produced more
and better botany; but there are marks of a dignified and conserv-
ative erudition that are characteristically Brunfels' own.

Life. His career was a long one, at least for a consumptive,1
and was singularly varied. One need not here analyze the motive
of that countryman of Brunfels who pretended that the man's
professional life might be summed up in one sentmce like the
following: "At first a schoolmaster at Strassburg, then a physician
at Berne." 2 This would be good language in which to epitomize the
professional life of one who had been at the early outset a school-
master, after that a university graduate in medicine, and then a
practitioner. Such would be the natural interpretation of a sentence
like that quoted; and the trouble with this pretended epitome is,
that it leaves completely out of view Brunfels' occupations during
the first fifty years of his life, revealing only the last twenty;
for certain it seems to be, that when in default of other means of a
livelihood he opened at Strassburg a school for boys, he was well
past fifty years of age; also that when at the University of Basle he
won the degree of Doctor of Medicine, he was sixty-five.

In the history of botany Brunfels will hold in the future, as he
has done in the past, a somewhat distinguished place among the
notabilities belonging to his century; and we must review, as well

1 Brunfels died of consumption at Berne, Switzerland, probably at the age
of about seventy years.

a Sprengel, Hist. Rei Herb., vol. i, p. 311.

169

170 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

as at the distance of four hundred years we may, the incidents that
had to do with the moulding of the youth, and helped to establish
the character of the man.

The birthplace of Otto Brunfels was Mayence, or Mainz. The
family had taken its name from Castle Brunsfels1 not far from
Mainz where the earlier ancestry of the botanist had lived. At
Mainz, John Brunsfels, the father, was in the business of a cooper;
appears to have been in comfortable if not affluent circumstances;
was well known and much respected as a man of character and
high integrity; also, as we learn by his opposition to young Otto's
plans, a man with a will and purposes of his own; qualities inherited
by the son, as we shall see. Otto was the only son, and entertained
the thought of devoting himself to the service of the Church.
At that time Martin Luther was yet unborn and all Germany was
Catholic.2 A Catholic father of that period, if rich or well to do,
would have been a marvel of pious unworldliness, if he had been
willing that his only son should become a clergyman; for that would
mean the immediate extinction of his own branch of an ancestral
line. This father of young Otto Brunfels was resolute and persist-
ent in his opposition to the son's wish; and naturally so; and this
must have continued until the son was of legal age; for at last, hope-
less of otherwise attaining to the priesthood, he left home and
became a novice in the Carthusian monastery that was in his
native town. This he would not have been permitted to do had
he been a mere youth, unless the father had given consent.

Meyer's inference that Brunfels remained but three or four years
an inmate of the monastery 3 proceeded from several misunderstand-
ings, one of which was that the man had not been born until a little
before the year 1500. But there is now good authority for our
accepting 1464 as the year of the botanist's nativity; so that in
1500 he was already thirty-six years old. Then, since to assume
a part in the new Lutheran movement was the object of his secret
flight from the house of the Carthusians, and that movement was
hardly well under way before 1517, it becomes highly probable that
the man was fifty-three years of age when, renouncing monasticism
and giving his learning and talents to the support of Luther's
cause, he took up the sojourn at Strassburg. He betook himself

i Brunsfels, rather than Brunfels, was the family name. In some of
our author's earlier works he wrote it Brunsfelsius; but later he appears
to have changed it to Brunfelsius.

» Otto Brunfels was born in 1464, Martin Luther in 1483.

3 Geschichte der Botanik, vol. iv, p. 296.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 171

to school teaching only after his voice had failed him, so that he
could no longer preach. Here again the historian Meyer draws
an inference. It is this, that his school must have been a financial
success, because at the end of nine years at teaching he had saved
money enough to pay the expenses of his degree at the University
of Basle. Without doubting the financial success of Brunfels' school
it is next to certain that he realized a much more considerable
income from the sale of his rather voluminous Protestant theological
writings; for these included, besides learned commentaries on certain
books of Scripture, pamphlets for popular reading, and a catechism
for children. There is a long list of them in Conrad Gesner's Biblio-
theca Universalis. Altogether his two vocations of teacher and
theological author must have yielded him a very fair income
during these first nine years at Strassburg; for he was able to give
employment to the best engraver of Strassburg, Hans Weydiz
(Latinized Guiditius) , who did the engraving of the I cones, and is
a man of distinction in the history of wood engraving.

It must have been after having taken his degree in medicine,
and within two or three years from the time of his death, that
Brunfels made a journey from Strassburg to Hornbach for the
purpose of personally urging Jerome Bock (Tragus) to write a book
of botany for German readers. For the record of this visit history
is indebted to Tragus himself. In the thirteenth chapter of his
preface to the Stirpium Historia he says: 'When information
about the labors and the journeyings which I had undergone in
behalf of plants had in some way been conveyed to the most learned
Otto Brunfels of pious memory, he himself came journeying all
the way from Strassburg to Hornbach, that he might see my gardens
and collections. These things pleased him so much that from that
day forward he ceased not to exhort, as did also others by letter,
that I would reduce all this matter to order, and give it to the
German public."

Not one of even the compatriot German historians of botany, in so
far as I am aware, has set before us this evidence that it was to
Brunfels' personal influence over Tragus that the writing and
publishing of Tragus' work was due. How much botany owes to
Tragus' unusual powers of observation and description we shall
learn later; for the half of that story has never yet been told.

It is well worth noting that this visit to Tragus, with its fruitful
consequences, was the last service which Brunfels rendered to
botany. The visit must have been made as late as the year 1532;
for not until that year was Tragus settled at Hornbach; and in the

172 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

next year Brunfels, now newly-appointed physician to the city of
Berne, removed thither; where also after only a year and a half of
service he died in 1534.

After having ceased from theological authorship, and subse-
quently to his having taken a degree in medicine, Brunfels pub-
lished several medical works; but both theology and medicine
appear to have forgotten his name. In the history of botany
only is he immortal; and this because he was intensely a lover of
nature and of plants. His book gives proof of this, although the
figures are the best part of it. It was because his love of plants
could not tolerate the absurd pictures then common, that he
resolved to produce something in that line true to nature,
despite the cost; for the employing of the best artist of his time
can not have been less than very expensive to him, and there may
have been no clear prospect of any return, even of that which the
plates cost him. Indeed no one can assert that there ever was any.
But here was devotion to an ideal; a love of plants that was bent
upon procuring faithful representations of them in books. And so
a well marked epoch in the study of the plant world dates from
Brunfels and the year 1530.

To the botanical memory of this ex-Carthusian, the Franciscan
monk Charles Plumier dedicated the genus BRUNFELSIA in the year

Phytography. If by a man's phytography is meant his manner
of describing plants, that is his word-picturing of them, it cannot
be said of Brunfels that he has any; and Julius von Sachs was never
farther from writing history than when he set this man forth as
among those who "went straight to nature, and described the wild
plants growing around them." 1 Brunfels publicly disclaims all
purpose of writing verbal descriptions of any plants whatever,
and in the following terms:

" In this whole work I have no other end in view than that of
giving a prop to fallen botany; to bring back to life a science almost
extinct. And because this has seemed to me to be in no other way
possible than by thrusting aside all the old herbals, and publishing
new and really life-like engravings, and along with them accurate
descriptions extracted from ancient and trustworthy authors, I have
attempted both; using the greatest care and pains that both should
be faithfully done."2

His meaning as to phytography is plain. He will describe

1 Sachs, Geschichte der Botanik, p. 4.

* Epistle Dedicatory, to the Senate of Strassburg, second page.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 173

nothing anew. He will ignore the contents of wretched mediaeval
herbals like the Hortus Sanitatis. He will reproduce the standard
descriptions of classic Greek and Roman authors. For an example,
take his presentation of the two water lilies, the white-flowered
kind and the yellow. He figures them admirably, and, not having
a word of his own to add to that knowledge of them which has been
the common property of botanists for a thousand years and more, he
supplements the two plates by three folio pages of quotations about
them, taken from a list of eleven of the most approved botanical
authors, ancient, mediaeval, and contemporary. Here is the list:

Theophrastus Serapion

Dioscorides Simon Januensis

Plinius Rases

Apuleius Joannes Vigonius

Georgius Valla Hieronymus Herbarius

Avicenna

And what is true as to his presentation of the water lilies holds
good in the case of almost every other genus that he takes up . Rarely
does he append to such a succession of quoted paragraphs a few
remarks of his own; and these always indicated as his by the
special caption, " Sententia nostra," or " Sententia Othonis;" nor
are such original paragraphs really of the nature of descriptions.
They usually express some opinion as to the identity of the plant
in question; have reference to the correct application of a classic
plant name. As to phytography, therefore, the Brunfelsian vol-
umes are a treasury of select quotations from a long line of books
many of which are now seldom seen. But there are no new descrip-
tions in his volumes ; and it may be doubted whether upon the whole
he directly advanced the art of plant description by a syllable.

It is no impeachment of his erudition to question that he had
the ability to describe plants well. There is evidence that he had
not the faculty of mentally imaging an unknown plant from its de-
scription; and the ability to describe, and that of making effective
use of a description are twin accomp ishments, if indeed they be
not almost one and the same, so that he who has the one has also the
other. Certain it is that Brunfels read and studied here and there
a classic plant description to little purpose. Bringing together in
one chapter the classic descriptions of Aristolochia, the figures by
which he illustrates the genus are Corydalis bulbosa and C. Halleri.
So gross an error explains tself in this way. The aristolochias
were of southern Europe and not found in Germany. Here, however ,

174 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

the roots of the fumariaceous perennials, not so unlike those of the
principal aristolochia, had usurped in medicine both their place and
their name. Brunfels, though professedly reforming German
pharmacy by the correcting of just such blunders, did not detect
this one Yet the very descriptions of aristolochia which he re-
prints from Dioscorides and Pliny must have shown, had he really
read them, that these things could not be aristolochias. Other
such errors also remained undiscovered by him, and as inexcusably ;
so that when his countryman and contemporary Fuchs remarked
that in Brunfels the descriptions and the plates accompanying
them are not in all cases at agreement,1 he was passing but a gentle
criticism on his neighbor's phytographical shortcomings.

Anthology. I have met with no evidence that during the fifteen
centuries intervening between Dioscorides and Brunfels there had
been any progress made in the knowledge and understanding of
floral structures. There were several of Brunfels' younger con-
temporaries who, after the year 1530, added somewhat to anthology;
but the time was yet more than two generations distant when the
science of the flower was to become so far developed as to begin
happily to revolutionize plant classification. There is no sign in
Brunfels that such a day is near its dawning. In his attempts to
range plants in groups he is no more influenced by considerations
of floral structure than were the medical botanists of remote anti-
quity; even less so than Dioscorides, who, as we shall see, could not
abide the placement of the bilabiate-flowered dead nettles in the
same genus with real nettles, but segregated them, on account of
their two-lipped corollas, and assigned them a new generic name of
their own, and framed to express the peculiarity of their flowers.
It is possible to rate the Brunfelsian anthology as more antiquated
and imperfect than that of Dioscorides; for he of the sixteenth cen-
tury less openly recognizes as generically distinct the Galeopsis and
Lamium "nettles" and the proper Urtica2; and if he figures the
thistles, the anthemideous composites, the principal borragineous
plants, the bulk of the labiates, and some other such, each as a
group by itself, it is done without any particular reference to floral
structure, at least on Brunfels' part; for in all these instances he is
but continuing groupings which the ancients themselves had indi-
cated as being natural, and had well established.

Taxonomy. Brunfels adopts without hesitancy the ancient pri-
mary classification of growths as herbaceous and woody. When,

« Epistle Dedicatory, in Fuchsius Hist. Stirpium.
2 Herbarum Vivas Icones, vol. i, pp. 151-154.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 175

however, it comes to that apparently quite as ancient division of
the vegetal kingdom into things cultivated and things wild, he de-
liberately ignores it. His first three plates represent three most
common and homely wayside weeds, members of the genus Plantago;
and thenceforward throughout his volumes he deals much more
extensively with wild plants than with the domesticated.

Now this eliminating of the distinction referred to is not to be at-
tributed to any following of the suggestions of Hippon, who some two
thousand years before had declared plants wild and domesticated
to be all of one lineage. There is no intimation that Brunfels had
made tests, and proven out of the book of nature that this old-time
grouping must be abandoned. The thought had come to him
solely as a deduction from theological premises. The polytheistic
ancients had held that the different alliances of cultivated plants
and trees were each the creation of some beneficent particular
divinity; and that the less useful or the altogether useless had
hardly been created at all. The theology which Brunfels accepted,
and, as a profession, taught, was monotheistic. One Divinity had
made all the plants that are — the wayside weeds, the homely remedial
herbs, as well as the beautiful things of the field, the garden, and
the orchard. Such doctrine of the equality of all plants as to one
divine origin finds expression in the last one of Brunfels' several
prefaces, which contains a prayer, after which one reads his apology
for giving to those common, lowly, and weedy things, the plantains,
the foremost place in his system of botany. ' They are the very
commonest of plants," he says, " and are known to everybody; and
being both lowly and also singularly useful, they are most apt to
recall to mind the thought of God, whose way it is to work wonders
through means that are usually accounted insignificant, passing by
such as make more display, and which men therefore hold in more
esteem." l This is even showing a preference for wild growths be-
fore those that have undergone domestication ; a kind of preference
that has been felt by the great majority of philosophic botanists
from Brunfels' time to ours; and by virtue of his being the first
propagandist of this new idea he sets up another landmark in the
history of botany.

This idea of the equal genetic dignity of all plants seems to have
come to Brunfels as a deduction from a theologic principle, rather
than inductively from the study of nature; but whence he derived
it signifies nothing to the disparagement of the idea itself; especially
now, after all the world has come to concede its truthfulness. But

1 Herbarwn Vivae Icones, vol. i, p. 22.

176 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

it was not at once approved in Brunfels' time. There were learned
men among his contemporaries who were at first startled by, and
then made light of his having brought forward some of the most
plebeian and beggarly roadside pe'sts, and introduced them as
upon an equality into the company of the nobler growths of the
fields and meadows, and of the vegetable and drug gardens. Among
the more serious faults that his contemporary Fuchsius found with
Brunfels' work, one was 'That he sometimes takes for subjects
the most common weeds." l

By at least one other item of his method, over and above this
of ignoring the old distinction between things as domesticated and
wild, does Brunfels commend himself as a believer in some kind
of a natural classification. He declines to adopt anything like an
alphabetic sequence of genera; a kind of arrangement which was
adhered to by several of his noted botanical contemporaries, as
we shall see. He prefers freedom to express, if but tacitly, some
ideas of a more rational grouping, such as the alphabetic succession
of names almost wholly precludes; and, with the medical botanist,
that arrangement may be most convenient, if not even in a sense
natural, in which plants, whether alike or unlike as to morphology,
are held in juxtaposition by agreement as to what are taken to be
their medicinal virtues.

For an example of this kind of classifying carried to an extreme,
take his two genera of liverworts, Hepatica and Jecoraria. The
former is that anemoneous herb that has retained in later times
the name Hepatica; the other is the common Marchantia polymorpha,
a cryptogam. The two are figured and described on opposite pages,
and their medicinal uses are said to be the same.2 It may be noted
that each bears alike, even in our time, thecommon name of liverwort.
Before Brunfels Hepatica usually meant the plant Marchantia,
which was also called Jecoraria, and the restriction of the name
Hepatica to the genus of anemone allies, and of Jecoraria to the
lichenoid hepatic, seems to date from Brunfels, and was a distinctly
taxonomic movement on his part; as if his judgment had been
that types so very unlike morphologically ought not to be treated
of under one and the same generic name.

Because of their having been employed interchangeably in
medicine, under the common designation of Verbena, our medical
botanist figures and discusses, one next after the other, Verbena
officinalis and Senecio vulgaris.3 Ths botanist of a later time will

1 Fuchsius, Hist. Stirp. in Epistola Nuncupatoria.

2 Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. i, pp. 190, 191.

3 Ibid., pp. 119-123.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 177

see no likeness or other sign of true affinity between these; and it is
very probable that Brunfels himself realized how very distinct they
are when considered from the morphological rather than the
remedial point of view; for when he formally designated one of
them Verbena mas and the other Verbena f&mina it is beyond
question that he was purposely indicating the morphological dis-
tinctions between them; quite as he had done in assigning to those
two morphologically dissimilar liverworts each a generic name
of its own. And according to the usage of Brunfels' time, as well
as for two centuries later, binary generic names like Verbena
mascula and Verbena jcemina were thought as suitable, and were as
freely made and admitted, as those of one word only.

Of such attempted improvements in classification by appeal to
considerations of morphology, one may come to a fuller appreciation
by looking into Brunfels' way of presenting those many herbs which,
in his time, had long been reputed to be good vulneraries, and
had therefore passed under the medico-generic name of Consolida,
with which Symphytum, Sanicula, Vulneraria, and Solldago were
synonymous, each such name indicative of the property which
these plants all had, or were believed to have, of promoting the
closing-up and healing of cuts and wounds. Here is a partial
list of these plants under their mediaeval names, with their equiva-
lents in modern nomenclature:

Mediaeval Modern

Consolida major Symphytum officinale

Consolida media Ajuga reptans

Consolida minor Sanicula Europaea

Consolida petraea Coris Monspeliensis

Consolida regalis Delphinium consolida

Consolida rubea Tormentilla erecta

One thus gains an idea of how great a diversity of plants passed
with mediaeval pharmacists and physicians under the generic name
Consolida. And the list must now be given again, that the Brun-
felsian taxonomic betterment of it may as readily be seen:

Mediaeval Brunfelsian

Consolida major Consolida major

Consolida media Consolida media

Consolida minor Diapensia

Consolida petraea Symphyton petraeum

Consolida regalis Consolida regalis

Consolida rubea Tormentilla

178 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 5 4.

One observes that out of the six Consolida names, three have
been eliminated, and others brought forward to take their places.
I say brought forward; for neither Diapensia, nor Symphyton
petrceum nor Tormentilla is coined and proposed as new by Brunfels.
He picked them up every one out of the ancient and mediaeval
synonymy of the vulnerary herbs; from which also it will appear
that other men who lived and wrote botany in times long forgotten
— but the history of which times must none the less some day be
written — thought as Brunfels did, that plants totally unlike in
appearance, i.e., morphologically very different, ought to be invested
with names more than partially different, even when as to
qualities and uses they were very similar. And these group names
established upon the merely remedial virtues of things visibly
most dissimilar must have been misleading and confusing in the
extreme. It seems as if Brunfels realized this, and intended to
suggest improvement when he set aside three out of the six Consolida
genus names and wrote others in place of them. It is as if he had
thought it out, that since the different kinds of plants can only be
well distinguished and scientifically grouped through attending to
their morphology, it is not well that they should bear names
that point to their qualities rather than to their forms. Therefore,
in the interests of a more sure identification of important plants, as
well as at the same time encouraging the appeal to morphologic
marks in classifying, it would be a good thing to at least place a
check upon this multitudinous repetition of pharmaco-generic
names, the first half of which is the same for a half-dozen very
dissimilar genera.

If it be asked why he did not, while he was about it, proceed to
the suppression of as many as five out of the six Consolida genus
names — leaving perhaps one of the genera to bear the simple name
Consolida — the right answer will seem to be that Brunfels was
not of the temperament of the taxonomic revolutionist but only a
reformer, and disposed to be somewhat conservative even as a
reformer ; between which character and that of the bold iconoclastic
revolutionist there are differences.

Entirely consistent with his aversion for genera made up of
plants qualitatively alike but morphologically unlike, is Brunfels'
approval and adoption of some in which the species are qualitatively
unlike, and at agreement morphologically. Such a genus as this
is that which he fully illustrates under the classic name of
Urtica,1 which in the botany of to-day comprises only the true

» Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. i, pp. 151-157.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 179

nettles. The specific constituents of his Urtica seem to be

Urtica dioica,

Lamium maculatum,1

Galeopsis Tetrahit,

Urtica urens,

and this, too, is the order in which they succeed one another in the
book; first a real nettle, then two so-called dead nettles, the line
closing with a second true nettle; a genus composed of two nettles,
and two or three members of the very different family of the Labiatse.
And this, as intimated above, is a genus not qualitatively but
morphologically constituted; a fact easily demonstrable when
it is remembered that Brunfels had no anthology; that the flowers
of plants not only were not at all understood by him, but were
the least and the last parts of them to receive any consideration.
So long as two or three herbs were alike as to roots, stems, and
leaves, they might easily be designated by the same common, i.e.,
generic, name. Forgetting, then, all anthologic differences between
nettle and dead nettle, note how remarkably they are at agreement.
The roots in all are small, fibrous, and not deep-seated. The
stems of all are upright, almost or quite without a branch, con-
spicuously quadrangular, and the leaves they bear are opposite.
'The leaves in all are short-stalked, their blades of the same ovate
or oval outline, serrate as to their margins, and are of much the same
texture as well as form. The seeds in all — for though anciently
flowers were neglected, seeds never were — the seeds were black, and
were always clustered together in the axils of the leaves all up and
down the stem. All these quite marked characteristics of all their
vegetative organs Urtica and Lamium and Galeopsis have in common.
Since the thought is one far from being familiar to the botanical
mind of the present, it must here again be insisted on, that the
grouping together of several plants upon vegetative characters
only, but under a generic name, is as exactly of the nature of a
generic concept as that group which is rested on characters of flower
and fruit only. By either method a genus may be circumscribed
which shall be unnatural ; and the idea is equally the idea of a genus
in either case.

I do not see what chapters of any history of botanical science
should be more profoundly significant, or of a more general interest,
than those touching upon the development of men's ideas of a plant
genus ; for the idea of the genus seems to be first and last the type-

' But this one not figured, though by implication included, as quoted
from Hermolaus Barbaras by Brunfels, on page 154.

Z8o SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

idea, if one may intelligibly so speak, of taxonomy. It was because
this seemed to be true, that in our Introductory on the Philosophy of
Botanical History, the earliest available expressions of such idea by
even the primitive and the unlettered were dwelt upon somewhat at
length; and for the same reason, one desires to examine with the
utmost care leading expressions of the idea of a generic group as they
occur in this almost the earliest propagandist of what has slowly de-
veloped into the thing known as modern botany. Brunfels was of
thoroughly well educated mind, even a profound scholar, also natur-
ally endowed with a keen insight into the beauties and the harmonies
of plant life and form. On all these accounts it would be exceedingly
interesting, if it were possible, to know just what his own opinion
really was as to the philosophic tenability of such a genus as this
which we have been inspecting; a genus Urtica, by name, but
made up of species some of them urtical, but as many others labiate.
If he has any taxonomic opinion different from that which, in as far
as we have proceeded, he seems to have expressed, we shall be likely
to find, the evidence of it, if there be any, by reading as it were
between the lines; for even a botanical genius, if writing as Brunfels
professes to write, in the interests of medical botany only, inditing
a work the readers and students of which are to be the physicians
and the pharmacists, must not yield to every impulse he may feel to
improve taxonomy; for such improvement commonly involves
changes in nomenclature, and there is nothing of which the druggist,
or other plant industrialist, is more intolerant than changes in names
of his commodities.

The opinion, if Brunfels held it, that nettles proper and labiate-
flowered nettles are generically distinct, was not original with
him. We observe that Dioscorides as long ago as the first cen-
tury of our era segregated the dead nettle as a genus, and under
a name which pointed to the character of its flower, the name
Galeopsis; and this proposition had evidently been acceded to by
some of the mediaeval Latin botanists, who, instead of the Greek
yaXioipig, had employed such Latin equivalents as Urtica mortua,
Urtica inersand Urtica labeo, the last a most significant appellation,
"nettle with a lip," evidently taking cognizance of the floral
character, while the other two refer merely to the lack of stinging
hairs. Now this mediaeval synonymy of the plants is perfectly
familiar to Brunfels. He formally quotes every item of it; and his
approval of Galeopsis * as a proper genus comes out plainly enough,

1 In modern botany the genus is written Galeopsis. Dioscorides (Book x,
ch. 80) wrote it Galiopsis, as did also Brunfels.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE l8l

at least to the careful reader, and on this wise. In reproducing
what Dioscorides had said about the labiate nettles he does it
under the following caption: " De GALIOPSI simili Urticis herba,
DIOSCORIDES." 1 Of such a caption the English version is, "Con-
cerning GALIOPSIS of Dioscorides, an herb resembling the nettles."

Of course, that which resembles another thing is not that other
thing which it resembles; and nothing that was ever printed in a
book is plainer than that this author did not regard Galiopsis
as congeneric with Urtica. When in his Icones he sandwiches the
dead nettle in between two real nettles, and when as a heading
to his Chapter XXIII., in which both kinds are discussed, he places
that simple " DE URTICIS," he is purposely adapting himself to the
understanding of the half -taught root and herb dealers, and the
untaught old women, who call them all nettles indiscriminately.
In a word, Brunfels is a man of some learning and insight in matters
botanical, and also a man of discreet conservatism ; holding it un-
wise to lay too openly before the general public every advanced
taxonomic view that is his own.

In his indubitable though dissembled accepting of Galiopsis
as distinct from the nettles he cannot but have been impressed
by the fact that Dioscorides in making the segregation had done
so in deference to its flowers, which he described as being " slender
and purple"; and it may or may not have been in deference to
similarity in floral structure that closely appended to the Urtica-
Galiopsis series comes an unbroken line of three other galeate-
flowered labiate types. If, however, this be an example of
guidance by anthology to the recognition of affinity, still it is
a guide which Brunfels is as far as possible from following
steadily. The flowers of orchidaceons plants have as much
agreement in character as have those of labiates; but when he
comes to the grouping of what are known to us as the orchid
genera we find that all those which have two or three large
tuberiform roots are gathered into one place by themselves,2
while their merely fibrous-rooted kindred form a group quite
apart from these,3 various wholly unrelated types intervening
between the two orchid groups. This is all. quite after the method
of antiquity; the method of those who, heedless of flowers, to the
knowledge of which they had not advanced, concluded things to be
allied because they were alike as to roots, and, it may be, as to
stem and foliage also.

1 Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. i, p. 155.

2 Ibid , pp. 103-1 10.

3 Ibid., pp. 181, 182.

182 SMIHHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Let us give a moment's attention here to another set of plants
which he places in juxtaposition for the reason that they all exhibit
a kind of tuberiform organs as developed among their roots. The
group is

Brunfels Modern

Scrophularia major Scrophularia nodosa

Scrophularia media Sedum Telephium

Ficaria Ficaria ranunculoides

The point that is of special interest here is, that for the third
member of the group Brunfels rejects that which was one of its
common mediaeval names, that is, Scrophularia minor; though
more anciently, even with Dioscorides, it was called Chelidonium
minus. What he did with this third plant of the list seems to at-
test that there was in him, botanically, as there was ecclesiastically,
something of the spirit of the revolutionist, or reformer. If there
had not been, he would have been almost sure to have called this
ranunculeous herb by one or other of its ancient and mediaeval names
ralher than startle the herbalists and pharmacists of his time by
that new name, Ficaria, for a type so long known under very
different appellations. We shall also, I think, miss a part of what
was in his mind, if we do not read here the expression of an objection
on his part against the old way of naming and grouping of plants
conformably to their medical qualities rather than according to
their morphology. All three of the plants had been called kinds
of Scrophularia, because they were believed to be efficacious against
;crofula; and there is with me no doubt that Brunfels in dis-
placing one of the old Scrophularia names by the new generic name
Ficaria is to be understood as mildly protesting against qualita-
tive criteria of plant affinities, and affirming the need of appealing
to the morphologic.

We were observing above how Brunfels might be said to have
limited his group of the orchids to such genera of them as have
a certain kind of underground organ; that he excluded from the
group such as have only fibrous roots, himself all the while oblivious
— as all the world before him always had been — of the flowers
by the structure of which all stand at agreement. Let us now
observe him locating as far away from each other two groups of
genera known to us as borragineous plants. In this instance he does
not separate on ground of differences as to roots, or form of leaves,
but of pubescence only, that is, over and above certain qualities
common to all. Upon such principles are Echium, Cynoglossum,

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 183

and Borrago made to form a group of genera.1 We of to-day,
after four centuries of taxonomic progress, concede that Brunfels
was correct in apprehending a very intimate consanguinity between
the three. But we hold them in juxtaposition on quite other
grounds than those which had weight in the early sixteenth century.
We judge them near allies because the plan of their flowers, and the
common characteristics of their fruits are the same. With Brunfels
the flower was so a' most wholly unknown that no such thing as the
plan of a flower had been thought of. And, viewed superficially—
the only view that had yet been taken of flowers at all, — they were
very notably dissimilar. The corollas of the genera are of remark-
ably distinct types, that of Echium being narrowly tubiform below,
with an irregular almost bilabiate limb ; that of Cynoglossum is short-
salverform, perfectly regular; that of Borrago broadly and flatly
star-shaped. Few families of plants present three genera so unlike
as to the cut of their respective corollas as these three. We there-
fore seem to infer to a certainty that in collocating these three
generic types, he had had the utmost regard to their likeness as to
roots, stems, foliage, and especially to that armature of harsh
somewhat stinging bristles wherewith all three alike defend them-
selves; and that in the process of his reasoning the corolla, i.e.,
the "flower," was not at all considered. And, as if to place this
beyond dispute, two other borragineous types are relegated to
another part of the book. One is a Cynoglossum, the other a
Myosotis.2 Both differ from the other group in that they show
no trace of the stinging-bristly or any other rough indument.
They are almost silkily soft-hairy. Had he not held such differences
to be most significant, taxonomically, it is impossible to see why
he separated so widely these two groups of what we of to-day
understand to be near allies.

If one is to follow the progress of plant taxonomy from the
year 1530 forward, it will be needful to bear in mind such things
as Brunfels' failure to apprehend the consanguinity of all the
borragineous genera that he knew; as well as to note, if perchance
one may discover the reason, why he failed. Then afterwards
it must be observed how those who came after him, one after another
and little by little, brought the other genera of such a family into a
continuous sequence ; also all the while attending to — even carefully
noting — the development of new principles, whatever they may
have been, in accordance with which the better taxonomy of more

i Herb. Viv. Icon., vo!. i, pp. 111-113.
*Ibid., 175-177.

184 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

recent centuries has been attained to. Thus may we learn, and
thus only, the lesson of the modern development of the very old
idea of plant families.

Nomenclature. All plant names are names of groups; and to
group things together under a common name is to classify. No-
menclature and classification are therefore so intimately connected
that neither topic can be fully discussed apart from some consider-
ation of the other. They can not be completely divorced ; and so
it was inevitable that something in relation to Brunfels as nomencla-
tor should be brought out under the heading of taxonomy. It
will be useful, however, to epitomize his work as nomenclator, and
particularly since he now and then evinces a disposition to amend
and improve upon ancient and mediaeval names and name-making
methods; or, it might perhaps better be said, a disposition to return
from mediaeval to ancient methods; for what I have in mind is
something like a distinction which, in a general way, holds between
what may be termed the ancient and the mediaeval plant naming.
It is, however, not much more than a difference between the genius
of the Greek language and that of the Latin as to manner of fram-
ing distinctive names for things.

In Greek the noun and adjective readily combine to form a
single word, such word beginning with the adjective part and ending
with the noun; whereas in Latin noun and adjective are kept as
distinct words, even with the noun rather than the adjective
standing first. To make this as plain as possible let us use a few
examples :

Greek Latin

Leucoion Viola alba

Melanion Viola nigra

Chrysion Viola aurea

Herpetion Viola repens

Chelidonion Viola hirundinaria

By many scores of such one-worded Greek plant names which
by translation into Latin become binaries, there is revealed one
of the misfortunes under which mediaeval and early renaissance
botany labored everywhere — for mediaeval botany was Latin botany
— that of having in its employment hundreds of binary names,
some of which were of specific import, while as many more were
but the names of monotypic genera.

The continual perplexities involved in this phase of nomenclature
seem to have exercised the mind of Brunfels to a degree, so that

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE

185

he made bold to displace here and there some binary generic name,
substituting one of a single word. A few examples of such action
on his part were brought forward under the heading of his taxonomy .
A more considerable exemplification of this practice is given below,
in a selection made from the first volume of the Viva I cones:

Early binary generic names

Fumus terras
Fumaria herba .

Ferraria major
Consolida minor
Testiculus canis
Testiculus vulpis

Lingua bubula

Sacra herba
Verbenaca supina
Cincinnalis herba
Lacryma Junonis
Herba sanguinalis
Sanguis Mercurii
Mustelse sanguis
Crista gallinacea
Trixago minor
Quercula minor

Scrophularia minor
Chelidonium minus

Herba Apollinaris
Faba suilla

Brunfelsian substitutes

Capnos
Sanicula

Satirion
= Borrago

Verbena

Chamaedrys

Ficaria

Hyoscyamus

The credit of having reformed the nomenclature of genera by the
exclusion of names made up of two distinct words has been given to
Linnaeus, who, in the year 1751, is thought first to have laid down
such a principle.1 But the actual reform had been quietly inaug-
urated by Brunfels two hundred and twenty years before Linnasus
came forward with his Philosophia Botanica.

Sprengel, the one nineteenth century author of a Genera Planta-
rum who has observed the law of priority in the crediting of generic
names, ascribes to Brunfels the authorship of the following:

Ammi Fragaria Pyrola

Calendula Linaria Sanicula

i Nomina generica ex duobus vocabulis integris, ac distinctis facta, e
Republica Botanica releganda sunt." Linn., Philosophia Botanica, Art. 242.

l86 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Carthamus Melissa Spinacia

Castanea Parietaria Scrophularia

Euphrasia Potentilla Valeriana

To this list of fifteen, credited to this author by Sprengel, I find
two more to be added, namely Hepatica and Ficaria. Sprengel's
reason for not taking them into the reckoning was simply this, that
he did not admit the types as worthy of generic rank, but held with
Linnaeus that the former was but an Anemone and the latter a
Ranunculus.

Now when Sprengel and other advocates of priority credit
such genera to Brunfels, it is not to be understood as their meaning
that in his book these types are for the first time named and defined.
The truth is, that all of them had been known before Brunfels, and
some of them had been much written about, under different names.
For a heading to each chapter in which a genus is discussed, Brunfels
selects, out of the several names current for that genus, the one
that pleases him best; and, by virtue of the great prestige which
his book obtained, the plant names in it were continued in use by
other authors. Therefore they who credit Sanicula, Potentilla,
Fragaria or Hepatica to Brunfels affirm no more than this, that each
such name, as the fixed appellation of a certain generic type, is
traceable back to Brunfels.

In his researches upon native German plants he came to know
here and there a type which, after the most diligent comparison
with all the classical plant descriptions, he felt certain had not been
known to the ancients, neither been described by any one. They
were new generic types; and to such he never assigns any name at
all, other than that by which it is known to German peasants.
There is beautifully figured in one place a flowering plant of Carda-
mine pratensis.1 Above the figure the German name Gauchbluem
is inscribed; beneath it the statement in Latin that the plant was
unknown to the ancients, though common enough in Germany,
and native. One page is occupied by a most accurate and life-like
representation of Anemone nemorosa, with the legend: " A wildwood
herb, the name of which is unknown."2 Nor is there any other
mention of the plant ; not so much as a record of its being known by
a vernacular name. This is doubtless the earliest publication of the
Wood Anemone.

Out of such namelessly figured types there might here be gathered
surprising items of plant history. For one instance: any one

1 Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. i, p. 218.
J Ibid, vol. ii, p. 80.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 187

informed as to how familiarly hundreds of useful plants were
known two thousand years before Brunfels would expect to find
so common and important a plant as Trifolium repens among that
number. Nevertheless, it is one of the things which Brunfels
presents as new to botanists.1 He says it is well dispersed through-
out Germany, chiefly in meadows, and is known to the common
people by the name of Weiss Fleischbluem ; also that his engraver
brought him the plant under that name. That Old German name
of the plant, and Brunfels' brief remark upon it, both printed
on the plate page, seem to constitute the earliest publication of
Trifolium repens.2 Both the botanist and the artist seem to
have agreed in the opinion — a purely philosophic one — that no little
weed was beneath botanical notice, and between them they have
given us the beginning of the history of Draba verna. The plant
is elegantly figured under the vernacular designation of Gensbluem;
but not another word is said about it.3 It is, however, the first
record, and a perfectly definite record, of an interesting though
diminutive type; one that within the last century has been much
discussed by very able botanists who have investigated it morpho-
logically, taxonomically, and even as to its rightful name; and
that Old German popular name Gensbluem — in later German
Gansblum — has proven a somewhat fateful appellation. More than
two centuries after Brunfels had printed it, Michel Adanson pro-
posed its adoption as being by right of priority the lawful generic
name .^ For two reasons, not calling for mention here, Adanson 's
movement failed of any public approval. Yet once again, in the
end of the nineteenth century, Otto Kuntze renewed he Adan-
sonian proposition;5 but the attempt to reinstate Gansblum was
again fruitless, at least as to gaining public approval. It was not
a Latin-made name. Probably it did not occur to Brunfels' mind
that a little weed, of no use in medicine or any art, needed to be
dignified by any other name at all than that by which the country
people of Germany knew it.

To the nomenclature of species it is evident Brunfels gave no
thought ; nor was there any reason why he should have given it any
attention. Most of the genera, with him as with the botanists of
antiquity, were monotypic, and the generic name was all that was

1 Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. ii, p. 55.

2 The botanists of remote antiquity knew but one plant which they called
Trifolium. It figures in modern nomenclature as Psoralea bituminosa.

3 Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. ii, p. 34.

4 Adanson, Families des Plantes, vol. ii, p. 420 (1763).

5 Kuntze, Revisio Generum, vol. i, p. 29 (1891).

l88 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL 54

needed. There was not the shadow of a reason for appending a
second name; and he, no more than hundreds of botanical writers
before his day, ever thought of such a thing. Sometimes when there
are one or more notable modifications of a type — varieties or species
of it — the original goes by the generic name only, while the others
have each its own cognomen. Of this sort is his nomenclature of
three buttercups which he figures and gives account of.1 In the
nomenclature of to-day they are (i) Ranunculus acris, (2) its double-
flowered garden variety, and (3) Ranunculus bulbosus. The
generic name which Brunfels adopts is Pes coruinus, i.e., Crowfoot,
turned into Latin. With him the first species is simply Crowfoot,
its variety of the gardens is Full-flowered Crowfoot, the third plant
is Lesser Crowfoot.

This early practice of leaving the one original representative of
a genus without any cognomen, even after said genus has ceased
to be monotypic, is a practice doubly suggestive in relation to the
philosophy of nomenclature ; for, in the first place it plainly reveals
the antiquity of the idea of generic types, and emphasizes it. In
the second place, the failing to assign a cognomen to the type species
entails a difficulty; becomes a possible source of ambiguity and
perplexity; for, Pes coruinus being mentioned, the question may
chance to be asked: Which one of the three? That question
is virtually a demand, and a most reasonable one, that the type
species have also its particular cognomen. That botanists of
fifteen centuries anterior to Brunfels had seen this to be desirable,
one may infer from the nomenclature of Plantago. Two species of
this genus were known to Pliny; and he had a specific cognomen
for the type species as well as for the other. They were Plantago
major and Plantago minor; and Brunfels follows Pliny in this.
His type species is not simply Plantago; it is P. major, which name,
as well as P. minor, the German father duly credits to the Latin
author of the olden time. He uses, then, a specific name for the orig-
inal representative of a genus when there is classic authority for
so doing; but I have not observed him taking the initiative in this
course by actually himself assigning to the type species of any
genus a cognomen.

These paragraphs on Brunfels as nomenclator ought not to be
concluded without our having taken a briefly comprehensive survey
of his principles. These principles, such as he was more or less
ruled by, will be all the more suggestive to us from the very fact
that he did not professedly have any; for doubtless he had never

1 Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. i, pp. 143-150.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 189

so much as heard, or even thought the phrase "botanical nomen-
clature." The laws governing the naming of plants were not
different from those observed in the naming of other things. All
that we may gather by observing his procedure along these
lines may be the course which a cultivated and philosophic mind,
unhampered by prejudices, will naturally take. But such a study
will be well worth while ; because one does not often meet with an
author who so nearly antedates all our stereotyped conventionalities,
and takes his own course so little influenced by traditions and
prejudices. Without having enunciated one of them, he seems
to have been more or less under the guidance of principles like the
following :

1. That for the science of botany there is an initial book;
that is the Historia Plantarum of Theophrastus of Eresus. He
quotes that work constantly, but never, I think, any earlier book
or author. Others of Brunfels' time and a little later we shall find
citing Moses, Solomon, and other Hebrew writers as if these had
been botanists; but not so Brunfels, who, notwithstanding his train-
ing in theology, and the distinction he had won as a Biblical scholar
and commentator, does not intimate that he has found botany
in Holy Scripture, and never cites an author who antedates Theo-
phrastus. It will not, however, follow that he must adopt The-
phrastan generic names in such wise as to make that author's
monumental work the point of departure for nomenclature. The
existence of an historically first book of botanical science is one
thing. The having a starting point for an universal nomenclature
of botany is quite another; and the two are both logically separ-
able and historically separate. Brunfels was well informed about the
historic beginnings of botany; but the idea of an universal
system of nomenclature for groups of plants had not in his day
been conceived.

2. Brunfels writes in Latin. The text of his book is for those
who know Latin, and, knowing it, know things by their Latin
names. The writer is under the necessity of using the Latin names
of plants rather than those by which the same plants are known
in Greek or Hebrew, Arabic or Persian. If a man pretending to
write in Latin about animals should write hippos instead of equus,
or alopex in place of vulpes, he would stultify himself; would be
writing unintelligibly, absurdly, and ridiculously. It is not imagin-
able that Brunfels, in a Latin book of botany, should have done
so insanely as to write drys instead of quercus, or kittos in place of
hedera, ion rather than viola, or arnoglossa rather than plantago.

SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Nevertheless he might have done so and most reasonably; indeed
he must have done so, had the ideas of universality and priority in
nomenclature been conceived and approved by him; because botany
is of Greek rather than Latin origin, and so the Greek names of
plants happen to be older than the Latin names. It was needful
here to take a survey of the whole situation; for from Brunfels
forward we must be looking for adumbrations of any of those prin-
ciples which in our time have come to rule — or misrule — biologic
nomenclature.

3. Even as a Latin writer, and using none but Latin generic
names as headings for his chapters, Brunfels does not pay respect
to priority. He readily adopts, out of several Latin names, an-
cient and mediaeval, not the oldest, but the one that best suits his
own purpose or fancy. From before the Christian era until six
or seven centuries after it the water lilies had been known as the
genus Nymphcea. Then from the eighth century forward to the
thirteenth and later the Arabic name Nenuphar had usurped its
place in Latin botany generally. Brunfels adopts Nenuphar and
writes Nymph&a down among the synonyms; this manifestly for
the reason that most of the botanists and druggists of his own
time knew the plants as Nenuphar and would be disturbed if he
should restore the classic name. Here, then, we have

4. The principle that the name by which a genus is known to
most of one's contemporaries is the one to be taken up, there
being no other objection against the name.

5. That a later name consisting of one word only is commonly
permitted by Brunfels to supplant a very ancient one made up of
two words has been already quite clearly demonstrated.

6. A species name, or cognomen, is not assigned the type which
alone represents its genus.

7. While plainly favoring the selection of the best of several
names as the one to be perpetuated, Brunfels, as if realizing the
inconvenience of having many synonyms, is moved to use the
greatest care and caution against creating them; that is, against
creating Latin synonyms. This is well shown by his great aversion
to assigning Latin names to types which to him appear undescribed.
He publishes freely the engravings of such, but is careful to label
them with no other than the German vernacular names. I have
not found him once deviating from this very conservative practice.
And, under his beautiful plate of Pulsatilla, in a long paragraph
he explains why he holds to such a course. In none of the authors
whom he has been able carefully to study has he found any descrip-

LANDMARKS OP BOTANICAL HISTORY —GREENE 191

tion of this sort of plant. It may have been named and described
somewhere nevertheless. He is resolved to print the figure, and
leave it to others who have more leisure than he, to study it in the
light of all descriptions to them accessible.1 Meanwhile the thing
may be known by one or other of those German names by which
the common people know it.

8. The student of botanical nomenclature should here note
well the distinction which Brunfels tacitly makes between the Latin
names used by Latin botanical writers, and those invented in their
mother tongue by the common people. It is plain that with him
they have not the same status. The vernacular name cannot figure
among the Latin synonyms. It is upon no equality with them.
His action and his words together bring it out clearly that, in
his mind, there is a botanical nomenclature, and synchronously
with it a kind of plant naming that is not valid scientifically. The
botanists of antiquity had not, and hardly could have had this
thought. Is the expression of it new with Brunfels ? He who is to
answer this question must first learn pre-Brunfelsian and mediaeval
botany. The prevalence of that opinion is long since become
universal, despite its having been ably disputed two centuries after
Brunfels. It will be important to the history of nomenclature that
one trace its progress from Brunfels forward.

9. In respect to the nomenclature of species it should be observed
that what is often spoken of now as the phrase name, or more
unadvisedly the "polynomial," and commonly attributed to all
botanists preceding Linnaeus, is a thing unknown to Brunfels. In
genera of several species I have not found him using in a single in-
stance any name that is more than binary. Where there are three
words to a name the first two are the generic name.

1 Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. i, p. 217.

CHAPTER VI
LEONHARDUS FUCHSIUS, 1501-1566

AN early and a clear vindication to Brunfelsius of the honor of
having made an epoch in the history of botanical iconography is
the fact that his Herbarum Viva Icones inspired a younger coun-
tryman of his to embark at once in a still larger enterprise of the
same kind; this with the manifest purpose of outdoing the originator
of the movement. Brunfelsius and Fuchsius were alike in that
they were college bred Germans and university graduates; their
early and also their later academic and professional training having
been acquired in Catholic schools, and mostly while they themselves
were yet Catholics ; and they were witnesses of the beginnings of the
Lutheran movement, and both became partisans of the Augustin-
ian; Brunfels with voice and pen actively and zealously furthering
the movement, and Fuchs so expressly in sympathy with it as to
have forfeited thereby the professorial chair with which his alma
mater had early honored him. Both were regularly graduated
medical practitioners, and both eminently successful, even famous,
as physicians; though this good fortune came to the elder of the
two only very late in life, and after he had abandoned theology
and polemics.

Life. Fuchsius was a native of Memmingen, Bavaria. The
father died when the child was in his fifth or sixth year. The
small boy must have been precociously intelligent. The care and
cost which the widowed mother bestowed on his education, and the
academic honors conferred on him in boyhood, youth, and very
early manhood attest this. At the age of ten he was sent away to
a noted school at Heilbronn, at eleven to Erfurth where, after a
year and a half of very special and zealous devotion to what were
already his favorite studies, the ancient languages, the university
conferred on him the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy; this before
he had completed the thirteenth year of his age. During a year
and a half, and that while he was somewhere between the ages of

192

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 193

fourteen and eighteen years, he was master of a private school in
his native town; to the success of which undertaking on the part
of one who was a mere boy in years, a precociously large stature,
quiet seriousness of mind, and a manly dignity of bearing are said
to have contributed.1 At the age of eighteen he again left home,
and this time to enter the university at Ingolstadt, where at first
he applied himself to advanced classical studies, and two years later
obtained the degree of Master of Philosophy. Entering at once
upon the study of medicine at the same institution he won the
doctorate in the year 1524, at the age of twenty-three. He under-
took to establish himself in the practice of medicine at Munich ; but
after a residence there of some two years, within which time he
had married, he was called to the Professorship of Medicine at
Ingolstadt. Here another and more honorable place was soon
tendered him, and he became physician to the Margrave George of
Brandenburg. During an outbreak, at Anspach, the residence
of this prince, of that very fatal epidemic which one reads of as
the plague, Fuchsius acquired reputation by the success that at-
tended his treatment of the disease. He remained physician to
George of Brandenburg some five years, and it was during this
period that his career as an author began. He published a Com-
pend of Medicine, then a translation from the Greek of one of the
books of Hippocrates. He was now called a second time to the
Chair of Medicine at Ingolstadt. The call was accepted; but again
the stay was short. This university still remained one of the strong-
holds of the old faith. Doctor Fuchsius let fall expressions of
sympathy with Luther's movement. Within less than a year
he withdrew, returned to Anspach, where the Margrave George gave
him welcome, and reappointed him body physician. The next
year witnessed another outbreak of the plague, and this time
Doctor Fuchsius with his wife and children fled the place.

In the year 1535 he received a call to the Chair of Medicine in the
then newly established Protestant university of Tubingen. Here
he remained to the end of his life, that is, for thirty-one years ; and
they appear to have been years of the most arduous and unremitting
activity. His lectures on medicine were extraordinarily popular,
and the intervals between lectures were occupied by the duties of
the practitioner. He declined one offer of a professorship in the
celebrated University of Pisa, and another to the office of Physician
to the King of Denmark.2

1 Melchior Adam, Vitas Germanorum Medicorum.
J Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. iv, p. 311.

SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

As to when, and amid what surroundings Fuchsius became in-
terested in botany, I have met with no record. It may, however,
safely be assumed that no passion for nature study, or for plants
in particular, was congenital with him. There is internal evidence
in his book that as a botanist he was not born but made. The
curricula of the schools of medicine at that period offered the possi-
bilities, at least, of the making of botanists. The medicines in
use were still chiefly plant products, either native or imported from
Asia. The names of them were plant names. Each was the sub-
ject of a chapter in the standard books of the materia medica.
Those books were all ancient, and had been written by the Greeks,
Hippocrates, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Galenos. Their chapters
were the texts on which university professors of medicine lectured
to their students; and the identification of the plants more or less
succinctly described in those classic chapters was a part of the
regular work. It was the examination of plants in the light of
what purported to be the original and authentic descriptions of
them. Critical work of this kind may be done by a student as a
piece of drudgery, or it may become an inspiration. To those
not too sluggish it must have been stimulating to be able to demon-
strate by Greek texts ten or fifteen centuries old that the vendors of
drugs were selling important medicines under wrong names; that
what they sold under the Greek name aristolochia, for example,
was not in the least like what the great Greek physicians had used
under that name either morphologically or qualitatively. And
if such questions took them to the drug gardens, or led them afield
into wild places in search of medicinal plants in their fresh and
growing condition, all this would tend to the fuller development
and the deepening of a sincere interest in botany.

There is every reason for believing that Fuchsius' interest in
botany was* thus awakened. His earliest botanical publication
fully substantiates this view. It was issued by Brunfels as an ap-
pendix to the second volume of his Icones in 1531, that is, ten
or eleven years earlier than the appearing of his principal botanical
work. Its title translated is Leonard Fucks' Notes on certain Herbs
and Simples not yet rightly understood by the Physicians.^ It consists
of thirty-fottr long chapters upon more than as many plants and
plant products then in use ; dealing mainly with the right application
of ancient names; often quoting the language of authors whom he

1 " Leonard! Fuchsii Annotationes aliquot Herbarum et Simplicium, a
Medicis hactenus non recte intellectorum." In Brunf. Icon., vol. ii, app.,
pp. 129-155.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 195

charges with having brought in this confusion under which the
pharmacy of his time is laboring, and denouncing the errors of
such authors with scathing sarcasms. The aim of the essay is the
elimination of gross errors from the pharmacopeia, and all the
subjects are plants that have been in use for ages. Nothing new is
added; neither is there any trace of the philosophic investigation
of the plant world as such; or the revelation of any interest in
plant life and form in themselves considered. But this is Fuchsius'
juvenile botanical production. Will there be awakened within
him later an interest in plants as plants rather than as drugs?

There is no evidence that such an awakening ever came ; or that
any considerable part of his work with plants had other than
utilitarian ends primarily in view. In the last chapter of this
earliest piece of his botanical writing he expresses the design of
going through the whole of Greek and Latin botany, correcting
errors and giving the right identification of everything, after the
method exemplified in the treatise he is now concluding; even
adding that he has been urged to do this by those fully convinced
of the great need of such a work. But this promise remained un-
fulfilled. The twofold duties incident to a professor's chair and an
extensive medical practice claimed his energies, and the twofold
emoluments enabled him to undertake a line of botanical work —
botanical recreation, rather — which it is improbable he ever would
have thought of but for the great success which had promptly
attended the publication of Brunfels' I cones. He employed two
painters, and also the best engraver in Strassburg,1 and set them
to work figuring plants. Thus within seven or eight years after
the appearing of Brunfels' work Fuchsius had ready for the press
his great volume of the Historia Stirpium; though it was not is-
sued from the press until some four years later, that is, in 1542.
Its success seems to have been speedily assured, and was really
wonderful. To a generation that had been accustomed to such
books as the Hortus Sanitatis, filled with the most wretched carica-
tures of plants in place of true representations of them, this great
book by Fuchsius must have appeared as nothing less than luxur-
ious; and the epoch which, ten years earlier, Brunfels had introduced
by his 135 good illustrations of as many plants, was strongly ac-
centuated by the appearing of this new volume with upwards of 500
large plates more than equaling, on the average, those of Brunfels.

1 The portraits of these artists, with their names, Heinrich Fullmaurer,
Albert Meyer, and Veit Rudolf Speckle, are appended to the first edition
of the Historia Stirpium.

196 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Within a year, or a little more, there was issued an edition in
German, this augmented by six more plates. Then in 1545 there
came out, as if in condescension to the class of the unlettered, an
inexpensive edition of the plates only, and this was so successful
that a second issue was made in that same year; both these were
in octavo. After that there were not a few small-sized and cheap
editions brought out, with Latin text, but with figures so greatly
reduced in size as to be of little use. With these, however, Fuchsius
had nothing to do.

During the long tenure of the professorship at Tubingen, which
covered nearly half his lifetime, there was no return to that critical
work upon the history of medicinal plants with which he had
inaugurated his career as botanical author; nor were there any
more than casual questionings of nature even as to the affinities
of plants. But the botanical artists were kept at work. To have
more plants figured, and to formulate a page of text to accompany
each plate, gave him pleasant respite from professional work, and
promised greater fame and fortune. Before his death he had
ready for the press the plates and descriptive texts of fifteen hun-
dred plants; a work which, if it had been printed, would have made
three folio volumes as large as the Historia Stirpium. But when
all was done, no publisher could be found who would undertake the
issuing of so vast a work without the advance of a considerable
sum of money. This the author would not — perhaps could not —
accede to, and the manuscript remained unpublished.1

In the original Latin edition of 1542, the Introductory Epistle,
addressed to the Margrave of Brandenburg, is a document deserving
fuller notice than can here be given it. It is a rather lengthy
discourse, but withal instructive as to the condition of botany
at the time, and exceedingly well written; amounting to something
like an abstract of the history of medical botany from the earliest
times down to his own date. As a piece of writing it reveals in its
author general abilities altogether superior to what I can not but
consider the mediocrity of his gifts as a botanist. It is in these
introductoiy pages that he earns for himself the praise of being
a fair and equitable judge and critic of the work of others, of
whatever race, religion, or nationality.2 At a time when it was
usual in Germany to depreciate, if not to denounce, all French and
Italian efforts to restore botany, Fuchsius proclaims it that they
are all inexpressibly indebted to such great scholars as Hermolaus

1 Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. iv, p. 313.

1 "^quissimus majorum suorum judex." Sprengel, Hist., vol. i, p. 324.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 197

Barbarus, Marcellus Virgilius, Ruellius, and others who, through
corrected texts and Latin versions of the Greek fathers, first
placed them at the service of the botanists of every country. He
takes pains to defend them one and all against aspersions that have
been cast upon their works by men incompetent to criticise them,
and recommends the study of them to all.

When, in their turn, his own countrymen and contemporaries,
Brunfelsius, Cordus, Tragus, come up for mention, it is always
most respectful and even honorable mention; and this despite the
fact that among them there is a rival or two whom he fears, and
has good reason to fear, still is he solicitous to be just to each,
and to speak out the favorable things concerning their work which
may be said.

A representation which he makes in this preface, of the low
estate into which the pharmacy of his time had fallen, I must in
substance reproduce. "The times once were when not only great
philosophers and poets but kings and princes both investigated
plants, and favored others so occupied. But in our day even the
physicians are so much averse to that kind of study that you will
hardly find one among a hundred of them who has correct knowledge
of even a very few kinds. They appear to think that this kind of
information does not belong to their profession, and to judge tha^;
it would be condescending from their proper dignity to entertain
doubts about the accuracy and trustworthiness of those who buy
and sell such things. And so it comes to pass that the druggists
• — God knows that they themselves are for the most part an illiterate
set — leave all this to the foolish and superstitious old women who
gather herbs and roots. Error is therefore heaped on error, and
will be so long as the identification of vegetable medicines is left
to rustic and vulgar ignorance."

The superb South American genus FUCHSIA was dedicated to this,
the second father of plant iconography, by Plumier in the year 1703.

Vegetative Organography. Fuchsius has a very instructive and
useful introductory chapter which he styles " An Explanation of
Difficult Terms. " From the historian's point of view this will be re-
garded as most valuable. It is the earliest vocabulary of botanic
terms that I have met with thus far; and no historian that I know
of has made mention of it. One gathers from this vocabulary good
information of progress gained — and also of retrogressions made —
in descriptive and organologic botany in the seventeen centuries
and more between Theophrastus and Fuchsius. True to his title,
our author omits all easy and familiar terms ; does not define anew

Ip8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

the root, the stem, the leaf, the flower. By this we know that he
has nothing to add to the ancient and classic diagnoses of these
organs. He does, however, define a bulb. " Bulbs are roots that
are round and tunicated; such are those of the hyacinth, asphodel
and colchicum. " There is here a retrogression from Theophras-
tus, who doubted that the tunicated mass ought to be considered
a root, and who also mentioned that the tuft of fibres descending
into the ground from underneath are undoubted roots. Neither
of these considerations affects the mind of stolid Fuchsius. Bulbs
are roots that are rounded and tunicated. I do not recall having
met with an earlier use of the word tunicated as describing certain
bulbs. It is very apt, and has now long been everywhere in use as
definitive of one kind of bulbs. With him. however, the em-
ployment of it is unfortunate ; for it makes the tunicated structure
to be characteristic of all bulbs, which is a bad mistake, as ex-
cluding the scaly kind, like that of lilies, from the category of bulbs;
for not the crudest morphologist could call a scale a tunic. And
Fuchsius proves his definition fallacious by stating, when he comes
to the figuring and describing of the true lilies, that they have bulbs.1
His referring to the asphodel as an example of a bulbous plant will
be misunderstood. He has not at all in mind that plant which
in later times has been identified as the famed asphodel of antiquity,
the underground parts of which have nothing that is in the nature
of a bulb of any kind. That which Fuchsius believes to be the
asphodel, and figures for it, is a lily, and its scaly bulb is well shown.2
If his third familiar example, colchicum, illustrates to us what we
distinguish now as a corm, it is at least fibrous-coated on the
outside, and would therefore answer at least to the letter of his
diagnosis of a bulb.

There is one term in use in the sixteenth century in connection
with certain bulbous plants which has not survived; that is, the
neck (cervix). Fuchsius defines the cervix as "an elongated and
cylindric body intervening between the summit of a bulb and
the tuft of leaves, and has the appearance of a neck." From its
position, and its external appearance as cylindric and supporting
leaves in onions, leeks, daffodils, and their kindred, one might
have expected to find it designated as a stem. That it was not, is
a circumstance that must convince us of two things: first, that
Theophrastus' immortal definition of a stem as made up of bark,
wood, and pith, was a part^of the very alphabet of botany in Fuch-

1 Hist. Stirp., p. 366.

2 Ibid., p. 115.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 199

sius' time as it is in ours; and second, that the stem-like cylinder
surmounting onion, leek, and daffodil bulbs must have been ex-
amined in cross section and found completely destitute of every
characteristic of stems in general; discovered to be made up of
nothing else but the compacted bases of the leaves themselves. It
looked much like a stem. Investigation proved it wanting every
claim to that title; and they named it cervix, the "neck" of a grow-
ing bulb. The word was not destined to a permanent place in the
vocabulary of the science. When at length it came to be seen
that the bulb itself, as well as the cervix, was also but a mass of
leaf-bases, and therefore no root at all, the term lost its particular
significancy and disappeared. And this very fact of the invention
of a new word that seemed to be called for, and its later passing
into desuetude, is an interesting kind of episode in the history of
morphology, and well merits notice in a place like this. We shall
meet with other instances.

Respecting that more marked phase of underground stem, the
rhizome, or rootstock, Fuchsius appears quite securely to rest in a
position which Theophrastus had held with wavering. Fuchsius
denominates them all radices geniculata . The Greek had realized
that they have rather too much in common with stems.

In his treatment of stems in general, one observes in Fuchsius
some divergencies from, even here and there some little advance
ment beyond, the status of these things in the minds of the ancient
authors. The word culmus, modified from the Greek calamos, is
his term for the stems of grass-like plants. The first and largest
divisions of tree trunks are denominated brachia, arms, though not
unless such diverge from one another rather strongly, suggesting,
as he says, arms of the human body when extended. Others had
always noted what they called the knots, or nodes, of stems. Fuch-
sius uses, and even defines, the good term internodium, internode;
though I much doubt his having invented it. He also observes
in trees and shrubs the occasional development of long and vigorous-
shoots from trunks and main stems ; points at which branching is
unusual if not abnormal. He names such shoots adnates. Botanjr
still recognizes this class, and knows them as adventitious shoots,,
from adventitiously formed buds

One reads in this author and in others of his time of such things
as the al(E of stems. The usual meaning of alae is wings, as of
a bird; but in ancient Latin the term also meant the armpits; and
quite like this is the sixteenth-century use of it in botany. Fuchsiu?
defines the alas of stems as being a kind of sinuses from which new

200 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

growth proceeds; they are the axils of modern terminology. It
is also here that I meet with scape as a botanic term; and the
application is just that now in use, designating an elongated
peduncle arising from under the ground; though neither Fuchsius
nor his contemporaries so understood it. They regarded it as a
true stem without nodes. But Fuchsius' " scapus" was not at once
adopted ; until long after his time it was usually denominated a
stylus.

Two of the several modes of leaf arrangement are named and
denned in this vocabulary, the decussate and the verticillate ; but
there is yet no one word in use by which to distinguish leaves as
opposite. A phrase is required to express that. Any leaf margin
that is evenly indented is described as crenate, or as serrate, quite
indiscriminately, the terms being treated as synonymous; but if
serratures be quite deep and close, as in the nettles, the leaf is
fimbriate. Pediculus and petiolus, i.e., peduncle and petiole, are
employed as indiscriminately, either one applying to leaf-stalk or to
flower-stalk. The word stipula also makes its appearance in
Fuchsius' vocabulary, but with nothing like its meaning in more
recent botany. His definition proves it to have been in his mind
merely a special name for the peculiar leaf of grass-like plants, not
a part of such leaf, but the whole of it.1 It is a definite proposal
that, since the stems of grains and grasses have the special name of
culm, the leaves of the same class of plants ought not to be called
leaves, but should have their own special designation — should be
called stipules; and this is perfectly logical and consistent; for the
leaves that grow on culms are quite as unlike all other leaves as
culms are unlike other sorts of stems. It will be recalled that
Theophrastus had named this entire group the Calamophylli in
allusion to the remarkable characteristics of the foliage. But Fuch-
sius does not seem to have met with success in this endeavor to
have grain leaves and grass leaves become known by the name
of stipules; and, more than two centuries later, Linnaeus picked up
the old term siipula and applied it anew, and with perfect success.

Fuchsius tried also to invest the compound leaf with a name of
its own, as a thing too different from the simple leaf. The dis-
tinction itself, as we know, was perfectly and for all time made by
Theophrastus, who discovered things and left them nameless. The
German father would have the compound leaf called a frons, i.e.,
frond, thus restricting the other Latin word folium to the simple leaf
and the individual leaflet of the compound. But this also fell short

» "Stipulse sunt folia culmum ambientia. " Fuchs.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 2O I

of general adoption; and long after Fuchsius, frond came into use
as designating the peculiar foliage of ferns. It must be said of
Fuchsius' application of frond that it was the more correct; for
frons with the old Latins meant the leaves of trees, or even leafy
twigs of trees, such as, anterior to Theophrastus, and by thousands
in later times, the compound leaf was believed to be.

Inflorescence. The term inflorescence of course did not appear
in botany until long after Fuchsius; but the thing had been of
necessity both observed and discussed. The using of words de-
finitive of the various clusterings of fruits and flowers must be older
than history. Perhaps few if any of those defined by the German
father were newly coined, or even otherwise applied than they had
been in far earlier times. But here in the Historia Stirpium we
have a goodly number of them brought together, along with not
indefinite statements of what that author understood to be their
meanings. And what must vouch for the importance of this para-
graph of history is the fact that not one of Fuchsius' terms relating
to inflorescence bears with him the meaning which the same term
has in the botany of our own time.

Take the word thyrsus, which at its first origin in Greek and Latin
was but a synonym of caulis, any stalk or stem; though later,
and still in ancient times, it acquired a special significance; while
with botanists of our time it means a particular kind of inflores-
cence. There is with Fuchsius no kind of a flower clustering that
is called a thyrse; yet he essays to define the term as if in the
botanical terminology of his time it had gained some new shade of
meaning. From his definition itself nothing of the kind is apparent ;
but at definition Fuchsius is no adept ; and when he says a thyrsus
is a straight wand-like or arrowy stalk he has hardly departed from
the earliest of ancient definitions. But wThen we make search for
his practical use of the term we find that it has with him a meaning
which he had not indicated or intimated in his definition. In the
description of the hyssop he uses the expression: "Flowers
purplish-blue, investing the thyrses like a spike."1 Here it is plain
that the thyrsus is the axis of a spicate inflorescence; that which
in much later botany is become the rachis. But it is only now and
then that he notes the arrangement of flowers; though the clustering
of fruits is much more frequently taken into account.

The term racemus occurs not infrequently; but I think only as
specifying the arrangement of some berry-like kinds of fruits.
The type of the raceme is the grape-cluster; but in his definition

1 Hist. Stir p., p. 840.

202 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

of racemus he says it is the fruit cluster not of the grape only, but
also of the ivy and of any kind of herbs or shrubs that have bunches
of berries. In practice we shall find him writing of the compactly
spicate berries of the arum as forming a racemus.

As with the ancients, so with Fuchsius the spike is rather more
a taxonomic than morphologic term. His definition of it is the
most concise of all. " A spike is that which a culm bears at its
summit. ... It consists of three parts, grain, glume, and beard.
A muticous spike is one that is beardless." Plainly, then, the
spike with him is the peculiar inflorescence of grains and their
natural allies. The typical form of a spike, that in which as in
wheat and barley there is a simple rachis — thyrsus, he would have
called it — up and down which the several parts are sessile, is not
alone a spike. The one prerequisite of a spike is, that it shall
crown the summit of, or at least be connected with, a culm. And so
we find him naming as spikes the inflorescences of broom corn,1 and
also of maize.2 In modern botany they are panicles. Only thus
far, however, does he abide by his own diagnosis of the spike as the
fruiting cluster of grass allies ; beyond this point, and lere and there,
we find him overstepping the bounds which he himself has set to the
application of that term. Lavandula stoechas, an aromatic shrub
common in European gardens of that time, is of the family of the
labiates, the flowers of which are congested within a somewhat
elongated and cylindric involucre of chaffy and overlapping scales.
This involucre vividly recalls the head or ear of some short-spiked
kind of wheat; and Fuchsius transgresses his definition boldly
enough by calling the involucre of this inflorescence a spike.3 In
justice to the botanist it must, however, be admitted that he was
following popular precedent. The inflorescences of not only this
but a number of other labiates had long been called spikes. There
is then traceable in Fuchsius a tendency toward a point that was
not actually gained until more than two centuries later, of defining
terms by morphologic rather than any other characteristics; of
naming a raceme from its structure rather than from the fact of its
bearing berries and not capsules ; and a spike not as the fructiferous
terminal of a culm, but as an axis, bearing up and down its length
sessile flowers or fruits, this irrespective of the family of plants in
which it may occur.

The panicula is almost unique among Fuchsian inflorescences in

i Hist. Stir p., p. 772
' Ibid., p. 824.
*Ibid., p. 777.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 203

that it is not made the mark of any particular taxonomic group, and
is defined in quite strictly morphologic terms. As far as possible
from the panicle of modern vocabularies, it consists of almost any
very compact cluster that is somewhat elongated and, at the ends,
well rounded. The first example given is that of the cones of
spruces, which are not conical, and therefore would not have been
called cones by botanists of antiquity, nor by their disciples
of the sixteenth century. But it is said by our author that the
Latins applied panicle mostly to such as, being of the requisite form
and density, were also appendaged by some sort of coma ; and so,
among the Fuchsian panicles, one finds the bristly hairy spikes
of millet, and the elongated furry heads of the mouse-ear clover,
otherwise called lagopus, i.e., Trifolium arvense. Also individual
spikes of scirpus, eleocharis, and others of their tribe — the indi-
vidual spikes, I say, and not the whole inflorescences — are panicles.

The umbel, though defined morphologically as a flower and fruit-
cluster constructed upon the plan of an umbrella, would never
be applied to an umbel of berries. The umbels with Fuchsius are
the inflorescences of the family of umbellifers, or at least of dry-
fruited plants, exclusively. The flat-topped clusters of certain
anthemideous composites like millefolium he speaks of as umbels;
though they are not really umbels, but corymbs; a distinction that
had not then been made.

Anthology. In the vocabulary of Fuchsius there is vouchsafed
a perfectly intelligible definition of what he calls the calyx. It is
a kind of "bag within which at first the flower, and after that the
seeds are enclosed." Note first of all, that such a calyx as this
can be no part of a flower. It can not be determined to be a calyx
until it has shown itself permanent ; until the seeds have ripened.
A deciduous calyx would be a contradiction in terms. A circle
of green sepals behind a flower, even though at first enclosing the
"flower" does not constitute a calyx; at least if it fail to persist
and to enfold the seeds after the other parts have fallen. Under this
definition all mintworts and sages, the borrageworts and other syn-
sepalous things have a calyx, while the poppies and the buttercups
and their allies have none. The pomegranate and all pomaceous
fruits are furnished with that organ; the olive and all drupe
bearing trees are destitute of it. This appears to be the earlier
idea of a calyx; the first movement toward the bringing in of that
green-leafy circle close behind what was called the "flower," to
where it should be recognized as a part of the flower. But his
having technically defined the calyx does not preclude his occasional

204 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. $4

employment of the term in an untechnical sense, that is, as de-
signating some other organ that happens to be shaped like a cup;
thus we find him calling the lily flower a calyx,1 i.e., a chalice-shaped
flower.

His doctrine of the flower in general is that of Theophrastus hardly
improved upon. There are two kinds, the leafy and the capillary;
but both are united in, for example, the rose. The term petal is still
wanting in botany. Its introduction into the vocabulary will not
be proposed until two generations after Fuchsius. The foliar parts
of a flower are still leaves only. Yet what is curiously interesting
is, that already as the green leaf is seen to have usually that which
they have called its petiolus, or pediculus, so the flower leaf is
credited with having its unguis, or claw; the more or less narrowed
basal part by which it is attached to its receptacle. Fuchsius
defines well enough this unguis, even remarking that in the flower
of a red rose this claw is white. And so the distinguishing of the
two parts, blade and claw, in this organ historically antedates the
naming of the whole organ as petal; and Fuchsius, so far from
affirming this to be a new distinction of his own making freely
attributes it to "the ancients."

In this Fuchsian vocabulary occurs what is perhaps the earliest
botanical definition of stamens. There is so much of history in it
that one must reproduce it as literally as may be. " Stamens are
those apexes that come forth from the middle of a flower-cup ; and are
so called because they rise up like filaments out of the inmost bosom
of the flower." As a definition this is illogical and bungling;
for both the anthers and the filaments are separately called the
stamens; not by any means the two parts that go to the making
up of stamens ; either one alone is stamen according to his absurd
statement. In the first clause the anthers, apices, are the stamens;
in the second, the filaments are the stamens. That what he de-
nominates apices are the anthers is clear as day from his description
of the flower of the common white lily, where he remarks that in
this the apices are yellow ; for no other parts of the lily blossom
are yellow but the anthers.3 The term filamenta by its very mean-
ing applies to no other organs but the filaments and styles. Let
us note here that there is yet no description of a stamen. The author
neither thinks nor speaks of the thing but in the plural. What he

> Hist. Stirp., p. 363.

2 " Stamina sunt qui in medio calycis erumpunt apices; sic dicta, quod
veluti filamenta ab intimo floris sinu prosiliant." Fuchs, in the vocabulary.
J Hist. Stirp., p. 363.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 20$

has seen, and what all the botanical authors before him had seen,
is a tuft of delicate things standing up from the midst of the circle
of colored flower leaves. The ancients had written of them as
•flocci, or as capillamenta, still only in the plural. No one had ever
looked into the individuality of one of those flocci or capillamenta.
To have done that would have been to lead the way to the discovery
that the members of the filamentose tuft are not all alike; that at
least the one central member — if not the whole central membership
of the tuft — is different from those that stand between them and
the circumference of the flower. There would soon have been two
kinds of Stamens to describe if one stamen had been defined,
because of those — the styles and their stigmas — which would not
have answered to the definition.

Now Fuchsius in practice writes of these tufted things in the
middle of a flower as the apices. This is a distinct departure from
the terminology of antiquity, and is withal a departure in the
right direction; for the ancients had seen and written of flocci,
capillamenta, and the German had seen — perhaps by some unknown
mediaeval botanist had been taught to see — the little knots that
surmount the outer set of the flocci, and from these little apical knots
the whole stamen-tuft had been named anew, "apices." This
term, whensoever it made its appearance, came in like a kind of
prophecy that the terminal knots were one day to be received as
the only essential parts of the tuft. One would willingly concede to
Fuchsius the invention of this term which shows that anthers are
being noticed; but he was in no sense a botanical discoverer, and
he availed himself of many an old book and manuscript of which
we have no knowledge.

For the staminate tassels of hazel, walnut, and oak trees he has
also now a name; whereas the ancients seem to have had none.
But he has no more idea what these tassels are for than the ancients
had; though he ventures the guess that they are instead of flowers;
thereby proving that he had never seen the pistillate or real flowers
of any of them. He calls the pendents nucamenta, nut-tassels, and
describes them in language borrowed from Theophrastus who,
as we have been learning, had a much better knowledge of nut-tree
flowers then Fuchsius ever attained to.

Fruit and Seed. The Greek ^philosopher's comprehensive and
classic definition of a fruit is either unknown to Fuchsius, or else
he purposely condescends to the popular notion; for he says that a
fruit is something made up of flesh and seeds. This is quite in
keeping with his definition of a raceme as being a cluster of fruits.

206 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

i.e., fleshy fruits, rather than a particular mode of clustering in
both flowers and fruits. Seed coverings other than fleshy are dis-
posed of by him under two or three distinctive terms. There is
the silique, the vasculum and the capitt as well as its diminutive,
the capitulum. The legumes he says are siliques, and yet many
other herbaceous plants and even shrubs bear siliques; and we infer
his silique to be any kind of an elongated and two-valved pod.
He ventures upon no definition of what he calls vascula, beyond
this, that they are the coverings of seeds. His account of head
and capitulum is, that they apply to any well rounded and solidified
part of a plant, whether basal or terminal. An onion-bulb, resting
wholly above ground and therefore not a root, is a head, a caput; and
so is the head of a cabbage, and also the round indurated capsule
of a poppy. If he knew anything of Theophrastus' technical de-
finition of a fruit as composed of pericarp and seed, he does not
appear to me to have made use of it, or of the term pericarp.

The seed is not defined in our author's vocabulary, or even
mentioned there otherwise than incidentally.

Phytography. There has already been cited this opinion of
phytography from Brunfelsius,1 that the best way to reform and
improve upon mediaeval plant description would be to restore word
for word the descriptions of the ancients. At a later time it was
thought — and the thought was carried into action — that the only
possibility of improvement in phytography lay in wholly disregard-
ing the classic texts, and writing all plant diagnoses anew. Such a
proposal as this last would have filled either Brunfelsius or Fuchsius
with amazement; and also not unreasonably, for neither of them
had in view the reformation of botany in general. Both were
aiming at the correction and improvement of that which we of to-
day would speak of as the botanical part of the pharmacopeia.
They were interested in phytography, because it is one of the necessi-
ties of medical botany. The most trying part of their work was
that of the identification of ancient remedies; and their only clues
to the identity of any of them were in the ancient descriptions.
We have followed Brunfelsius in his giving, for some plant newly
figured, page after page of different descriptions literally quoted
from those whom he regards as standard authors, not willing to
divert the attention of the student by a single line of his own;
willing that they who study his book shall judge for themselves
whether what he has figured under a given Theophrastan, or
Dioscoridean, or Plinian name has been rightly identified.

1 See page 172 preceding.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 207

The ideal of Brunfelsius is high. His book is for scholars; but
Fuchsius plans to be more popular. He will publish twice as many
plates as the former had done, and for the sake of economy must
reduce the number of pages of printed matter. The average is
not much more than a half-page to a plate; yet the descriptive
part of Fuchsius' volume is not in all respects insignificant when
compared with that of Brunfelsius. There is a falling off in the
bulk of interesting and useful matter; but some good phytographic
distinctions are made which do not appear in Brunfelsius.

Every chapter of Fuchsius is divided into separate and separately
named paragraphs, of which always the first, headed Nomina, is
devoted to the name and synonymy of the genus, and con'ains
nothing else. In the case of every monotypic genus the second
paragraph is headed Forma. In this we read always the morpho-
logic marks of this type ; at least such of them as Fuchsius can copy
out of standard authors. When, however, a generic type is known
to be made up of two or more species or varieties, then this morpho-
logic paragraph is not second in order but third; the second being
now given to the naming and defining of the species or varieties;
and this occasional second paragraph is always under the caption
Genera. In an earlier chapter an explanation has been given of
the primitive use of the term genus, and its plural genera, as
meaning nothing more nor less than the kind or kinds of a thing.1
It is plain that Fuchsius' "genera" are the species and varieties,
while under Forma he gives the morphology of the genus as a whole.
The placing of the descriptions of species and varieties first, and
that of the genus next below is illogical in the extreme; but there
are still other intimations that a logical mind was not among the
learned Fuchsius' natural endowments. But this segregating of
the morphology, the ecology, and the properties of a plant, and
the relegating of each to its own paragraph is definitely an improve-
ment in phytography, and is perhaps an invention of his own.

Taxonomy. We are learning that there was in Fuchsius nothing
of the plant anatomist or physiologist, something of the organ-
ologist, but that he was in no wise given to philosophizings about
plant life and form in general; that he was a medical botanist,
dealing with plants from the utilitarian point of view. He would
not have appeared as a taxonomist had not taxonomy been in-
evitable wherever more than one individual plant is treated of.

Concerning the larger and more comprehensive groups, the

1 See pages 115, 1 1 6 preceding.

208 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

genera major a of the botanists of a somewhat later period , the orders
or families of to-day, there is little to be read in Fuchsius; for his
sequence of genera is alphabetic, a kind of arrangement which pre-
cludes the grouping of genera into families. It does not, however,
in any way influence the definiteness of the genera themselves, or
of the species composing them. The work is divided into 343
chapters, and each chapter is devoted to one genus and no more;
so that the number of genera treated of is the same as the number
of the chapters. Many of the genera are represented by only a
single species, many by two or three, several by four or five, and
one has seven species, all described and figured. But one must
not pass to the study of his genera without noting certain lapses
from the alphabetic arrangement which are made in deference to
what are held to be the affinities of a genus. These are not numer-
ous, but they are enough to show Fuchsius as susceptible of being
influenced by the idea, even in his time an old one, that some genera
are interrelated. Here it must also be observed that the alphabetic
order he follows is that of the Greek rather than Latin names of
genera. For medical botany, all through the ages and down to
Fuchsius' time, Greek rather than Latin was the preferred language
of nomenclature, at least with those best educated; because all
three of the most venerated authorities upon that part of botany,
Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and Galenos had been Greeks and had
written their treatises in Greek. Now while in his Latin text
Fuchsius uses the Latin names of things, quite as he ought, the
generic names heading the chapters are the Greek generic names;
and the sequence is that of Greek letters of Greek names; so that
the chapter on the genus of the elder trees or bushes is headed
not Sambucus but Acte, and that of the plantains not Plantago but
Arnoglosson.

Now for a sequence of genera in a book of sixteenth-century
botany, the choice of the Greek alphabetic order left its author
certain liberties. All Latin names are naturally exempt from such
a rule ; and there were now in Fuchsius' time not a few plants holding
places in the pharmacopeia which had not been known to the
Greeks of old, and which therefore had only their Latin and their
vernacular appellations. Since the Latin names of these may not
consistently head chapters where the headings are professedly
Greek, Fuchsius is apt to use these as occasions for giving ex-
pressions of opinion about natural affinity by placing them in the
line of what he conceives to be their real kindred. For one
instance, take his placing of Datura ^tetel, a plant then newly

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 209

introduced into Europe, where it was known only by the Italian
name of Stramonia. Since it has no Greek name he locates it where
he will; and we who have been taught that there was no natural
classifying of plants until well toward the end of the eighteenth
century may well be surprised that Fuchsius places this at the end
of a line which begins with Solanum nigrum, such perfectly solana-
ceous types Solanum melon gena, Phy sails somnifera, and Atropa
Belladonna intervening.

That very early in the sixteenth century there was already in
exercise the taxonomic skill to put together as under one com-
prehensive natural genus such diverse-looking consanguinities as
the five plants here named is something that merits more than
passing notice. It is another -of those forceful intimations that
much of the botanical history we once learned must be unlearned.
Let us remember that we are now at a point more than one hundred
and fifty years anterior to those great lights, Morison, Ray, and
Tournefort, and some two hundred anterior to Haller, Jussieu, and
Adanson, to which latter trio is usually accorded all the glory of
having first outlined such natural groups as this. But Fuchsius
himself intimates that from very ancient times there had been a
somewhat familiar knowledge of four out of these five plants, and
says that both Dioscorides and Galenos had held them to be
kinds of ffrpi'xvov, i.e., Solanum.1 But the referring of so marked
a new type of plant as Datura to the anciently recognized group of
the Solanum allies by men of the sixteenth century will hardly fail
to suggest to some that there must have been, after all, some appeal
to anthology. Certainly the conventional nineteenth-century
botanist finds no stronger links uniting these two plants to one
family than the symmetrical pentamery of the flower, coinciding
with a plicate praefloration and superior ovary. It is none the less
well beyond question that not a single point anthological had in-
fluence in determining the affinities of Datura. The corolla has not
yet, at this period obtained its name. It is still the "flower'*
simply. Neither stamen nor style had been taken note of as an
individual organ; much less had the two been distinguished, or the
members of either set been counted. Floral symmetry was yet
unnoticed; and, marked as is the aestivation, or praefloration of
solanum and all its allies, the very topic of praefloration was not
yet heard of in Fuchsius' time, nor did it begin to figure in taxonomy
until some two centuries after his demise. According to Fuchsius,

1 Hist. Stirp., p. 691.

210 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

his best reason for locating this type in the line of the nightshades is
the fact that its herbage exhales the narcotic odor characteristic
of all other nightshade allies. Plant classification, then, in Fuch-
sius' time has not yet emerged from the period of antiquity ; and
botanists are still considering agieement among plants as to their
vegetative and qualitative characteristics, giving little heed to
those of flowers or fruit. And a fair measure of success not rarely
attended taxonomic effort guided by these criteria. But the
success, however marked in the case now in mind, was not quite
complete. Capsicum is undoubtedly a solanaceous type, but this
fact Fuchsius failed to apprehend; yet the failure is not unaccount-
able, notwithstanding that, viewed morphologically, capsicum is
much more plainly akin to nightshade than is Datura. The plant
was a new one in German gardens of the sixteenth century as was also
Datura. It had been as unknown to the ancient Greeks, and had
no Greek name ; therefore Fuchsius could have placed it next Solan-
urn. The fact is, no one had yet seen its relationship. The plant
lacks the narcotic odor. Every part from leaf to seed is of a peppery
odor; and this quality, amounting to a burning pungency of taste,
joined to the peculiar medicinal qualities, blinded every one to
that affinity for Solanum which every one now sees in Capsicum.
It must not, however, be inferred that this principle of qualita-
tive agreement is held an inviolable rule in this early taxonomy.
"With botanists of that time, quite as with those of every later
generation, the endeavors to form groups are dominated sometimes
by one principle, sometimes by another. It is easy to bring forth
outjrf Fuchsius instances of putting things together as of the same
genus regardless of odors and flavors and of almost all other marks
save those of roots and leaves and general mode of growth. Under
the genus Verbena he figures two species. There is the most decep-
tive likeness between the two as to roots, stems, leaves, and a
slenderly spicate inflorescence of small flowers; but one of these
verbenas is Verbena supina, the other is Sisymbrium L&selii; a
true verbena and a crucifer made congeneric; in the Fuchsian
binary nomenclature Verbena recta and Verbena supina.1 It will
not be easy for the systematist of to-day to imagine so natural
an alliance as that of the crucifers remaining unrecognized by
those who had already recognized the solanaceas; yet as to roots,
foliage, and habital characteristics the crucifers differ among
themselves a hundred-fold more widely than do the solanaceae.

« Hist. Stirp., pp. 59 1-593 •

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 211

Despite what we of later times perceive to be the naturalness of
the cruciferous group, its recognition had to await the development
of anthology; and I have met with no evidence that up to the time
when the career of Fuchsius was ended there had yet lived a botanist
who had known the floral structure of a crucifer. Even the
Theophrastan elements of anthology seem to have been sunken in
oblivion ages before the birth of Sprengel's and Meyer's and Sachs'
" German Fathers of Botany," one or two of whom were to renew the
investigation of floral structures; though Fuchsius was hardly one
of these.

The contemplation of these quaint herbalistic genera based on
vegetative characters and ignoring flowers and fruits is both en-
tertaining and instructive. It is as if one had discovered in these
antiquated tomes a fossilized and now extinct system of plant
classifying; and the reader will not fail to be interested in glancing
at the outlines of other such genera. Fuchsius has one little genus
for which he brings forward into print, from out an unpublished
manuscript, the name Pilosella. Here is the composition of the
genus : 1

Fuchsian Recent

Pilosella major Hieracium Pilosella.

Pilosella minor Antennaria dioica.

He has tried to make one of the plants answer to the Myosotis of
Dioscorides. It does not well agree, and he is confident that neither
of the two was known to the ancients. Both are well known in
Germany, and of repute as vulneraries, on which account he must
not omit them. The German herbalists of his time know one of
them by the name Pilosella. That will suffice for a formally
generic name, and with it he has already headed his Chap, ccxxx.
'Two kinds of it are found, differing in nothing but the flowers.
One of them has leaves that are larger, and do not lie flat upon the
ground. Its flowers are yellow, and it is named Pilosella major.
The other has smaller leaves that lie flat upon the ground, and
purple flowers which disappear with a pappus. The Germans have
for this the names Little Mousear and Rabbitsfoot. In a manuscript
herbal I find these plants disposed of as Pilosella major and minor."
I thus present a literal version of what our author had to relate
respecting the components of this his genus Pilosella, even to the
interesting admission that the whole chapter had been borrowed

' Hist. Stirp., pp. 604-607.

212 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

from an old herbal in manuscript — illustrated by drawings, no
doubt — which had been available to him. Even the specific names
P. major and P. minor were from said manuscript. Contemplating
these two plates, whether the proposed genus consisting of a
hieracium and an antennaria seem rational or absurd will depend
entirely upon whether one view the types with the eye of the
modern botanist, or with that of him of Fuchsius' time. The
modern, taught by the traditions of not more than five or six
generations of his more recent botanical ancestry, looks at the
flowers only, and in consequence realizes only that the two must
be regarded as of widely separate genera; for one has the flower
head of a hawkweed, the other a congested bunch of cudweed heads;
and as to the structure of their individual flowers they represent
something like two extremes. But it will be both illogical and
unfair to test the consistency of the earlier classification by pre-
suming to hold it amenable to modern taxonomic principles ; though
this seems to be about what the readers of old botany, and even
the historians, have always hitherto been doing. The consistency
of the Fuchsian Pilosella is readily seen if, blinding ourselves as he
and his forbears were blind to small floral structures, we look at
and compare those parts of the two plants which tbey looked upon
as bearing marks of consanguinity. Both the antennaria and
hieracium are small perennial herbs of one and the same mode of
growth, and that mode rather exceptional. Each has its leaves most-
ly in a basal tuft, and bears its flowers at the summit of scapiform
stems. A number of depressed stolons leafy with a smaller foliage
radiate from the base of the stem of each, so that both in the same
fashion propagate vegetatively and form colonies. Add to these
and other points of morphologic agreement the consideration that
both were received as possessing the same remedial virtues, and
we have a rational genus according to all the leading principles of
sixteenth-century taxonomy.

Thus comprehending the situation — realizing that these groups
that look so strange and motley have not been formed at random,
but rather under guidance of definite principles — every such group
acquires a new and even a lively interest. Let us open the book at
its initial chapter. The name of the first genus is Absinthium.
Three species are described, two of them figured well. They are:

Fuchsian Recent

Absinthium vulgare Artemisia Absinthium.

Absinthium Seriphium Sisymbrium Loeselii.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY— GREENE 213

Thus a cruciferous plant, common in German vineyards and hedge-
rows, is made congeneric with wormwood because it has similar
foliage, and also is thought to answer to Seriphium in several other
particulars. It is a good example of futile effort to identify with
the Seriphium of Dioscorides a very different plant of central
Europe which Dioscorides never saw, and which, by the way, if he
had seen it, he would never have thought of as a kind of worm-
wood; for, as we have seen, the Greek did not quite disregard floral
structures, but could distinguish genera by anthologic marks.1

But Fuchsius' disregard of flowers in these generic groupings
is manifest again close by Absinthium, in his Anthemis. The
name of the genus and those of all three species are taken up from
Dioscorides, as he says, and the following is his identification of
them, the names at the right being those now in use.

Fuchsian Recent

Anthemis leucanthemon Matricaria chamomilla.

Anthemis chrysanthemon Anthemis tinctoria.

Anthemis eranthemon Delphinium Consolida.

Judged by the modern and improved standards, the locating of a
larkspur as congeneric with chamomile is the worst of conceivable
taxonomy; and it is impossible that in this Fuchsius interpreted
Dioscorides otherwise than erroneously and even almost stupidly.
The Greek had habitually looked at the flowers of things, and had
shown clearly a tendency to regard the forms of flowers as taxono-
mically significant. Concerning Anthemis in particular he declares
that the flowers in the three species differ only as to the color of the
little leaves that encircle the centers of the flowers, which central
part he says is yellow in them all.2 Now concerning the identity of
the white-rayed and the yellow-rayed Anthemis species of Dioscor-
ides there never had been any doubt; therefore as to these two
Fuchsius was but reiterating the expression of a common opinion.
The third member, however, that is, the purple-rayed anthemis,
was problematic ; for there is not known in those regions where the
ancients botanized a purple-rayed composite having the foliage
of an anthemis. But there need not be; for any ranunculus-
flowered or anemone-flowered branching herb, if it had the foliage
of anthemis might have been relegated to that genus. It is only
to the trained eye of the modern botanist that the rayed head of a

1 See page 180 preceding.

2 Dioscorides, Book iii, ch. 130.

214 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

composite and a ten-petalled flower of an anemone or a buttercup
seem very unlike. By the ancients, and by everybody down to
Fuchsius' time and much later they were not regarded as being
different. The superficial likeness between the two is great. In
either type there is a yellow center made up of little things com-
pacted together, and this is encircled by rather many narrow leaves
apt to be different in coloring from those of central tuft, or mat, or
cone. The different constituency of those yellow centers in anthe-
mis and anemone no one had yet perceived, even in Fuchsius' time.
With him, as with all botanical antiquity, the yellow middle part
was made up of the "stamina," the " capillamenta, " the "flocci,"
in anthemis as in anemone : and that the circle of colored leaves is a
circle of ray-flowers in anthemis, and of petals or sepals in a*nemone
and buttercup — that is a refinement anthological of which neither
Dioscorides in his day, nor Fuchsius fifteen centuries later, had ever
dreamed. But in the grain fields of Greece and Italy there grew
in abundance one anemoneous herb with perfectly anthemideous
habit and foliage, and flower leaves dark-red — easily within the
wide range of the purples of the ancients. Must not this have been
the Anthemis eranthemon of Dioscorides? Its modern name is
Adonis cestivalis.1 Certainly this, rather than Delphinium Con-
solida, is the third anthemis of the Greek physician. And the
fault of Fuchsius is his utter disregard of those floral marks in
respect to which the Greek had said that all three species of an-
themis were at agreement; though as to mere foliage, and the
annual root as well as more of growth, the larkspur-anthemis of
Fuchsius answers well enough to the other kinds; and this would
have been the apology for Fuchsius' erroneous determination of the
plant, had he not virtually disclaimed it for himself by attributing
it to some unknown earlier botanist whose anonymous manuscript
has been at his disposal. In this manuscript he says, "there is an
exquisite drawing of this plant, which is commonly called consolida
regalis, " and then he proceeds to quote, from this unknown author,
the following: " Some call the herb Monachella or else Capuciaria,
doubtless in allusion to the hood of the monks, which the flower
recalls. Dioscorides calls it Eranthemon, and it is one of the kinds
of Anthemis, having the foliage of the chamomile, though of a
darker green ; but the flower is rather like that of a violet. " 2

Evidently the author of that unpublished commentary had been

i See Matthiolus, Comm. (ed. of 1565), pp. 904-906, with fine plate of
Adonis, in between two plates of anthemids.
' Hist. Stir p., p. 28.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 215

too superficial in his knowledge of the wild plants of Mediterranean
fields to well interpret Dioscorides. But his identification of the
third anthemis appears to have suited the fancy of Fuchsius and
he approved it. His former rival, Brunfelsius, a dozen years
earlier had maintained that the Consolida regalis was sui generis, and
did not think it had been known to any of the botanists of antiquity.1

There seems to be evidence within the book of Fuchsius itself
that the work was long in preparation, and the middle and later
chapters printed so much later than the earlier as to bear intimations
of his mind's having changed somewhat in the direction of an ap-
preciation of floral structure as having some value in the de-
termining of plant relationships. While his contemporaries
Brunfelsius and Tragus hesitated to distinguish generically be-
tween the real nettles and the labiate-flowered dead nettles, Fuch-
sius separates them widely, and under the names of Urtica and
Lamium2 ; this, however, not as an original proposition, but as
adopted from Dioscorides and Pliny.

In his description of the genus Pisum, the garden pea, he says
that its flower is shaped like a butterfly; but I do not find him
using the expression in describing other plants of that family;
and while this is the earliest mention of the papilionaceous corolla
form that I have met with, I still think it improbable that it was
original with Fuchsius.

Among several new genera proposed by this author there is one,
namely Digitalis, which he establishes almost upon the form of the
corolla alone.3 This genus of two species, which he names re-
spectively D. purpurea and D. lutea, practically concludes this
volume of more than 900 pages ; and so a course that began in almost
total disregard of anthological considerations, ends in the admission
that floral structure may upon occasion be of such high taxonomic
import as to furnish the most essential character of a genus. Con-
trasted with the beginnings of the volume, this conclusion of it is
taxonomically very significant; even prophetic. It forecasts the
time a hundred and fifty years later when Tournefort, running to
another extreme, would essay the systematization of all petaliferous
plants, almost by the corolla alone.

Nomenclature. All the unconventionality, simplicity, and brev-
ity of a primitive and even a classic nomenclature marks the

1 Brunfelsius, vol. i, p. 84.

* Urtica, Hist. Stirp. pp. 105-109, three species; Lamium, Ibid., pp. 468, 469,
also three species.

» Hist. Stirp., pp. 892-894

2l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

plant-naming of Fuchsius. As already indicated he heads each
chapter with the Greek name of the genus, unless perchance the
plant was unknown to the Greeks and has no Greek name; then
the Latin name is used. For every one the Latin and the German
synonyms are given, and that in the first paragraph of the chapter,
under the caption " NOMINA. " Still more carefully considering the
convenience of pharmacists and the untutored collectors of simples,
he causes to be printed on each plate the Latin name of the species
at the lower left-hand corner, and at the right-hand corner the Ger-
man. Quite as we expect to find it, we read on plates representing
monotypic genera no name at all but the generic. Commonly such
names consist of but one word. Such are Adiantum, Alth&a, Anethum,
Asarum, Asparagus, and scores of others as familiar and as ancient.
But there is also no dearth of purely generic names for monotypic
genera that are of two terms. There are Acorus officinarum,
Tagetes Indica, Plantago aquatica, .Aster Atticus, Barba Capri, Vitis
vinifera, Vitis alba, Vitis nigra, Viola pur pur ea (= Viola), Viola
alba (=Matthiola), and very many more like these. There is no
ground for questioning that every one of these names is purely
generic. There is no warrant for denominating so much as one of
them "a pre-Linnaean binomial," that is, a name of which the
first word is, in the accepted sense, generic, the second specific.
Names binary, and of just this last named quality do also abound
in Fuchsius ; but these now cited, and also a host of others like them,
have nothing in them of the generico-specific meaning which all
binaries in use to-day convey, and are understood to convey.
Now that Fuchsius does not mean by Plantago aquatica any species
of the genus Plantago is put beyond all doubt or cavil by the facts,
first, that he takes it as the topic of a chapter apart from that in
which Plantago proper is discussed1 ; and second, that the officinal,
or more properly scientific (Greek) names heading the chapters are
totally distinct, the one being Arnoglosson, the other Alisma.
Concerning Vitis vinifera, now long in the status of a generico-
specific binary, it is as readily demonstrable that with Fuchsius it
is purely generic. Assuming that in primitive times the one word
Vitis — in Greek a ^TteAos — was, as it now again is become, the
generic name for grape-bearing shrubs, there came in later such
two-worded generic names as Vitis alba, Vitis nigra, Vitis Idcea,
etc., each standing for a completely and widely different genus.
It is easy to see that such multiplication of generic names beginning

i Plantago (of two species) is the topic of ch. xi, pp. 40, 41; Plantago
aquaiica (monotypic) is of ch. xii, pp. 42, 43.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 217

with Vitis rendered it needful that the original Vitis should receive
also a second and modifying term in order to avoid confusion; and
thus there came into existence, and of necessity, the generic name
Vitis vinifera instead of the simple and primitive Vitis. Let us
see what Fuchsius' genera of which this term is a part of the name,
really are :

Fuchsian Recent

Vitis vinifera Vitis

Vitis alba Bryonia

Vitis nigra Clematis

Specific names, with this German father, quite as with all his
forbears that I know aught about from Theophrastus forward, are
strictly binary. One simple word, almost always adjective,
constitutes the specific term of such binary, and is the cognomen,
as some called it. It happens, indeed, with many a such binary
name that it is composed of three separate words ; but that is always
for the reason that the generic name is of two words. Not much
less than a hundred of Linnaeus' trivial names of plants are of three
distinct words; but this is because he makes the specific part
of such names to consist of two words, and never the generic part.
This is precisely the difference between the Fuchsian and the Lin-
naean binary nomenclature; and there exists no other difference.
We amend Linnaeus by connecting by a hyphen his two-worded
specific names. This is done in order to preclude if possible any
questioning of the fact that the two words which we have hy-
phenated are to be thought of as one. It were equally in place to
hyphenate the terms of Fuchsius' two-worded generic names.
This done, he who ran might read the truth that all Fuchsian plant
names not those of monotypic genera are as strictly binary as those
of Linnaeus; with even this one difference in Fuchsius' favor, that
he has no two-worded specific names.

As to general principles of botanical nomenclature, those of
Fuchsius seem few, and easily ascertained. Those principles appear
to be convenience, etymological suitability, brevity.

If all his names are binary, and, as being the mere names, hold
places entirely apart and distinct from the descriptive paragraphs,
as they always do, then there is not even the suggestion in Fuchs-
ius of those "phrase names," so called, which became a burden
upon the phytography of two centuries later ; and it may be said of
his work that it is quite a model of brevity in nomenclature.

Inasmuch as the Greek names of genera are older than the Latin,

2l8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

and he gives to them a kind of precedence, making them the head-
ings of his chapters, there might arise a question whether the Greek
names were preferred on account of their right of priority. But
there is other evidence that the principle of priority in nomencla-
ture obtained no recognition with him; was perhaps never once
thought of. The standard works on the materia medica in use
everywhere in Fuchsius' day had been written in Greek; which
fact alone would give the highest prestige to Greek plant names.
Their Latin names, needful to be used for the convenience of the
many who knew Latin but not Greek, were in every way as valid
as the Greek names. Both were used, chiefly as a matter of the
greater convenience to readers and students as a body. That he
never thought about rights of priority as worth contending for
comes out as clearly as possible in his presenting a new genus with
the new generic name Digitalis. :< We make use of this name,
until we ourselves or some one else shall have invented a better
one."1

The above remark attests its author's opinion that there could
be appropriate names and inappropriate, and that names either
bad, or even not very good, might well be suppressed in favor of
new ones more suitable. Even the principle of convenience, which
always favors the retention of an established name whether bad
or good, may be overruled for the rejection of a name that is ill
constructed, and the substitution of a new and better one. There
is one generic name that had held good for some fifteen centuries,
a Greek name too, which he declines to adopt as the heading of
its chapter, evidently because etymologically distasteful to him.
The name in Greek is Ocimoides, formed by the addition of aides to
the generic name Ocimum. Instead of the ancient and established
Ocimoides he writes for a heading to the chapter the new name
Ocimastrum2; an initiative in the reform of generic nomenclature
which Linnaeus two centuries later was to carry forward with
universal approval.

He who thinks that nomenclature, like the science itself, should
be subject to advancement and improvement, must be believed
to have his reasons; though Fuchsius does not appear to have
declared his. One thing, however, we observe, and that is that all
the names he uses have their meanings. A genus is named in
allusion to some morphologic or qualitative characteristic; or else
in honor of some personage who had to do with botany; or rarely,

iHist. Stir p., p. 892.
'Ibid., p. 895.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE

from some foreign country whence the plant or tree had been in-
troduced into Europe. But there is nothing of the meaningless
and cabalistic in any of the 343 generic names that head as many
Fuchsian chapters. The meaning is not in every instance plainly
to be 'read in the name itself. That which it once had when newly
coined, has now and then become obscure, if not quite lost, through
the lapse of ages. But there are not yet in botany anagrammatic
names, nor any that had been framed by the putting together of
two or three meaningless though perhaps euphonious syllables.
The beginnings of such an epoch in nomenclature we shall not Jook
for until after the time of Linnaeus.

In specific nomenclature, however, we note in Fuchsius a free
use of cabalistic names. In genera of two species one is very apt
to be named mas, the other fasmina, and since at that time nothing
was known about sexuality in plants, such names had little mean-
ing. But quite as frequently the first species is called prima, the
other altera; and in the case of his fine plates of six species^of
Geranium, they are named G. primum, G. alterum, G. tertium, G.
quartum, G. quintum and G. sextum.1 Though without a trace of
diagnostic significancy, and purely cabalistic, we shall find that
this kind of specific adjective came into use very extensively in the
works of botanists of a generation later than Fuchsius.

1 Hist. Stirp, pp. 204-210.

CHAPTER VII
HIERONYMUS TRAGUS 1498-1554

AN original and even eccentric character, singularly gifted as a
botanist, was Hieronymus Bock, whose names in literature are
several ; for his earliest publications were made in Latin, under the
name Hieronymus Herbarius. Brunfels in his first volume publishes
a number of paragraphs the manuscript of which had been furnished
by his friend Bock, and these are all credited to him as Hieronymus
Herbarius — Jerome Botanist, or Jerome Herbalist, as you like.
So again, in the Appendix to Brunfels' second volume, there is a
document of some length, entitled Apodixis Germanica.1 This is
in German, and is by Tragus, but still under the name Hieronymus
Herbarius. In the numerous German issues of his principal work
he figures as an author whose name is Hieronymus Bock. When
the great botanical merit of this work had been intimated abroad,
and a Latin edition of it was thereby called for, in this he appeared
under the Graeco-Latin name Hieronymus Tragus. By this name
therefore is he known in the botanical world in general. The
genus that was dedicated to him by Father Plumier therefore
necessarily took the form of TRAGIA.

Life. No adequate biography of this interesting character
seems to be known. We trust that we have to a certainty the
year of his birth ; we have the date of his marriage, the maiden name
of the bride, the names of her parents, and even the number of
guests that were in attendance ; and all this out of Tragus' own diary.2
Neither is there any disputing the date of his death, the place of his
burial, or the name of the preacher who delivered the funeral pane-
gyric. But all these are matters which, in the biography of a
reputed scholar, a practicing physician, and the beneficiary of a
lucrative parochial endowment, are of subordinate interest.
What one most wishes to know are the names of the colleges and
universities at which the man studied, the schools whence he had his

1 Brunfels, Viv. Icon. vol. ii, pp. 183-199 (in my copy).

2 Melchior Adam, Vit<z Germanorum Medicorum, p. 68.

220

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 221

degrees in medicine and in theology. In other cases there is or-
dinarily no doubt of the date of the conferring of a degree, or of the
admission to sacred orders. Upon these several points, each
of prime importance to even the briefest sketch of the career of
a noted scholar, physician and clergyman, Tragus' biographers
from Melchior Adam away back in the year 1620, down to Ernst
Meyer in 1857, are silent. Not one of them names a school of
any grade, or of any profession, which the man was known to have
attended; and if any should suspect Tragus of having been a
medical practitioner without a diploma, and of having enjoyed as a
Protestant layman the income of a large Catholic parochial en-
dowment, there is not a line in the most authentic biographies, as I
have read them, by which to allay either suspicion.

Tragus was born at Heidesbach, not very far from Heidelberg,
in the year 1498. Concerning the estate of his parents as poor, or
as in easy circumstances, nothing is known. As a youth he was found
uncommonly well educated; whence Meyer inferred that the parents
were well to do. That inference may as easily be wrong as right.1
At the monasteries of the period there was free education for boys
of intelligence and promise, if their parents were poor. Meyer,
writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, should have be-
thought himself of this, that in the Germany of Jerome Bock's
boyhood Luther and the reformation had not yet appeared, and
monasteries were everywhere. The biographers all affirm the
disappointment of the parents at the young man's final and very
fixed determination not to become a monk; and the disappointment
seems to imply that he had been placed under monastic influence,
and on their part hopefully.

The considerable views which we obtain of Tragus' life here and
there do not show him always happily circumstanced, but rather
more commonly as acquainted with adversity. Physically he was
a consumptive. Even out of the ten children born to him eight
died young; and he survived also the mother of them. It is in the
year 1523, when he is twenty-five years old, that we find him settled
in Zweibrucken, under the appointment of the Palgrave Ludewig,
as a school teacher, and also as in charge of gardens of this prince,
which he is said to have enriched with many plants.2 This favor-
able incumbency Tragus seems to have held for some nine years, and
came to an end in 1532 by the death of the Palgrave Ludewig.
Quite before this date we should have found Martin Luther a central

1 Geschichte der Botanik, vol. iv, p. 303.
J Meyer, Ibid.

SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

figure before the German public, the ecclesiastical revolution in
progress, and Jerome Bock a zealous and outspoken Protestant.
Prince Ludewig's successor, Friedrich II., was either still firmly a
Catholic, or else unwilling to declare himself a partisan of Luther;
and Jerome Bock, botanist, lost his position and became penniless
with a young family on his hands.

A plan inaugurated by some sympathizing friend for his relief
is one that ought to have been regarded as somewhat hazardous,
and indeed may have seemed so to them; but it was attempted. A
beautiful country place called Hornbach was the site of a Catholic
church dedicated to Saint Fabian and, long before Tragus' time,
richly endowed by private munificence. The parish was vacant.
Luther's influence had been felt there and the membership was
divided between allegiance to Rome and sympathy with Luther.
It was hoped, so says Melchior Adam — himself strongly a Lutheran
partizan — that the "old superstition" had been banished to such a de-
gree that the new incumbent would be able to complete the " reforma-
tion" of St. Fabian's. The event proved otherwise, and the incumbent
was obliged to retire; not, however, very promptly, nor until after he
had done much botanizing in the wild rich regions roundabout ; such
journeyings being made, as he informs us, disguised as a peasant.

On his enforced retirement from this anomalous and only quasi-
official incumbency he was again in the straits of poverty extreme ;
until relief came in the form of a bidding to make his home in the
castle of Count Philip of Nassau, who remembered our botanist as
having once brought him safely through a dangerous illness. His
sojourn with this friend seems to have continued through several
years, though for precisely how long can not be ascertained. Dur-
ing this interval, however, the affairs of St. Fabian's Church
at Hornbach had undergone a change, probably that of the elimina-
tion of the Catholic element ; for a way was now open for Tragus'
return to the enjoyment of that benefice. He is said to have
received a hearty welcome back by those remaining, and that he
ended his days there not very long after his return is certain. He
died of consumption early in the year 1554, at the age of about 56
years. A half-century or so later when Melchior Adam was en-
gaged upon his biographies of German worthies, a search appears to
have been made for Tragus' tomb at Hornbach. On the site of
St. Fabian's Church nothing remained but a mass of ruins; but forth
from under the fallen rocks they were able to bring a memorial
tablet bearing this inscription: *

1 Melchior Adam, Vita Germanorum Medicorum, p. 70.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 223

"Anno Dom. 1554, 21 Febr. Hieronymus Tragos, animae
corporisque medicus, et canonicus huius asdis, in Domino Jesu
obdormivit; cuius anima in consortio beatorum quiescit. Amen."

Phytography. The third in order of time among the more
noted German botanists of his century, Tragus is the first in their
line to actually describe plants. Brunfels had caused pictures to be
made, and then by way of comment on each picture had gathered
together all that creditable authors in times past had written about
the plant, repeating their language to the letter, and citing reli-
giously the volumes and the pages. Fuchs had also pictured
every plant, and then to lessen the cost of printing, had presented
short descriptions, compiled from other authors, and for the most
part given forth as his own.

Two circumstances, both beneficent, united their influences to
make 'Tragus' work peculiarly and distinctively a book of plant
description. First of all, the man was by nature an ardent lover
of plants. He began to pursue botany for the mere love of it,
without thought of thereby acquiring either fame or profit. He
who loves things will see much in them to which the indifferent
calm and cool observer is blind. If the born botanist — not the
machine made one — write of plants he will find language wherewith
to enable his readers to see what he has seen in a plant ; and this is
phytography. The second favorable circumstance was that of
poverty. Tragus at first had no money with which to employ
draftsmen and engravers. When he yielded to the entreaties of
friends of botany that he would prepare a book, he wrote it in the
German language, and with the intent that unfamiliar plants at
least ; hould be recognizable with German readers by his verbal
descriptions of them alone. In passing at once from the descrip-
tions in Fuchsius to those of the Latin edition of Tragus, one is
impressed by the originality and the vastly superior excellency
of the latter, it should be recalled that the high quality of them is
largely due to their having been first written and published in Ger-
man,1 and without thought of their ever being accompanied by
pictorial aids to the identification of the plants; and that it was
their great success as descriptions that called for the republication
of the book in a Latin version, so that the whole might be available
to scholars everywhere outside of Germany.

While easily to be ranked among the fathers of phytography,

» Both the New Kreutterbuch (1539) and the Kreutterbuch (1546) are in
German; the former without illustrations.

224 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

and even as the first of them in point of time after Theophrastus,
Tragus does not systematically describe all the plants which he
finds occasion to present for discussion. The most familiar things
of field and garden, such as every one has known from time im-
memorial he neglects, as to their organography, assuming, as did
the ancient authors, that the names will recall the images of the
plants to the mind of almost any reader. It is the wild things,
the native growths of Germany, together with the more recent
introductions into German gardens, which engage his powers of
verbal delineation.

To the vocabulary of descriptive terminology Tragus does not
make any considerable additions. He very commonly employs
the old established system of comparisons ; conveying an impression
of the root, the stem and mode of growth, the leaf-outline, the in-
florescence of a less known plant, by comparing them with the like
organs in very familiar types. Sometimes he does, what every one
besides had always done, that is, he repeats old comparisons that
had been in steady use unaltered for a thousand years and more,
and occasionally he makes bold to suggest a new one which he
thinks better. Dioscorides had described in the following terms
the foliage of a certain plant:1 "Cyclamen has the leaves of the
mature ivy bush, but colored purple, and variegated with whitish
markings." Of course Tragus had pondered well this classic line,
but thought it might be improved. Here is his own description of
the leaves of what he takes to be the same plant. ;'The leaves
of cyclamen are spread over the ground in a circle, are very similar
to those of the ivy, 01, as I think, of the asarum rather, of a dark
green, underneath somewhat reddened, above more brownish, and
marked with whitish spots."2 This is liable to be promptly ad-
judged a better description than the other, at least for cyclamen
leaves as most people are used to seeing them; and the cyclamen
which Tragus knew in Germany has foliage assuredly more like
that of asarum than like that of old ivy. But what renders the
attempted amendment of the Greek author's diagnosis infelicitous
is this, that Dioscorides never saw the cyclamen species that Tragus
knew, and that at least some of the several Mediterranean cyclamens
have leaves of more nearly ovate outline, and therefore better
likened to bush-ivy leaves than to those of asarum. The audacious-
ness of Tragus .is not diminished by the consideration that Dios-
corides had not only also known asarum, but in describing its

1 Diosc. Book ii, ch. 158.

2 Stirp. Comm., p. 905.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 225

foliage had definitely indicated wherein it differs from that of ivy1 ;
so that if the cyclamens of Greece and Italy as he had known them
had shown asarum leaf outlines he would have been likely to have
said so. Tragus was deceived by his own gratuitous supposition
that the cyclamen of Germany was the one only cyclamen existing.

The common mullein had been used in medicine from the time
of Hippocrates; but in the books not much more than one line of
description, and that of the leaves only, had been accorded it.
Nothing even remotely approaching the following by Tragus had
been written about it:

" A very notable thing in this plant is the long straight thick
root, of a woody hardness. Its leaves, especially the earlier, lie
close to the ground, are rather broad and long, of a whitish aspect
and woolly, more so than those of helenium (that is, elecampane,
Inula Helenium). Not until the second year does it send up its
stem, full of a white pith within, like the elder, and sometimes
attaining a man's height, clothed with leaves which gradually
become smaller and narrower as they approach the summit. The
flowers, yellow, woolly, and most sweet smelling are of five distinct
leaves, and completely cover the stem from where they begin up
to the very apex of it ; which falling away are succeeded each by a
woolly globe crowded full of seeds not unlike those of a poppy.
When the plant is in flower it well resembles a beautiful torch,
whence the name King's Torch has been given it. "2

It is the earliest botanical account given of the mullein. The
writer of it is manifestly a botanist ; for he has busied himself with
the investigation of this plant as a plant, not as a thing either
useful or useless. The subject of this piece of research is but a
weed, but he has followed it through its life history, examining
its root, dissecting its stem, noting the norm of its foliage, and also
the deviations from it, has counted the segments of the corolla,
discovered that from within there is exhaled a pleasant odor, has
inspected with care the seed vessel and its contents, likening the
seeds within it to other seeds that every one is familiar with.
There is even added an item of the folklore of the plant. The like
of this comes very near to being something new in the history of
botany ; and the book abounds in plant descriptions of this new and
original type.

For an example of his diagnosis of a plant never before described
by any one, take that of the Lily of the Valley:

1 Diosc. Book i, ch. 9.

2 Stirp. Comm., pp. 216, 217.

226 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

" From a fibre bearing an extensively creeping root somewhat
like that of lolium there arise in the month of April green sprouts
not so unlike those of asparagus, which turn out to be nothing else
than a pair of green leaves closely wrapped together, and supported
on a common footstalk. Now when these two begin to separate
from each other they assume the appearance of a pair of leaves of
the white lily; at the same time there is seen to arise as from be-
tween them a triangular peduncle ornamented by five or six little
globes placed one after another, of about the size of a chick pea,
which in the latter part of April expand to little cymbal-shaped
flowers of a snowy whiteness, round, hollow, serrated around the
lower part (i.e., that part looking toward the ground), in the
middle within marked with a purple spot, the whole flower most
fragrant, but of a bitter taste. After the falling away of these they
are succeeded, at the end of June, by a coral-red fruit not unlike
that of the asparagus. "l

The production of this fine word picture had been prompted by
something more than mere admiration for a beautiful plant which,
although unknown to descriptive botany, has risen to high repute
in medicine, at least in Germany. A spirit of friendly rivalry
seems to have added zest to those morphologic investigations from
which the description followed. Brunfels, who had been first to
figure the plant, had found no description of it anywhere, and
left it without any. Concerning the medical authorities of the
time, whose chapters he had ransacked in search of some account
of it, he says he has found them "as silent as fishes." We learn
from Tragus that Brunfels afterwards changed his mind in so far
as to doubt whether this might not be the Hemerocallis of Dioscori-
des3 ; and Tragus the more carefully studies lily of the valley from
earliest spring to the end of the season, and describes it every part
from root to fruit, that he may successfully controvert the view of
that " man of pious memory, Otto Brunfels. " The argument, given
at full length, occupies a separate paragraph appended to the
description.

On his frequent excursions to the woods and other wild lands,
Tragus nad discovered many growths hitherto unknown; and while
never until late in life having thought of availing himself of the en-
graver's art, he published a long list of such by verbal delineation
only; and so well that plates, when at last in a new edition he

1 Stirp. Comm., p. 572.

» Brunfels, Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. i, p. 212.

' Stirp. Comm., p. 573.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 227

made use of them, were wellnigh superfluous, at least to all who
were competent to read the descriptions. No greate praise can
be given any man of that epoch, than will be rightfully accorded to
Tragus in adjudging him to be, for the whole era of modern botany,
the first father of phytography after Theophrastus.

Anthology. It was now quite time that some one should
resume the investigation of floral structures; a part of botany in
respect to which no advancement had been made for fifteen cen-
turies. Neither Brunfels nor Fuchs had even so much knowledge
of them as had been attained to by Theophrastus eighteen centuries
before. The Greek had said concerning nut trees and oak trees
that, over and above those vermiform tassels whose use and nature
he could not explain, they have real flowers , things out of the very
heart of which nut and acorn were developed. Fuchsius, the
famous professor of medicine . physician to the titled and the
affluent, and moneyed employer of draftsmen and engravers to
figure plants, had boldly ventured the unwarranted opinion-
contradictory to that of the great Theophrastus — that the tassels of
oak and hazel take the place of flowers, and that such trees have
no other kind at all.1

Tragus, the poor schoolmaster, the apparently unlicensed country
doctor, the unordained preacher of the new evangel, welcomes this
kind of an opportunity to assail the errors of the dogmatists who
sit in exalted station; for, whatever else Tragus may or may not
be, he is a botanist well worthy of the name. The combined
botanical knowledge of all the Brunfelses and Fuchses of Germany
is but a small fraction of what he has seen and taken note of in the
book of nature. He has studied the hazel bushes both wild and
cultivated in their several species, from the time of the lengthening
of their aments in February, all through the spring, and the summer,
and the autumn. Theophrastus had averred that, whatever the
tassels might not be, the bush has flowers, demonstrably such by
the fact that the fruits develop from them. Of the form and
coloring of such flowers, and the time of their appearing, he had
given no hint ; and since at the period with which we are dealing,
quite as during two thousand years before, the first idea of a flower
was exactly our idea of a corolla, and none had ever seen such
things on hazel bushes at any time of year, it was not so wholly
inexcusable to deny that there were hazel flowers. And yet, the
most cursory reader of Theophrastus' chapters on flowers must have
seen that he recognized flowers as either petaliferous or apetalous,
1 Fuchs, Hist. Stirp., p. 397.

228 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

even though he did not use those terms; and thus, if corylus failed
ever to deck itself with corollas, the next thing in order would be
to scrutinize the shrubs in quest of the Theophrastan "capillary"
flowers. In such a quest as this Tfagus was successful; and since he
is the first to actually describe the fertile flowers of Corylus Avellana,
his words have such historic value that we must quote them:

" All kinds of corylus have diminutive red flowers, resembling the
very short stamens of a crocus, which they display just before
the unfolding of thei' leaves. It is in the month of February
that those aments which some erroneously suppose to be the flowers,
acquire their yellow coloring. Theophrastus in the sixth chapter
of his third book of the History of Plants makes mention of the
proper flowers of corylus; nevertheless Leonard Fuchs and John
Ruelle. besides some others, persistently deny that corylus has ever
any flowers ; a thing which beyond doubt they would not have done,
had they ever once looked into the book of nature on the subject." 1

After so signal a contribution to the anthology of the hazel, and
especially after such public castigation of Fuchsius and Ruellius,
it was fateful that Tragus should err, and that ridiculously, in his
philosophy of alder blossoms. Here, having denied that hazel
aments are flowers, he is confident as can be that alder aments are
true flowers ; and he proves it in this wise : " The alder, at least when
full grown, adorns itself in spring with brownish flowers, almost like
those of the birch and the beech; but they do not fall off, as we
have observed that they do in the beech, but are permanent, and
come to be drawn together so that they at length acquire something
like the configuration of an olive. And this is the fruit of the alder,
which matures at the end of summer, and then falling sows itself,
so that by this means new alder trees are produced."2 After-
wards in giving account of the flowering and fruiting of birches he
betrays the same nnocence of the real origin and history of the
small seed-bearing cones3 ; inferring that they had been produced by
a final contracting and thickening of the pendulous staminate tassels.
A less erratic and more logical mind would not have been con-
tent with affirming that the loose pendulous aments of birch and
alder are real flowers, and at the same time denying that the very
similar ones of hazel have anything at all of the nature of flowers.
Yet when it comes to the oaks, Tragus must again be given a
credit mark as having detected, next after Theophrastus, their very

1 Tragus, Stirp. Comm., p. 1095.
a Ibid., p. 1085.
J Ibid., p. 1114.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 229

obscure fertile flowers. 'The leaves of all kinds of oaks when
young are very small and delicate, and there appear with them
at this stage long yellow aments. . . . After the aments there
come forth very small red flowers which subsequently transform
themselves into acorns."1

Sexuality in plants never yet having been apprehended, Tragus
had no conception of the fact of dicecism. He studied the catkins
of willows, but without discovering that those of some individuals
are promptly deciduous, and that only those of certain other
individuals remain longer. He therefore wrongly attributes to
willow catkins indiscriminately the quality of remaining on the
tree until they have developed a kind of wool which sails away on
the passing breeze. In just this connection, however, he makes a
remark which reveals him for once in the character of a truly
inductive philosopher, unwilling to venture a broad general con-
clusion from an isolated fact. :< Whether this wool of willows be
their seed or not I do not know, except as regards the fourth species,
in the case of which it at least takes the place of seed; for in this
I have caught the floating wool, have sown it, and have seen wil-
lows of this same species spring up from the sowing. "

As to certain particulars in the structure of petaliferous flowers
the chapters of Tragus seem still more clearly to herald the coming
of a new era in anthology. Not that he has any new doctrine of the
flower. So far from it, he follows the universal and time-honored
practice of calling, in the case of petaliferous flowers, that and
that alone the flower, which only long after his day came to be
known as the corolla. But he observes and takes note of things
outside of this " flower, " and of other things inside it, the tendency
of which notes and observations is to raise a question as to whether
there are not other things which, taken together with the circle of
colored leaves, should all collectively be thought to constitute the
flower. He does not formally propound any such question. Even
that suggestion of it which his language carries, it is more than
likely he himself did not perceive. Let us attend to a few instances
of anthological comment that seem to be new and original with
Tragus.

As subjects of brief description and of various comment the
poppies are very ancient, and were so in Tragus' time; and he is the
first man in all history to describe the plants as with the pen of a
botanist ; the pen of a man who had looked at them with his own

1 Stirp. Comm., p. 1101.

2 Ibid., p. 1073.

230 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

eyes, and had seen points of morphology never mentioned before
him. One of these points relates to the " flower" before its unfold-
ing; or as we should now say, to the flower buds. No such ex-
pression as flower bud, however, was yet in use; and Tragus names
the thing a capitulum, a little head. Poppy plants have what have
been called from time immemorial their heads, that is to say their
capsules, or seed vessels; and Tragus now attributes to them a
second kind of head, one never before mentioned; and this is his
language: 'The head from which the flower is to break forth is
covered with a pair of skins (cuticuli), green as to color, and also
hairy. When the flower itself is ready to make its exit the two
integuments separate and promptly fall away."1

He has several genera, and in all some eight species and varieties
of poppy allies, and to the group as a whole he attributes this
pair of caducous integuments. It is a significant item in the his-
tory of anthology. He has recorded the discovery of an organ,
and has given at least the hint of its possible availability in
taxonomy; but, as is usual with discoverers, he is in advance of the
time in which his work will be appreciated. It will be yet two
hundred and forty years before this pair of integuments to the
poppy bud will acquire their name as sepals, and about as long
before their caducous nature will be recognized as a good character
for the family of the P ap aver ace <z.

In respect to the forms of flowers, i.e., corollas, there are evident
traces of attempts — perhaps half-unconscious efforts — to generalize.
As if the wild rose might have been looked upon as the most per-
fect flower-form, or at least as a most representative type, he is
given to speaking of other broad petalled and subrotate flowers
as being rose-like, or even as being roses. In describing Paonia,
which he figures in a single-flowered state, he twice refers to its
" roses, " hardly using the word flower at all. ;< In all our Germany
you will hardly find a more elegant rose than that of paeonia";
and again he says that " toward the end of April a round head at the
summit of each stem all at once breaks into a broad red rose."2
In like manner he speaks of the flowers of hollyhocks only as roses,
and is wont to denominate any large flower of five petals widely
spreading as rose, or at least as rose-like. Smaller ones, with petals
equally spreading, and especially if they be acutish petals, are his
"stellate" flowers. But if the five spreading petals be unequal in
some degree, and especially if one of them be at^all_prolonged at

1 Stir p. Comm.t p. 119;

2 Ibid., p. 582.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 231

base into a hollow protuberance or spur, such a corolla is not with
him a flower but a "violet." The proper violets, that is the
acaulescent kinds, and the pansies or tricolor kinds, are regarded by
Tragus as by all others before him, as of two genera with different
generic names; yet flowers of both are spoken of not as flowers
but as "violets"; and the same term is applied to the flowers of
larkspurs.1

But there is a second and very different corolla-type which is
also called by Tragus a violet-flower, namely, the cruciform.
This came about by reason of the familiarly known fact that in
the nomenclature of that period there was a genus Viola purpurea —
sometimes called Viola Martia ( = Viola], and also a genus Viola
alba ( — Mattkiold), besides even a Viola lutea ( = Cheiranthus). It
is with this cruciferous viola type in mind that he describes the
flower corymbs of Viburnum Opulus as adorned with " an outer
circle of large white violets consisting of four leaves. " 2 But among
the crucifers particularly, the flowers of all that have rather large
and showy petals he habitually speaks of as violets; for example
those of the mustard,3 the cabbage,4 and the turnip,3 with also that
of celandine.6 That it w'as not the merely cruciform arrangement
of spreading petals that caused a flower to be called a violet of
this type becomes apparent when one has observed that Tragus
never applies it to the blossom of any small-flowered crucifer. In
the case of the lepidiums, and Bursa Pastoris, and all others having
diminutive petals, it is his custom to say only that the flowers are
small and of such or such a color; never speaking of them as even
small violets. For the crucifer- violet to be called a violet there
must be some approximation to the size and showiness of the wall-
flower and gilliflower.

But now, the learned philologist may interpose that, after all,,
both rose and violet, in the speech of primitive peoples are terms
indicative of not particular kinds of flowers ; that each, in its origin,,
is but the synonym of that other and later word flower. Nor may
this be successfully controverted. The very nomenclature of scores-
of familiar flowers to-day attests the truth of it. There is Christ-
mas Rose (—Helleborus], China Rose (^Hibiscus Rosa Sinensis),

1 Stir p. Comm., p. 568, 903.

* Ibid., p. 1002, under the name Sambucus aquatica.

* Ibid., p. 100.
« Ibid., p. 718.

* Ibid., p. 728.
« Ibid., p. 106.

232 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Guelder Rose ( = Viburnum Opulus) , Rock Rose ( = Cistus) Rose of
Sharon ( = Hibiscus Trionum) ; also there is Dame's Violet ( = Hesperis
matronalis) Dogtooth Violet ( — Erythronium), and a great number
of other such, for plants that have no affinity to either the rose
genus or violet genus. Doubtless with some of the peasantry of
several countries to-day the showy flowers they know may be
found classified in their languages more or less definitely as roses,
lilies, and violets. And something like this was most certainly
true four hundred years ago in rural Germany where Tragus was
born, and where he did all his botanizing. And although I find
him twice using the term violet for small flowers that do not readily
fall into either of his two definable categories of violets, I do not
think that either one instances a lapse into that primitive usage
under which the term is synonymous with smallish petaliferous
flowers in general. If he calls the flower of the catsfoot, or ground
ivy1 a violet, the color of the flower, and the irregularity of its co-
rolla-limb may have suggested it ; and the corolla of a bryony2 is not
unlike that of the sterile outer row of those in viburnum 3 corymbs.
That he in truth goes far on the way toward a convenient morpho-
logical classification of corollas is evinced by his giving diagnostic
names to still other forms. Among the polypetalous he even dis-
tinguishes the rotate from the rosaceous. The flower of nigella he
says is " round like a wheel, "4 that is, the petals spread away in a
flatly horizontal direction from their axis, a thing which can not
be said of either rose or paeony petals. It is an excellent dis-
tinction, not noted even by Tournefort the great corollistic systema-
tist of a hundred and fifty years later ; for he describes the nigella
flower as rosaceous.5 The campanulate, or campaniform, was
also named by Tragus. In his description of the plant hyoscyamus
lie says that it has little bells for flowers.6 The corollas of cam-
panula, 7 of digitalis,8 and of vaccinium9 are said to be campaniform.
The funnelform is also alluded to, though under the term cym-
"baliform. He attributes that configuration to lily and morning-

1 Stir p. Comm., p. 798.

2 Ibid., p. 819.
* Ibid., p. 1002.

* Ibid., p. 117.

* Tourn., Elemens., vol. i, 225.
« Stirp. Comm., p. 132.

' Ibid., pp. 724, 926.
-» Ibid., p. 888.
•» Ibid., p. 974-

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 233

glory flowers. In a word, he is so definitely the first forerunner of
Tournef ort in the matter of observing and carefully noting a number
of marked corolla forms, that it seems due him that a list of them
should here be given synoptically.

1. Rotate, typified in Nigella.

2. Roseform, typified in Rosa, Paeonia.

3. Violetform (proper), typified in Viola, Delphinium.

4. Violetform (cruciferous), typified in Cheiranthus, Matthiola.

5. Stellate, typified in Sedum, Solanum.

6. Campaniform, typified in Campanula, Digitalis.

7. Cymbaliform, typified in Convolvulus, Oxalis.

Gifted with keen perceptibilities in the matter of floral structures,
it is rather remarkable that Tragus did not assign names to such
very strong corolla-types as the bilabiate and the papilionaceous ;
for I find in him no trace of any term by which he would designate
either one. Even the later Latins seem to have denominated
certain very nettled-leaved labiates as " nettles with a lip "; and this
most lynx-eyed and original inspector of flowers seldom names
anything more than the mere color of labiate flowers, once only-
the case of glechoma above referred to — giving perhaps a hint of
the form. In respect to the flower of leguminous plants he does
not so much as second the suggestion of Gesner that the pea blos-
som has the form of a butterfly, but attributes, for example, to the
pea vine the flower of genista, and to genista in its turn the flower
of the pea, and so on to the end of the series. There was never-
theless in Tragus' time a German school boy who had already
coined the term papilionaceous for these flowers, though only in
manuscripts that were not published until after Tragus' demise.

Among those scattered anthological notes which, to his con-
temporaries and to himself, may have seemed of least moment
were his various observations upon stamens. Their function had
not yet been guessed at, or even by Tragus himself so much as
thought about. The organ had not been even morphologically
contemplated, in its individuality, up to the time when Tragus
began to examine it in different flowers comparatively. From
time almost immemorial they had been mentioned only collectively,
in Latin writing, as the capillamenta, the flocci, the stamina, the
apices; mostly a tuft of thready things, with or without knotted tips.
It is altogether a new thing in botany for a man to write as follows
concerning the white-lily flower: "From out the bottom of it

234 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

there stand forth six apices, and these yellow; then prominently
from the midst of them a kind of thickish stamen that is green and
has a triangular head, the whole being shaped something like a
walking stick. "*

In a flower of the size of a lily such diagnosis of less obvious
parts is easy, insomuch that one need not have been surprised if
many a writer before Tragus had indicated them as well; but for
similar inspection and diagnosis a gooseberry blossom was small
and difficult for a botanist whose researches antedated the inven-
tion of hand lenses. The following is our botanist's account of it;
and it is the oldest one extant: 2 " In March the bush puts forth its
flowers, small, concave, purple, which if you examine them one by
one you find to contain within five diminutive apices each sup-
ported on a hair, the whole resembling a little bell."3 Another
flower which he is first to describe is that of the hawthorn. This is
not much larger than the gooseberry blossom, and of less simplicity
in its structure ; but he brings out its characteristics quite as clearly.
" The individual flower is made up of five small white leaves, from
out the middle of which there stand many white things like hairs
supporting rose-colored apices, such as one observes in all poma-
ceous flowers. "^ Among his "pomes" Tragus includes also the
drupe-bearing trees, and his account of their floral structure is
given once for all under the caption of the Wild Plum. 'The
individual flowers of the wild plum consist of five bright-white
leaves; and in the midst are seen about eighteen as clear white
capillamenta or stamina each supporting its small yellow apex.
Just about this is the structure of the flowers of nearly all the pomes,
cherries, plums, pears, and apples, except that some of them exhibit
a greater number of capillamenta and apices than do those of this
wild plum."5 From this point forward throughout the line of the
pomaceous and drupaceous trees, he has little to say of the flowers
beyond this, that "they are those of all the pomes," sometimes
remarking that the "apices " are red, or that they are yellow.

In thus taking a census of individual stamens, recording the
number of them as being constant in each different kind of flower,
even distinguishing by name each of their two parts, it is evident

1 Stir p. Comm., p. 794.

1 Fuchsius had said of gooseberry flowers only that they "are of a purplish

green. "

Stirp. Comm., p. 978.
« Ibid., p. 934-
* Ibid., p. 1016.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 235

that Tragus on his own part was but entertaining himself and some
of his readers with mere curiosities ; that he had no notion whatever
of the real importance, to the future of botany, of that which he was
doing. Let us, then, take a still more careful survey of the things
which he accomplished in this particular direction which were for
the advancement of anthology, albeit he himself was all unconscious
of their import. To begin enumerating the stamens of particular
flowers, and to record in each instance the count, was to make a
decided innovation upon the immemorially established anthology
of Tragus' time, which had always treated of them in the aggregate
only, as tufts of hairs or threads. If he announces that in every
gooseberry blossom there are just five such hairs or knotted threads,
that is announcing that he has made two different comparisons
of them: first, a comparison of the five one with another, and then of
these with two other hairs quite different from them which occupy
the very center within their circle. He does not mention these, the
styles, or style-branches, yet can not have failed to perceive them.
But he now proceeds virtually to define a stamen. It is the little
apex, and the hair on whose summit the apex is sustained. Else-
where he repeats the definition more explicitly, and, avoiding the
use of any new terms, he calls that the " capillamentum " which
we now know as the filament, and "apex" is his application of
an old term to what has become the anther of modern anthology.
Tragus is, then, the discoverer of the stamen as a definable organ
made up of two separate and different parts, each part with its own
name. The same is very near being true of him as regards also
the pistil. We have just seen how accurately he could describe
the style and stigma of a lily as things quite apart from the stamens ;
and as to the flowers of common fruit trees, we must eel assured that
he saw the one style of each plum and cherry blossom that he
inspected, and the five of them that are conspicuous in the flowers of
pear and apple trees. He did not mention them; but then, they
are as plainly visible there as the stamens themselves, and both his
enumeration and his definition of these prove that he did not
confuse the styles with them. Curiously enough, after having
located and well outlined the large lily style and its stigma, the
very next account he gives of such central thing is in connection
with a flower even smaller than that of a gooseberry, namely,
of the little ericaceous undershrub then called Myrtillus.1 Here
the stamens seem to have escaped his notice, as they easily

1 The Vaccinium of recent botany.

236 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

may have done, being both minute and hidden away within the
partly closed hollow of the corolla at its base, falling away with it;
but the style is very obvious, and in describing this hollow bell
of a corolla he says: " It has in the middle a red-brown something
like the clapper of a bell, which, after the falling of the flower
grows into a round reddish berry. ' ' l The Latin term used for this
thing in the middle of the flower bell is pist ilium. It is the first
instance of the employment of that term to designate what has
long since become universally known by that name.

On the whole, then, as by suggesting the classifying of corollas
this author is the first herald of Tournefort ; much more conspicu-
ously as the first investigator, even fairly the discoverer, of stamen
and pistil, is he the first forerunner of Linnaeus. It was anthology
which created the new botany of the eighteenth century and the
nineteenth; and the beginnings of the modern anthology are with
Tragus.

Fruit and Seed. Well in advance of classic antiquity in the
knowledge of floral structure, Tragus not only added nothing to
carpology, but had never learned either from Theophrastus or by
research of his own anything like all that Theophrastus had attained
to along this line. One may doubt if any other book was ever
printed, or even written in any age, in which there find expression
so many whimsical and superstitious fancies about seeds. In a
general way they seem to fall short of having that value in the
economy of plant life and plant distribution, in Tragus' opinion,
which even a remote antiquity accorded to them. The transmuta-
tion of the seeds of cereals into germs of chess and darnel he accepts
without the expression of a doubt. Abiogenesis, the doctrine of
the origin of living things from lifeless matter, he accepts un-
waveringly, and with a plenitude of faith probably surpassing that
of the Greeks who aforetime invented the theory. He even defends
it by theologic arguments2 ; and by it he explains the coming into
existence not only of low and simple flowerless things, but also of
some of the highest types, even of trees. The time seems to have
been when he had thought that all willows had at first come forth
spontaneously from the mud of river banks ; for he knew them to be
propagated by cuttings always, and no one had ever seen or heard of
a willow seed. Even when with such truly scientific inquisitiveness
he had planted some of the " white down" that he had gathered as it
was about to float off from a willow, and had afterwards the satisfac-

i Stirp. Comm., p. 974.
» Ibid., pp. 1125, 1126.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 237

tion of seeing willows spring up as from that down, this neither
convinced him that all the other kinds of willow might be raised
in that way, nor even that any willow had ever borne a real seed.
He says that one out of the four species of willows which he de-
scribes can be propagated in this way; but he vouches for none of
the others; does not infer that the other three may be found pro-
ducible from "willow down." Nor did he have any idea that he
had planted willow seeds. 'The down takes the place of seed."1
There are certain kinds of poplar, and even of maple, which he
thinks never bear seed at all, and which he therefore thinks came
into existence abiogenetically. These were dioecious trees, none
of them indigenous to Germany, and perhaps then existing there
in only the male sex. He has seen the tassels of Populus alba,
and knows them to be always deciduous ; also no one knows of any
seed as consequent to the flowering of Acer pseudo platanus. They
are seedless, and therefore, to the faith of Tragus, abiogenetic in
their origin. It even seems to be his opinion that certain plants
plentifully seed-bearing may upon occasion spring up and mature
in places where no seed of them had fallen. It is upon just this
theory that he accounts for the occurrence of individual plants of
many kinds on high walls of solid masonry and upon the roofs of
buildings. No orchids, in his understanding of them, produce seeds
at all. He is familiar with the fact that in autumn, as the plants
are withering away, a very fine dust falls from where the flowers
were, but he affirms that this perishes together with the season's
growth of stem and leaves.2 He presents to his readers a strange
fancy about the primal origin and the perpetuation of this class of
plants. He is the first author to mention, and may or may not
have been first to observe in the flowers of orchids, resemblances to
birds and other flying things ; but he writes much as if he had been
the inventor of the theory that this kind of seedless plants originates
from certain excretions of birds. It is in the chapter that is devoted
to the birds' nest orchis that he explains this belief. Such plants, he
remarks, abound chiefly in and about thickets where small birds
mate and nest.

The belief in all kinds of spontaneous generation, of even seed
plants as well as the seedless, did not preclude all research on
Tragus' part along these lines. There is a picturesque account of
nightly vigils in search of the problematic seeds of Osmunda regalis.3

1 Stirp. Comm., p. 1073.

2 Ibid., p. 784.

3 Ibid., p. 544.

238 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

While it was generally held that all fern-like plants are seedless, this
one seems to have been popularly credited with shedding seeds
regularly on one particular night of the year. Thus runs Tragus'
own story:

:< Inasmuch as all writers about herbs have said that ferns pro-
duce neither flowers nor seeds, I have thought it worth while to place
on record, for the information of botanists, an account of my own
experiences, which prove the contrary. For four years in succession
I kept vigil all the night preceding the Feast of St. John Baptist.1
and always found in the very early morning, before the break of day,
very minute black seeds, not so very unlike poppy seeds lying on
the pieces of cloth, and the mullein leaves which, in order that I
might not miss the seeds, I had placed under the plants beforehand.
Some of the ferns had shed no seeds at all; others had deposited
them by the hundred. Moreover, in these experiments, I employed
no cabalistics, no conjurings, no incantations, no superstitious
observances of any kind, nor did any one of the three companions of
my vigils; but having made a fire we watched and waited, some-
times finding none, at other times a few here, and many there. Why
there should be such a diversity in the yield of seed, and what the
purpose of nature may be in all this matter, I do not understand. "2

This account incidentally reveals it that in middle Europe in
the sixteenth century there still flourished the ancient profession
of the root and herb gatherer, in the practice of its old time
superstitions; that men believed that under the sacred spell of
the summer-solstitial midnight such flowerless and seedless herbs
as ferns, by help of solemn incantation could be made to scatter
seeds ; these presumed to be efficacious in medicine or magic. Tragus,
the inquirer and reformer, half believing and half disbelieving,
investigated the matter, proving to his own satisfaction that ferns
bear seeds ; that they produce them naturally, without the prompt-
ings of conjuration; yet it seems not to have occurred even to our
reformer botanist to look for fern seeds in the day time, or at night
except on that immediately preceding St. John's Day!

The distinction, indicated so long ago by Theophrastus, between
plants with one seed leaf and those with two, though never again
brought forward prominently until long after Tragus, had not been
ignored by him. It had been the cereals and their kindred to
which the Greek had ascribed the one seed leaf as a universal

1 The 24th of June; otherwise called, at least in Old England, Midsummer
Day.

2 Ibid., p. 544.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 239

characteristic. There was now common in Germany one bread-
stuff plant which the ancients had not known, namely, buckwheat.
Tragus describes and figures it among the proper cereals, but
with the remark that it differs from all the rest of them in that it
comes up from the seed with a pair of leaves instead of with one
alone, in this respect more like a turnip or cabbage.1 And although
he was a student of wild plants rather than of cultivated, there are
many instances of his concluding a description with the statement
that the seedlings of such a plant come up with two leaves. Now and
then he mentions the outline of such seed leaves in some particular
plant as contrasted with those of some other; showing that he not
only observed but compared them in different plants. But this
does not seem to have had any purpose beyond that of gratifying
his own curiosity and stimulating the like in his readers. There is
no indication of his having apprehended the taxonomic significance
of these distinctions between monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous
seeds. The time for the birth of this great thought lay distant
from Tragus a hundred years and more.

Taxonomy. In his Preface Tragus abjures the alphabetic
arrangement of genera as unscientific, bringing in confusion where
natural order ought to be. He is clear in expressing the determina-
tion to adopt a natural sequence. " In describing things, I come
as nearly as I can to keeping by themselves such plants as nature
seems to have linked together by similarity of form."2 This was
no new proposition. Ever since plants had first been observed
philosophically, and written about, various groups, varying sever-
ally as to their extent and inclusiveness, had gained recognition as
natural groups through resemblances in morphology. Tragus
knew this well, and was only indicating his choice of natural method,
in preference to the purely artificial alphabetic arrangement of
genera, such as Fuchs and Gesner saved themselves labor by ad-
hering to. Neither does he contemplate considerable innovations
upon the long established method of grouping and arranging
things. By his own frequent peerings into the curiosities of floral
structures and recording what he saw, he has vividly suggested a
new anthology. He has even begun it; and in the course of its
future development it is going to revolutionize taxonomy completely
and that twice over; yet nothing of this is even dreamed of by
Tragus; and his superior knowledge of floral morphology has little
real and almost no appreciable effect upon his own classifyings.

1 Stir p. Comm., p. 648.

2 Ibid., Praefatio, ch. xiv.

240 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Tragus' taxonomy, like that of all his forebears, is established
upon characters of the vegetative organs, with no strong appeal to
flower or fruit; and the primary grouping of things as trees, shrubs,
and herbs is in his estimation natural and valid. Nevertheless a few
exceptions are taken by him against this rule. An underlying
principle of such a rule, or at least a logical deduction from it,
is that no one genus embraces both trees and herbaceous plants.
And really there was but a solitary genus known in early botany
that was troublesome to those who regarded the distinction between
woody plants and the herbaceous as being taxonomically fundamen-
tal. There was the tree Sambucus and the herb Ebulus. These are
their classic Latin names, and the import of this nomenclature
is, that they are of two genera. Ebulus is not even in the least
degree woody or shrubby in any part. In texture and duration
it is as perfectly a perennial herb as the common asparagus or
rhubarb. Dioscorides, the great Greek physician and medical
botanist, having regard to pharmaceutical principles as well as taxo-
nomic, received Ebulus as a kind of Sambucus. They are alike,
he says, in foliage, flower, fruit, and medical properties.1 Tragus,
consistently adhering to the fundamentals of classification there
accepted, describes and figures Ebulus among the genera of herbs;
for even his readers, every one, would look for it among the herbs
and not among the trees; and Sambucus is treated of far away, in
the third book, under the general topic of trees.2 In both places,
however, he ventures the opinion that the two are naturally of one
genus. Under Ebulus he says, " If you consider its foliage, flower,
and the heavy somewhat sickening odor of the herbage, you must
regard it as nothing else but a smaller and herbaceous kind of
Sambucus. " Under the latter he says again, " As to its leaf, flower,
fruit, and odor this is so exactly like Ebulus that the ancients were
wont to receive them as of one and the same genus."

From a period too remote for precise limitation, only Sambucus
and Ebulus seem to have militated against the taxonomic validity
of that old distinction between herb and tree; and we shall be
interested in following the subsequent history of this taxonomic
puzzle to its final solution.

That old philosophy of the three grand divisions of Tree, Shrub,
and Herb unquestionably carried with it the opinion, certainly
not altogether unreasonable, that trees are of highest rank, and
herbaceous plants of the lowest. Under this system it will be seen

1 Diosc., Book iv, ch. 168.

9 Stirp. Comm., pp. 796 and 996.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 241

that some authors began with the highest and proceeded to the
lowest, and that other authors, beginning with the herbaceous
genera, ended with the ligneous, the largest and most enduring trees
coming last of all. This last is the order followed by Tragus ; not,
however, as one philosophically viewing the plant world from lowest
type to highest as a genetically connected whole. It is, on the con-
trary, quite certain that that Aristotelian idea, only now very lately
reinstated, never entered Tragus' thought at all. If he takes up
herbaceous plants first in order, it may well be because they are
both the most numerous as to the genera and species, and of the
highest importance to man. Nevertheless we shall find him very
much given to running like things together and thus forming groups
within groups, lesser ones within the more comprehensive, whether
he be dealing with herbs or with shrubs or with trees. This is
taxonomic work ; and this is the way in which he fulfils the promise
made in his Preface about natural arrangement. We must follow
him now for some distance, and very carefully, if we are to arrive
at an understanding as to what botanical system really was, in
Germany, in this first half of the sixteenth century.

In no author as early as Tragus is there given any introductory
synopsis or tabulation of the system. Such convenient and helpful
skeletonization is a later invention ; and here one gathers informa-
tion about the system, even to the principles that underlie it,
only through following the author chapter by chapter from the
beginning of the volume to its end.

For a work like this, of 1200 pages, the selection of 100 for such
analytic study must suffice. They might be taken at random from
any one of the three divisions of the treatise; but we shall select
the first 100. Within these there are embraced figures and de-
scriptions of some 74 species, distributed to about 31 genera".
Now this proportion of something like two and a half species to a
genus was something new in botany and is therefore one of the very
significant features of the book; so much so that we must give it
a moment's consideration before passing to a study of the sequence
of the genera. In order to realize the meaning of my statement that,
for the time at which he wrote, the ratio of two and a half species
is so great as to amount to an innovation in taxonomy, a brief com-
parison must be instituted. The 500 or 600 plants that the ancients
had dealt with represented, in the great majority of cases, what we
of to-day are accustomed to speak of as monotypic genera. Not
any very considerable number of their genera are defined as con-
sisting of two or more species ; so that they had but one and a small

242 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

fraction species to each genus. Fortunately for our comparisons the
volume of Tragus deals with not very far from the same number
of species as that of Dioscorides, and seems to have rather more
than twice as many species to each genus; or, to express it differ-
ently an equal number of species is distributed to only half as
many genera by Tragus as by Dioscorides; and this must be re-
garded as having been somewhat revolutionary, especially in view
of the fact that Brunfels and Fuchs had much less perceptibly,
if at all, departed from time-honored usage in such matters.

There may be reason to doubt that such a movement originated
in the mind of Tragus himself. There are intimations elsewhere
that as a new departure it may have been suggested if not advised
by a mind more philosophic than his own. But this is a matter the
investigation of which may be deferred. What should here be
remarked is, that almost every generation of active and leading
systematists during now nearly four hundred years has been di-
vided upon the question of whether plants are more philosophically
disposed in few genera of many species, or in many genera of corre-
spondingly few species; and in Tragus' book we are at a kind of
starting point in this perhaps endless controversy about the delimi-
tation of genera. As perceptibly inclining to reduce the number of
them he is again the forerunner of Linnaeus.

Surveying now somewhat closely 62 consecutive pages of the
first 100, we enumerate 45 species all in one line, and with a soli-
tary exception, all at agreement as to certain very obvious char-
acteristics. All of them exhibit fibrous roots, quadrangular stems,
and opposite leaves. In 41 out of the 44 the leaves are simple
and in no wise divided or even cleft. Here is proof that things had
been selected and brought together under the guidance of definite
morphologic principle. Also much time and toil must have been
bestowed upon the getting together of so considerable a number
of square-stemmed opposite-leaved herbs all at agreement in a
general characteristic of leaf-outline. Some of them are much
branched herbs in which no trace of quadrangularity is seen on the
maturer branches, but only on the growing twigs; and it was the
judgment of something like a botanical expert that brought such
into line among the square-stemmed. It is also worth noticing
that 41 of the 45 are plants more or less aromatic.

The number of the genera among which the 45 plants are dis-
tributed is twenty. First in order stands Urtica with three species ;
then seventeen genera of the family of the Labiates; then the genus
Valeriana with three species. As to the nettles proper and the

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 243

labiate dead nettles, Tragus has order where in Brunfelsius there
was confusion1 ; for the figures of the two nettles have Urtica printed
over them, while the two dead nettles are respectively indicated as
Galeopsis and Lamium. To these succeeds Marrubium with an
array of four species. Only one of them is of that genus; two belong
to a genus that had not at the time been proposed, that is, Stachys;
the fourth is a plant that was destined to stand as prototype of
the genus Lycopus. The figure well represents Lycopus Europ&us;
and this appears to be the first publication of the species, though
he writes as if it were already familiarly known in the pharmacy of
the time under the name Marrubium palustre.2 It is in the course of
his definition of this too amplified Marrubium that he describes the
fruiting calyx with its four naked nutlets; one of the most im-
portant characteristics of the whole family of the labiates; though
as we have said before he is far enough from realizing the taxonomic
value of what he has thus been the first to discover and describe.3
The presence of this pouch, as he calls it, with its four naked seeds
occurring as it does in some herbs with dissected foliage, does not
induce him to place any such in the same line with the nettle-
leaved labiates. His mind upon these matters is the mind of all
antiquity, and of his contemporaries, dominated by the idea that
likeness as to foliage and stem and root, together with agreement
in sensible qualities, more surely indicate consanguinity than do
similarity in respect to seed vessels and seeds. We shall meet
with plenty of proofs of this.

Next after Marrubium the first considerable genus is Mentha.
Tragus is aware that it is difficult, and says that quite a number of
plants which some have regarded as mints others have referred to
other genera. He seems to have a new view of his own, namely,
that no plant is properly a Mentha that has not an upright mode of
growth, with flowers separate from the leafy part, and borne in
naked pedunculate spikes at summit of the stem. It is a group of
mints that is sufficiently natural, and has been recognized as such
by all special students of the genus of later periods. Tragus, as his
four plates show, limits the genus to this group, disposing some-
what variously of the equally numerous species that have all their
flowers in the axils of the leaves. As good a species of Mentha
as that called Pulegium is excluded, and held as a monotypic
genus, doubtless partly on account of its peculiar odor and its

1 Page 179 preceding.

2 Stirp. Comm., p. 10.
» Ibid., p. 8.

244 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

efficacy as an insectifuge, and partly because its stems are almost
or quite prostrate; for in this antique classification by vegetative
characters the very posture of stems was regarded as a weighty
consideration, as we shall see later.

In the treatment of these plants now long known as the family
of the Labiates, Tragus, quite as if he had recognized the family
and wished to keep the members of it in as close juxtaposition as
possible, again does violence to one of the very fundamentals of the
old system to which he has professed fealty. Rosemary and
lavender are genera of labiates, square-stemmed, opposite-leaved,
aromatic, and have the flowers and fruits of labiates, but they are
shrubs; at least rosemary is, and the lavenders are strongly suf-
frutescent ; therefore the proper place for them is away in Tragus'
Third Book, among the woody growths, where also we find plenty
of growths that are both smaller and less woody than either of
rosemary or lavender; but he has both these here in the First Book,
at the end of the line of the labiates, all the rest of which are herbs.

With this ending of the series of the labiates we are brought to
about the sixtieth of our one hundred sample pages. The num-
ber of genera embraced within the fifty-nine pages is eighteen.
All are genera of Labiates except the first, and that is Urtica.
We have already seen how nettles and dead nettles were primitively
regarded as of one and the same genus. The conceding that the
two were generically distinct did not necessitate any wide sundering
of them. The close resemblance between them as to vegetative
organs, and the clustering of the flowers in the leaf-axils, betokened
still a close consanguinity. To Tragus and his contemporaries the
transition from Urtica to Lamium, so far from seeming to be
abrupt, was a perfectly easy and natural one

That close against the aromatic labiates of herb and drug gardens
Valeriana should be located is not so difficult to explain, now that
we have Tragus' point of view; for the valerians, at least as to
their basal and underground parts, are notably odoriferous; they
are not indistinctly square-stemmed, their leaves are opposite,
their inflorescence is of the verticillastrate type, and their flowers
are bilabiate.

At this juncture the series of the square-stemmed and opposite-
leaved is briefly interrupted. The intercalated genera are Asarum,
Geum, and Ruta. But in the primitive classifyings aromatic pro-
perties were much deferred to, and inasmuch as this whole series,
all the way from Lamium to Ruta, is a line of aromatic plants, the
three above named do not interrupt it save only as to stem and leaf

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 245

morphology, which, at least for the moment, is held subordinate
to the qualitative.

After Ruta there is at once a return to the line of the quadrangu-
lar stem and opposite leaf. The genus is now Hypericum, and five
species of it are described and figured. These harmonize with the
main series as to an undivided foliage set oppositely and at regular
intervals up and down square stems; and also as being notably
odoriferous even if not distinctly aromatic like labiates. At the
same time they have manifest points of contact with rue, that
genus which they immediately follow; for their leaves are dotted,
and small flatly opening yellow flowers crown the stems and bran-
ches. Next after hypericum stands the undershrub, Santolina, an
anthemideous composite; and, viewed in the light of twentieth-
century taxonomy certainly rue and hypericum and santolina
placed in line together make a motley order; but, what we are here
in quest of is, the set of principles on which sixteenth-century
taxonomy was grounded. We are certain that Tragus had his
taxonomic reasons for locating santolina where he did, for he states
them. Every one who knows the plant is aware of its being
notably odoriferous; and he gives as one reason why it may well
stand next hypericum the fact that its aroma is that of hypericum
intensified. Now on the other side we shall find santolina flanked
by two labiate plants; and in respect to its mode of growth, and its
aspect as clothed thickly with small grayish foliage, Tragus says
that in these things it well resembles lavender and hyssop and
thyme. So then, judged by the criteria employed at that period,
this was not a motley arranging of things.

From santolina there is a return to labiates. Two species are
figured and three described. We wish to know why he thus sepa-
rated them from the rest of their line. .It would be interesting if
we could learn his reasons for intruding almost into the midst of
the line of the mintworts Asarum, Ruta, the whole series of the
Hypericum species and Santolina. There is one thing which gives
to these last members of the line of labiates an aspect very unlike
that of the others; for their leaves are much dissected, while in
the line of more than thirty that precede rue and hypericum there
is not one that displays any other than simple leaves. This short
concluding series consists of compound-leaved species of the genus
Teucrium. Did Tragus, blinded by foliage so exceedingly different,
fail to see that these are true allies of that simple-leaved series
that has been interrupted by rue and hypericum? We have the
most positive proof that he did perceive the relation; for he says

246 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

that the stems are quadrangular, that the flowers are verticillas-
trate around the sterns, and that each comes forth from what
he calls the seed-pouch, in which particular he likens them to those of
hyssop and satureja.1 But in other instances besides this he is
seen to pay such deference to the distinction of compound and
simple foliage as to make use of it taxonomically. Of even this
genus Teucrium one simple-leaved species is not only held generi-
cally distinct from those with dissected foliage, but is located
124 pages away from them, where, by the way, on account of its
veronica-like habit and foliage it is associated with several veronicas
to constitute a genus Cham&drys. In his Third Book, in taking
up the natural series of the pomaceous and drupaceous trees,,
the compound-leaved genus Sorbus in three species heads the series,
quite as if by virtue of its compound foliage it had been regarded
as the highest or most advanced type of its alliance.2 Again, the
bulk of the umbellifers, all having pinnated or more dissected
foliage, Tragus adopts as a natural alliance, following of course
the botanists of remote antiquity; but Bupleurum, vested as
it seemed to him in a perfectly simple and even entire foliage ,
he on that account excludes from the family. The genus
Achillea, of the anthemideous composites, quite imitative of the
umbellifers as to foliage and inflorescence, intervenes between
Bupleurum and its compound - leaved affinities.3 Other proofs
need not be adduced; for we must return to that group of
dissected-leaved labiates that close the line of their cognates.
They have brought us to number eighty of our one hundred
pages.

With page eighty-one, and thenceforward, one notes an
abrupt change, at least respecting the morphology of things;
for within the next one hundred it will be rare to meet with
a plant square-stemmed and opposite - leaved. The stems
are now terete, and the leaves alternate; and in place of
aromatic odors there is now everywhere a peculiar pungency
of flavor to the herbage. The genera and species are, for
a time, those of the family of the crucifers. There occurs at
first an unbroken line of seven of these. The student to whom
the book is not available will be helped by a list of the names
of the species :

1 Stirp. Comm., p. 79.
a Ibid., pp. 1008-101 1.
a Ibid., pp. 474-483.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY— GREENE 247

Tragus Modern

1 . Nasturtium hortense Lepidium sativum

2. Nasturtium aquaticum Nasturtium officinale

3. Nasturtium pratense Cardamine pratensis

4. Thlaspidium Lepidium ruderale

5. Alliaria Alliaria officinalis

6. Thlaspi Thlaspi arvense

7. Lepidium Lepidium latifolium

It will be seen at a glance that no taxonomic account is made
of the pods in drawing up the line of those crucifers. Siliculose
and siliquose genera are completely intermixed. It is just what
Sachs, from his mistaken point of view, calls a "motley order." Yet
there is a system in the arrangement of these seven crucifers,
and it is plainly apparent. Draw a line between the numbers 4
and 5 and all above the line are compound-leaved, all below it
simple-leaved. It is a natural arrangement, according to Tragus'
notions — certainly very crude, sometimes — about the tests of
affinity. From this point, however, the succession of members of
this family is broken by the intrusion of eight species belonging to
three other natural groups. The intruders are, two persicarias,
five buttercups, and a rather peculiar plantain. Only at the end of
such a line as this does he again take up the crucifers.

If in this procedure the German father seem chargeable with
having abandoned the principle laid down in his Preface, I see no
clear defense for him. If he had been intent upon collocating things
by the criterion of "form," as he calls it, he must needs have kept
the line of the crucifers uninterrupted by plants polygonaceous
and ranunculaceous. He was botanist enough easily to have seen
the marked contrasts of form between these plants and those cruci-
fers that flank them in considerable file on either hand. Being such,
these intrusions were not made by chance or whim. Apparently
it is a case of the subordinating of taxonomic principle to the
convenience of a multitude of those to whom morphologic marks
would go for naught, and with whom a grouping according to use-
ful qualities would be welcome. Let us understand how, with such
a purpose before him, Tragus would not unnaturally break the
succession of crucifers and interpose a line of buttercups.

Where the succession of square-stemmed opposite-leaved aroma-
tic herbs ends in a fragrant teucrium, and the terete-stemmed
alternate-leaved series begins with the garden peppergrass, I have
characterized the transition as abrupt; but this was done with a

248 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

mental reservation. Morphologically it is abrupt, extremely so.
Qualitatively considered, however, the entire series, from the first
labiate to the last crucifer has a common character; and Tragus
realized this character and allowed it to influence his classifying.
The whole line, or group, is one made up of herbs either aromatic
or pungent, or both. Let us accentuate this fact by denominating
the mint-lavender division of the series the spicy plants, and the
peppergrass-buttercup end of it the peppery plants. Now if one
should catalogue and enumerate all the aromatic-scented and all
the pungent-tasting herbs that are, the aggregate of them all would
be but a fraction of the whole number of herbaceous plants. Such
constitute, I suppose, not much more than a tenth of all the herbs
known to Tragus. But his thought is that such a qualitative thread
as this, pervading many species, may be used to line them up by,
even so as to include within the line here and there a few which in the
particulars of their morphology are not at agreement with the others.

Now this first series of seven crucifers is made up of species the
tender stems and leaves of which were eaten raw as salads, or else
the crushed seeds were used as condiments. They are particularly
pungent, or peppery crucifers. Even the name nasturtium, which
half the species bore, the etymologists derive from that irritation
of the nasal passages experienced during mastication of these things.
It must here be stated that, after the interpolation of the butter-
cups, the resumption of the line of crucifers is made at the genus
of the mustards, plants the ground seeds of which had been
employed in medicine as counter-irritants from time immemorial.
And there will be readers to whom the information will be new that
the seeds of the buttercups are as pungent as the seeds of mustard
and were long used for the same purpose of raising blisters on the
skin. Yet this acridly pungent quality of them is expressed in the
very names by which the commonest species are known in botany,
that is to say Ranunculus sceleratus and Ranunculus acris. And
Tragus was so familiar with all this, as to have been constrained to
locate the Ranunculus species in the midst of the counter-irritants ;
for his whole volume was indited to a great extent in the interest
of those who practiced, even rudely and primitively, the healing
art. These would expect to find remedial equivalents treated of in
contiguous chapters, and he was willing to meet their expectations.

The resumption of the line of the crucifers has brought us to the
limit of the one hundred sample pages which we were to examine
somewhat thoroughly in quest of the man's mind and method. And
now, perhaps in no way may one more easily arrive at a still fuller

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 249

comprehension of his method than by following him in his further
treatment of the cruciferous plants. The list of seven species
which, set in line, precede the buttercups, together with the line of
five species that succeed the buttercups, amount to about half the
number of this family which he figures and describes. The other
twelve or fifteen are discussed in two groups, each widely removed
from the present series and also from one another. This is because
the author must conform to the ancient usage of treating ornamental
plants all by themselves in one place, and the edible plants of the
kitchen garden also apart from all others. Under these divisions,
however, we find the crucifers in each well kept together. The
ornamental kinds, to give them by later names, are Cheiranthus,
two species of Matthiola, and Hesperis matronalis.1 The last
is a little separated from the line; two other plants, both remote
from the crucifers, but popularly called violets, being intruded. I
entertain no doubt about Tragus' having perceived the real con-
sanguinity subsisting between these wallflower-gilliflower orna-
mental plants — all known as violets — and the other crucifers;
for in describing the wallflower he remarks that it belongs to the
four-leaved — that is, the four-petalled — group of the violets, rather
than to the five-leaved sort. Then again under Hesperis he
describes the seeds of it as being enclosed in elongated and terete
siliques like those of the cabbage.

For a glance at his final series of crucifers we must pass to the
Second Book, where the topic is that of culinary herbs and roots
in general. The series begins with cabbage, which is at once fol-
lowed by the .kales, plants the herbage of which and not the roots
is the useful part. At the opposite end of the line occur in order
the turnips, the radish, and lastly horseradish2 ; all these being so
called root crops, the sum of the members of the family assembled
at this point being seven; the line being divided according to
nature of the roots as fibrous or fleshy. More than that, the crucifer-
ous series is here again slightly interrupted; for just after the cab-
bage-kale series, and before that of the real turnip-radish series, two
campanulaceous plants are intruded ; both of them with fleshy roots
so turnip-like in form, and in such frequent use in cookery as
substitutes for turnips, that people call them wild turnips, or
little turnips, so that this vernacular name became turned into Latin
as Rapuncnlus ,3 the earliest Latin name for the genus now long

1 Stirp. Comm., pp. 560-567.

2 Ibid., pp. 716-735.

J The Latin for turnip being Rapum.

250 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

known as Campanula. There are three crucifers described and
figured, each of which stands isolated from all the others. One
is Bursa pastoris.1 Its having been located so far from its allies of
the peppergrass kind was but accidental. At the time of the print-
ing of those, the shepherd's purse does not appear to have been
well known to the author, and his first expression concerning it is
that its rightful place is next to what he has called Thlaspidium,2 i.e.
Lepidium ruderale.

Another of the isolated members is Camelina.3 In certain dis-
tricts it is common, he says, in fields, especially among flax, to
which he likens the plant, except as to its having small yellowish
flowers. He reports that its seeds ground with grain impart a
certain sweetness to bread; also that the oil expressed from this seed
is, in his opinion, of a flavor superior to that of olive oil. From
many a passage in Tragus it is evident he was accustomed to
identify plants as of the cress and mustard alliance by a pungent
flavor of the seeds. Possibly in Camelina they lack this quality.
Possibly also our author, variously misled, never tested them in
this regard, or thought of such an experiment; for he nowhere
intimates that the plant is of that alliance.

The genus Isatis* is a second member of the crucifers whose
relationship Tragus shows no sign of having recognized. Possibly
he did not know the plant but by hearsay. His draftsman copied
Fuchsius' plate of it, and in so doing made the mistake of represent-
ing most of the flowers as either five-petalled or six-petalled. It
is also to be noted that the fruits of Isatis at first sight are sadly
bewildering; pendulous like the samaras of the ash tree, which
they also much resemble. In the next generation after Tragus,
and by one of the most illustrious of all botanical systematists,
Isatis was indeed referred to the crucifers; though even a century
after that its right to a place there was disputed. Tragus will,
then, be excused for not having guessed this thing to be a cress-
mustard ally; nevertheless in describing the fruit he proved that a
German father of the sixteenth century in his going " straight
to nature," might well have taken with him the old Greek father
Dioscorides more often than he did; for Tragus, having described
the pendulous pouches or bags that succeed the flowers avers, that
" this pouch is the seed of the plant. " Dioscorides in describing the

1 Stir p. Comm., p. 214.
1 Ibid., p. 82.
» Ibid., p. 655.
* Ibid., p. 255.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 251

fruit of Isatis had said that "within the pouch there is a seed";1
and here Tragus' powerful rival, Fuchsius, by plagiarizing Dios-
corides' whole account of Isatis had been right about its fruit and
its one seed.2 It seems not improbable that a man as keen of
botanical vision as Tragus, had been relying on other people's
statements when he wrote that pouch and seed are here one and the
same.

With the exception of these two, Camelina and Isatis, Tragus'
comprehension of the group of crucifers appears to have been com-
plete; and this will become still more manifest by an item of his
taxonomic procedure still to be adduced. Fuchsius, as was related
in the preceding chapter, guided by superficial resemblances
in purely vegetative characters, and wholly inattentive to their
small flowers and fruits, had received a hedge mustard and a small
flowered vervain as members of one genus which he called Verbena.
To Tragus this misplaced plant is so plainly of the mustard alliance
that he becomes impatient of his rival's blunder. 'This thing is
about as much like a verbena as a nettle is like a rosemary bush.
I could wish that none should be displeased with me for saying this;
but I am aware there are some who will take it much to heart that
I have transferred their Verbena fcemina to the category of the
mustards, and judge me rashly for having done so. But it was
reason that compelled me to this course, when I perceived the plant
by its whole substance and flavor to be at accord with Sinapis."3
Though he names the texture and flavor of the herbage as the
reason, that is because it is the one which will appeal to most people,
those into whose minds anthological considerations do not enter.
It is none the less presumable that the diminutively mustard-like
flowers, along with the pods and seeds so concordant therewith,
first led Tragus to investigate the qualities of the plant.

Some twenty-six species of crucifers all told are described' by
Tragus. That is probably three times as many as may be found in
any author earlier than he, except Fuchsius, who allows them to be
scattered about according to the alphabetic order of their Greek
names, and nowhere gives expression to a thought about their
affinities. And Tragus, inasmuch as he plainly discloses his
recognition of their consanguinity, except in the case of two species
both of them anomalous, ought to be accredited as the first dis-
coverer, so to speak, of this important and taxonomically interesting

» Diosc., Book ii, ch. 180.
1 Fuchs, Hist, Stir p., p. 330.
' Stirp. Comnt., p. 104.

252 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

family. He did not, indeed, name the family. He was not, like
the philosophic Theophrastus of old, given to using significant
names for such groups of genera. But let us not here perpetrate
a fallacy too common with historians, of attributing the discovery
of a thing to the man who did but name it, after it had been dis-
covered by another.

There are to be noted in Tragus not a few other instances of
decided movement in the direction of a better grouping of genera;
but only two or three more may here be allowed even a passing
mention.

In our study of Fuchsius we had observed that, despite the alpha-
betic artificiality of his arrangement, by dint of stretching to
the uttermost the application of the Greek generic name Strychiws
(=5olanum), he had brought almost all solanaceous plants into one
line1; but that while a thing as anomalous as Datura had thus
gained admission to the company of its cognates, Capsicum had not
been at all apprehended by him as a member of that group. He does
not appear to have seen in it any likeness thereto. Tragus, while
also doubtless like Fuchsius finding the peppery properties of all
parts of the plant too foreign to those of other solanaceous genera,
nevertheless observes that as to the form of its leaves, and especially
of its flowers, it recalls Solanum.2 This was giving that serviceable
hint by which later taxonomists were to be led to place Capsicum
within the lines of the Solanacece.

The borrages are a group all the then known members of
which are first brought together in unbroken line by Tragus3 ; and
he has seven genera of them, embracing something like twice that
number of species. All much alike in habit and inflorescence, but
differing one genus from another very notably as to nature of the
pubescence, and still more so as to form of the "flower," they
again come to almost one and the same thing as to the calyx and its
. . . three or four naked seed-like nutlets ; and all these peculiarities
of the flowers, together with the aspect and character of the fructifi-
cation, Tragus is the first botanist to describe ; and he describes them
for each genus. In all except the naming of it he is the founder of
the family of the Borraginaceoe.

While there is evidence enough that this man's perceptions of
plant affinity were keener than those with which any earlier author
had been endowed, yet there was never with him any such thought

» Page 209 preceding.
2 Stirp. Comm., p. 938.
» Ibid., pp. 339-241.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 253

as that natural groups of genera are very numerous; still farther
from his mind was such an idea as that all genera may be reduced
to a line of natural families. The time was not ripe for the engen-
dering of that thought ; nor was it to find expression until three
generations later. The list of genera which Tragus can not sys-
tematize, as he had done those of the labiates, the crucifers, and
the borrages, is a long one. But he must needs bring them all into
some kind of grouping, or succession; and the principles upon
which he collocates monotypic genera are various. We must take
note of several of them.

There is one quite extended series made up of the following:
Convolvulus, two species, Nummularia, Cuscuta, Humulus, Smilax,
Dulcamara, Clematis, Bryonia and Lonicera.1 There is one char-
acter, at least a negative one, by whch all these are connectible.
Not one of them has an upright stem. All are in some manner
climbing; and twining and prehensile plants are much more excep-
tional, at least in cool-temperate latitudes where Tragus botanized,
than one would suppose. Outside of this series now in hand not
many were known to him; for the series does not end with Lonicera.
To that there immediately succeed all the genera of cucurbits
that are rough-leaved and are grown in gardens.2 The smooth-
leaved and unvigorous or delicate genera Bryonia and Momordica
had not yet gained recognition as members of the Cucurbitacecs.
And if neither the twining leguminous plants nor the tendril-bearing
are placed in this succession, it is for the reason that in their case,
and ages befor Tagus, the principle of stem-posture had been
subordinated to the higher one of their agreement with the up-
right and bushy kinds in a peculiar and distinctive morphology of
flower and fruit. Tragus was perfectly aware of all this; and can
not have had so much as a thought of including in this present line
the weak-stemmed and prehensile peas and beans.

Sometimes one finds him placing two generic types in juxtaposi-
tion for no botanical reason, but only for what may be called a
literary motive. The vine, the fig tree, the palm, the olive, and the
bay are types not genetically interrelated3; neither to Tragus'
knowledge was any one of the five related to any other tree. But
in ancient history and poetry all had often been associated. They
form a group, and that most historic and distinguished, but on the
basis not of botany but of literature. And yet, as regards the after

1 Stirp. Comm., pp. 804-823.

2 Ibid., pp. 824-835.

J Ibid., pp. 1049-1056.

254 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

part of this line, comprising palm, olive, and bay, one would not dare
either affirm or deny that these three had been botanically con-
nected in the author's mind by their drupaceous fruits.

Repeatedly does he bring together two types in every way
dissimilar for the sole reason that their names are practically the
same ; this of course in condescension to those who, in looking for a
given plant under a certain name may find that and its homonyms
all in one place. Thus at the end of the buttercups does he locate
the herb called Coronopus ( = Plantago Coronopus) . It would be
irrational to require of Tragus that he should have referred this to
the genus Plantago. The floral structure which connects them
could never have been seen until after the invention of hand lenses at
least. The leaves of this Coronopus are cut into narrow and remote
pinnated segments and beset with bristly hairs ; on the whole as far
from plantain leaves in form as imaginable. The form of these
leaves had procured for the plant the name coronopus, Greek for
crowfoot, and that very anciently. Ranunculus had also for a
second Latin name Pescorvi, the exact equivalent of the Greek
coronopus and English crowfoot. Because they had the same name
our author placed side by side these different plants. He did the
like with the labiate that was usually called Hedera terrestris, that
is, ground ivy, locating it next the true ivy, Hedera Helix, as well
aware as any one ever was that there is no consanguinity between
them ; but this disposal of it would suit the convenience of those
untaught in better classification.

Nomenclature. No special attention is given to nomenclature
by this author. He follows the usages of antiquity and of his own
period, yet in ways of his own by which it comes to pass that he
illustrates those usages uncommonly well. We have already
observed that such family names as Umbelliferae, Cichoriaceae,
Carduaceae, Legumina for the leguminous plants, and Malvae, for
the malvaceous had been in familiar use time out of mind. Tragus
essays the addition of a few new terms of that kind to comprehend
other groups of genera ; but these have not been successful ; and the
cause of their failure will readily be seen. He proposed the name
Serpentariae1 for that group of trailing, twining, and climbing herbs
referred to above as embracing Convolvulus, Humulus, Clematis, and
others; both the outlining and the naming of it being made, cu-
riously enough, just at a time when taxonomists — even Tragus him-
self foremost among them — began to depend less upon the texture

1 Stirp. Comm.t p. 798.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 255

and posture of steins, and more upon characteristics of flowers and
fruits. And his small group of the Lappae1 was equally futile;
for while this series might at first view seem to be connected upon
a thread of fruit characters, a more attentive inspection brings
it out that nothing more significant than the hooked character of
the prickles investing the fruits holds the genera together ; for they
are Lappa, Xanthium, Trapa, Caucalis, and Agrimonia. Thus
Tragus' two new family names, Serpentarias and Lappce, were both
destined to suppression, because the grouping in either case was
little better than fanciful; being based on agreement as to certain
peculiarities that are of no general taxonomic value.

Upon the then settled principles of generic nomenclature —
principles approved by all antiquity — Tragus attempts no inroads.
It does not enter his thought to question the perfection of the
established methods in naming things. A generic name of two
words, noun and adjective, suits him as well as one of a sing'e term
and that substantive ; perhaps even better, as signifying somewhat
more; for there is more of meaning conveyed by a noun qualified
by an adjective than there is in a noun standing alone ; and the time
is yet distant when meaningless and cabalistic names will be toler-
ated. So when he becomes the discoverer of a new and nameless
generic type that is an ally of Cyanus, the common cornflower, or
bluebottle, though not of its genus exactly, he assigns the new
genus the compound name Cyanus silvestris 2; and we, well aware
that half the generic names in sixteenth-century botany are thus
made, must read his whole account of the plant in order to assure
ourselves that he does not, after all, mean simply a new species
of the genus Cyanus.

Fuchsius, convinced that the genus Plantago aquatica is identifi-
able as the Alisma of the Greeks, had taken up the latter name 3;
but Tragus shows a preference for the two-worded appellation
and restores it; taking pains also to inform the untaught that,
although the plant's name is Plantago aquatica, it does not belong
to the genus Plantago.*

Even for Fuchsius' new genus aptly named Digitalis 5 Tragus
thinks that such a two-worded name as Campanula silvestris would
be better; and he formally proposes this as a substitute, writing

' Stir p. Comm., pp. 836—844.

3 Ibid., pp. 218, 219.

» Fuchs, Hist. Stirp., p. 43.

4 Stirp. Comm., p. 227.

* Fuchs, Hist. Stirp., p. 892.

256 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Digitalis down as a synonym. His remarks at this point illustrate
well the idea then prevailing, that the nomenclature of newly
proposed genera should be freely open to amendment and improve-
ment. "Let any one name this plant what he will. We, in con-
sideration of the form of the flower, shall name it Campanula
silvestris, at least for the time being, and until a still more appro-
priate name shall arise. There are those who call it Digitalis. MI

While Tragus, like others both before him and long after, leaves
the representatives of monotypic genera without specific names,
yet up and down the margins of a great majority of his noo pages
are the binary names of species. If many of these seem to consist
of three terms, it is usually because two of them constitute the
generic name. Occasionally the third word indicates that what
is in hand is a mere variety of the species preceding ; and now and
then it will be seen that a fourth word is introduced to indicate the
variety. In case the generic name itself is binary, the fourth
term becomes needful for the indicating of a named variety. Still
there is no trace in this author of those phrase names that became
a burden upon the botany of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. The marginal placing of these binary names is as universal
with Tragus as one finds it in Linnaeus ; but these same names are
often repeated as headings to the chapters, and again over the
plates. The author employs less freely the numeral adjectives for
specific names, and has not many that are geographic. The
personal names for species are less rare ; though most of these are of
earlier mediaeval origin, commemorating saints of the Roman
calendar; and he is perhaps the first of botanists to have dedicated
a new species to himself.2

Ecology, Phenology. Tragus is far from emulating in any
general way the endeavors of Theophrastus to indicate groups of
plants ecologically considered ; but there is one piece of such work
that ought not to be allowed to pass unnoticed. The Third Book
of his volume is to be devoted to the trees and to other lesser but
strictly woody growths. Accordingly in the first chapter at its
beginning there is introduced the figure of a large tree, a spruce tree,
as we are able to determine from a branch or two of small dimen-
sions which are all that remain alive ; for the tree is moribund. All
up and down its trunk there are fungi and lichens of several kinds ;
then upon the ground beneath are as many more. The text of the
whole chapter, and it is a long one, covering seven pages, relates

1 Stlrp. Comm., p. 88q.

» Quinquefolium Tragi, Tragus, Stirp. Comm., p. 587.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 257

exclusively to these plants, and a considerable number of them of
various genera, embracing an aggregate of some thirty species. The
next chapter treats of mosses; the third, of mistletoe. Thus the
whole assemblage of German saprophytes and tree parasites is made
one ecologic group, as of things growing together, many of them
upon trees, most of the others upon the ground beneath trees.

Ecology, however, forms an item and a very distinct one in the
account of almost every wild plant which he describes; a fact that
will be best impressed by a few citations.

"Asarum affects shady places where the soil is rather moist,
and is usually found under thickets of hazel, but sometimes also
in deep damp woods. M1

" Alliaria is an elegant plant which in the month of April is found
in certain waste places, under walls, along the bases of hills, by
hedges and in cavernous places which are the abode of lizards and
other vermin. "2 The chickweed is located thus: 'This most com-
mon of herbs is found throughout the whole year in gardens and
vineyards; and the richer the soil, the more large and tender the
herbage. "3

Ranunculus sceleratus "grows in low swamps, especially if the
soil be sandy, and preferably where there are frogs; but occasionally
in very rainy years it will be found in wet lands that are more ele-
vated. "4

"Fumaria grows in gardens, fields of rye, and also among flax,
onions, and cabbages, where it flowers in May, and again in autumn
it reappears in turnip fields. "5

The almost omnipresent knotgrass, Polygonum aviculare, he
thus descants upon: "Polygonum among common plants is the
very commonest of all, at the same time a useful one also. What
part of the country is there where one does not meet with it? What
roadside is there where it does not abound? What fields (for in
cultivated fields it particularly delights) . what hedgerows, and what
by paths are not covered with it? "6

"Aquilegia, mostly a garden plant with us, also grows wild in
elevated woodlands, on rocky hills, and sometimes in the crevices
of precipitous rocks. " 7

' Stirp. Comnt., p. 65.
» Ibid., p. 85.

3 Ibid., p. 384.

4 Ibid., p. 93, under the name Apiunt aquaticttm.

5 Ibid., p. in.

6 Ibid., p. 390.
' Ibid., p. 136.

258 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

In phrases like these does Tragus almost always particular-
ize about the habitat, the soil, the exposure of the wild plants of
Germany which he describes ; and it would not be difficult to gather
out of these antiquated and yet living pages definite outlines of the
plant associations of every part of the country with which he was
familiar.

The fungi, lichens, and mosses, already alluded to under this
heading, are not the only plants in connection with which he per-
mits ecological considerations to influence his taxonomy. He
collocates in an unbroken series, as plants nearly' allied, broad-
leaved houseleeks, and sedum species the leaves of which are small
and terete. Such a series is of course a faultless one in the judg-
ment of modern botany, because the structure of flower and fruit
is the same in all; but the case was otherwise four hundred years
ago, when anthology was hardly yet in embryo, and even leaves
were more generally received as furnishing the criteria of affinity.
Tragus had to defend the position he had taken when placing certain
small plants regarded as leafless in the same line with live-forever
and houseleek as their next of kin. He himself could not claim
that Sedum acre and its cognates had leaves at all. They exhib-
ited, he said, in what seemed to be the places for leaves, grain-
like things which he preferred to call acini; and an acinus may be a
seed, a grain, a germ, or even a berry. He has but one argument
to offer in defense of this line of broad-leaved things and things
green though leafless, as being a natural series, and that argument
is purely ecological. All of them inhabit peculiarly the roofs of
buildings, and thrive there much better than elsewhere. Even
such of the species as now and then establish themselves on the
ground are never seen but in' the most open exposures. All of
them everywhere avoid all protection from extremes of tempera-
ture, retaining their fresh verdure unimpaired under the rigors
of the severest winter.1 Such ecologic groupings are of course
traditional, having come down from earlier times; and under such
defense as Tragus makes of this one, his contemporaries would
perhaps admit its validity despite the great diversity among the
members of it as to foliage.

Another instance of this kind of procedure to which I wish to
call attention is the reverse of the above as to the result attained.
German species of the rather ample genus Veronica are placed in
widely sundered groups on principles as purely ecologic. In one

1 Stir p. Comm., pp. 373-380.

LANDMARKS OP BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 259

place, under the generic name Sium non odoratum, he describes
what is now Veronica Beccabunga, appending to his excellent diag-
nosis the following: " It grows around springs which never freeze,
or in such ditches as are equally immune from frost during the
whole winter. ' ' l Then the habitat of a second species of the genus —
— Veronica Anagallis aquatica is its Linnasan name — is given in
similar terms: "Throughout the whole winter season this keeps its
verdure quite untouched by frost, growing as it does in the water
of warm springs. " Now six chapters away from this which treats
of the two aquatic veronicas, and with more than as many plants
not allied to Veronica intervening, he describes the dry land mem-
bers of this same genus, but under the generic names Chamcedrys and
Teucrium.2 These have retained in more recent botany those
generic names as specific under Veronica.

Thus do we find that our familiar genus Veronica was all unre-
cognized as a whole by Tragus, its members being ranged in two
rather widely separated groups, bearing different generic names;
and all this in deference to mere ecology, as it were; for, if those of
the aquatic group have a tender subsucculent and glabrous herb-
age holding its freshness all winter, whereas those of the dry
land are thin-leaved, soft-hairy, and die down to the ground in
autumn, and if these differences may have helped to keep the
groups apart, yet are they anatomical differences rather than
morphological. And the case can not fail to convince us of the
weight which ecological considerations carried in sixteenth-century
classifyings. Neither Tragus, however, nor any of his contempo-
raries had invented these ecologic distinctions. They were already
an old, old story. Contemplate the mere name for those
aquatic speedwells, Sium non odoratum. It is a generic name,
because there are two very clearly distinct species of it. There
is somewhat of early botanical history concentrated in that very
name. It implies beyond mistake the existence of a genus named
Sium odoratum. Still further it suggests as almost certain that the
name Sium odoratum is less ancient than the other. Searching old
records now, we shall find that things happened exactly after the
manner which the name Sium non odoratum seemed to indicate.
Sium odoratum, the original of all siums, was at first Sium, simply,
that is, a monotypic genus. More than a thousand years before
Tragus, and maybe two thousand or three, the Greeks had known,
and had used medicinally, an aquatic of springs and spring runs

> Stirp. Comm., p. 187.
* Ibid., pp. 203—209.

260 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

that never freeze. It had the foliage and the pleasantly odorous
quality of certain umbellifers, as Dioscorides had intimated1;,
and this was Sium2; and centuries later when up in middle Europe
men versed in the materia medica looked in wild springy places for
the Sium of Dioscorides, and more often found there those different
things, unknown to the ancients, which though green in midwinter
were odorless, and therefore not the real thing, and named them
Sium non odoratum, they were proceeding upon the principle
that both, and all such plants, being generated as most of them
believed, by spring water and the earth at the bottom, were naturally
allied, and might all be named so many kinds of Sium. Further-
more, the establishment of such a name as Sium non odoratum
rendered it needful that original Sium should be invested with a
cognomen in order to avoid misunderstanding and confusion.
Hence its later generic name Sium odoratum.

That this sium, constant inhabitant of springs and warm drainage
ditches, is classed not ecologically but morphologically by Tragus
argues no inconsistency. It would be one thing for a sixteenth-
century botanist to fail to recognize by morphologic marks the
membership of the Scrophulariacece, and quite another thing to
miss the family characters of any umbellifer. Sium at first glance,
as well as by its properties, is unmistakably an umbellifer; and the
time is not to be found in the annals of botany when this family
had not obtained general recognition, marked as it is both morpho-
logically and qualitatively. The family, so-called, to which the
veronicas belong is not so. The Scrophulariacece have never yet
been circumscribed otherwise than most arbitrarily and unsatis-
factorily. Tragus understood well the superiority of morphologic
over ecologic criteria, and that the latter are to cede to the
former when the former are manifest. The anthologic harmony
between hardy undying water veronicas and the tender perishable
kinds of dry meadows and uplands it was not given him to see;
nor, indeed, to any one until long after Tragus' day. And yet, an
umbellifer to him was an umbellifer whether hydrophilous or xero-
philous. But in the arranging of his umbelliferous genera it will be
observed that the two aquatic genera Sium and Apium are placed
side by side.3

To the botanist of the fields, the plains, the marshes and the

1 Diosc., Book ii, ch. 120.

* The plant is Sium angustifolium Linn., type of the genus, though now
called Berula angustifolia.

> Stirp. Comm., pp. 464, 465.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 2&I

mountains it is easy to recall the special habitat of almost any
plant, but not so the average time of its flowering year by year.
To be able to say that this shrub will be found in bloom about the
middle of May, that tree in the early part of May, this flower
appears late in March, the other in the last days of April, is not likely
to be a matter of unaided memory. To know the average time of
flowering for everything that grows involves the keeping of written
notes through years. Tragus tells this time of the annual flowering
of things in almost every chapter of his book; and he is the first of
botanical authors to have done this.

Transmutation. Though much given to diversifying his botan-
ical pages by bits of invective against superstitions that are of
theologic type, Tragus has never doubted the easy transmutability
of wheat and rye into chess. In a long chapter he demonstrates to
his readers how this may and does come to pass, under various
conditions. And here some experimentations of his own are
recorded: ' That it is possible for seeds of one species to degenerate
and become so changed as to come up as another species is some-
thing which I have learned by experience ; for from very old cabbage
seed sown by my own hands I have raised a crop of turnips."1
At another place he has the following upon the same subject:
" There are those who think that a sowing of turnip seed upon very
dry and sandy ground, especially if the seed be very old, will come
up as wild mustard; or at least in that which is as much of the
nature of mustard as of that of turnip. In the same fashion
cabbage seed very commonly changes into that of a poor and
stunted kind of turnip, as I myself have often proven by
experiment. "2

Again in his dissertation upon wheat he reports a certain dark-
grained kind as apt to appear intermixed with the other in the
low moist parts of the fields; so dark — blackish is his word — as to
render flour and bread from such admixture dark-colored. He in
perfect confidence accepts this admixture of dark-grained as another
instance of transmutation; has never a suspicion that it is
another variety of wheat, the seed of which was mixed by chance,
in the sowing, with the other.

The case is one entirely apart from that of the melampyrum, or
black wheat, of a totally different plant alliance, the seed of which,
accidentally harvested with the grain and ground with it also

1 Stirp. Comm., p. 668.
1 Ibid., pp. 10 1, 102.

262 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

caused a darkening of the bread ; for on this weed he has a chapter
apart,1 as well as another upon smut2 in grains.

From our view point of four centuries later it may not be easy to
understand how such childish fancies could hold their places firmly
in gifted minds which, after all, were seriously bent on cold scientific
enquiry into all nature's mysteries and were often successful; but of
the fact itself there is abundant proof.

1 Stirp. Contm., p. 662.

2 Ibid., p. 666.

CHAPTER VIII
EURICIUS CORDUS, 1486-1535

ONE of the most gifted and scholarly men among all who figured
in German botany in the early sixteenth century is Euicius rCordus
who, though a cultivator of plants, and also a zealous field botanist,
wrote no great book, and is chiefly interesting here as having been
the father and the educator of that most brilliant of early German
botanists, Valerius Cordus.

Life. Henricus — the name was altered by himself in his school
days to Euricius — was the thirteenth child of a pair of honest and
worthy Hessian peasants, and was born at Siemershausen in the
year 1486. His parents died when he was a child, and in some way
he became for a time the inmate of a collegiate school at Franken-
berg. Here he formed a strong and lasting attachment to a youth,
his junior by two years, who afterwards under the adopted name
of Helius Eobanus Hessus became celebrated as a philologist and
as one of the most elegant Latin writers of the period. On account
of a treatise upon dietetics favoring vegetable foods,1 which in its
day was well received and passed through several editions, Haller
has enrolled the name of this Eobanus Hessus in his list of botanical
authors. What influence he had upon botany was more indirect.
It was evidently by virtue of this strong attachment between
Hessus and Cordus that the latter was brought finally to devote
himself to intellectual pursuits.

After those first school days at Frankenberg, and while Cordus
was very young, he married and was settled at his native Siemers-
hausen; in what occupation no records tell; but when in the year
1515 a son was born to him, the event appears to have stimulated
him to renewed endeavors to attain distinction in scholarship ; for
before the son was two years old Euricius Cordus had won the
Master's degree at the university of Erfurth; his special studies

1 " Praecepta bonae valetudinis conservandae " is the title of this treatise
according to Haller, Bibliotheca Botanica, vol. i, p. 260.

263

264 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

having been the ancient languages and philology, the same which
his particular friend Eob nus Hessus had been all the while
pursuing. The year following, i.e. 1517, we find him a student
at Leipzig, where also he gives lectures on pastoral poems in Latin
of which he is himself the author. Here also he makes a lasting
friendship with the young Joachim Camerarius — father of the
botanist of that same name — a much younger man than Cordus,
and at the time a student at Leipzig, and who subsequently became
distinguished in philology. Camerarius soon removed to Erfurth,
and Cordus returned thither with him. Eobanus Hessus was still
there, and the three determined to open there a select school of
their own. That Cordus' lectures and poems had already earned
for him a reputation is evinced by this, that his opening a seminary
of learning brought him a letter of congratulation and good counsel
from so great a celebrity as Desiderius Erasmus.

The time at which this new school enterprise was undertaken
proved inopportune; a time when, in Germany, even the oldest and
most renowned seats of learning were realizing the influences
of that ecclesiastical and civil upheaval commonly called the
Reformation; and Cordus and his companions closed their school
in the year 1521. And now, as if in hope of thereby gaming a
better, or at least a surer, living for himself and his family, he entered
the medical profession. Without the means of journeying to
Italy and maintaining a year's residence at the most celebrated
school of medicine in Europe, that of Ferrara, a physician at
Erfurth, one Doctor Sturtius,1 offered him financial aid; and at
Ferrara, in 1522, Cordus received the Doctorate in Medicine at the
hands of the venerable Leonicenus then 94 years of age and still
active in the discharge of his professorial duties.

Returning now to Erfurth, Cordus practiced medicine during four
or five years, and then in 1527 accepted an appointment to the
chair of medicine in the newly founded Protestant university at
Marburg; from which movement the historians infer, and not un-
reasonably, that Cordus had abandoned the Catholic faith and
become a Lutheran. In this new position he found leisure for
study and authorship, for he translated into Latin verse both the
Alexipharmaca and the Theriaca of Nicander. both published by
Egenolph of Frankfort, in 1532. Here also his own Latin pastoral
poems were published, but without date, or name of publisher.
Here also he wrote and gave to the public his one botanical work, the

i Winckler, Geschichte der Botanik, p. 76.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 265

Botanologicon, which closed his career as an author. This was
published at Cologne in 1534. In this he complains of oppositions
and persecutions which he has had to endure at Marburg, such as
had compelled him to accept a proffered appointment as City
Physician at Biemen, to the Senate and Citizens of which city the
book is dedicated. He died at Bremen in 1535, at the age of 49
years.

The Botanologicon.1 The book is in the form of a colloquy
between Cordus and a few friends of his, most of them away back in
their younger years fellow students at Erfurth, all now men of
middle age, physicians, pharmacists, or men otherwise interested in
plants, at least the medicinal. As having been university students
of medicine every one of them is assumed to be somewhat familiar
with all the ancient line of Greek and Roman authors who had
written on the materia medica, and whose books were still the
standards of study and reference.

Euricius Cordus, even while young, and as yet aiming at nothing
else but distinction in languages and philology, had been a great
lover and cultivator of plants, training his child Valerius from
infancy to know and love them. Then when through mad religious
partisanship the universities of Germany began to suffer disruption
and depletion,2 and Cordus with a family on his hands was obliged
to prepare for a remunerative calling, he was trebly prepared to
make a mark in botany. He was a genius. He was intensely a
lover of plants. He was uncommonly well skilled in those ancient
languages in which the old standards of the materia medica had
been written.

The useful purposes which the Botanologicon has in view are
several, and are essentially reformatory. Prominent among
them is that of demonstrating that, through sheer ignorance, a
considerable proportion of the jars and drawers and packets in
the drug shops are falsely labelled. They are marked with the
names of Diocoridean and Galenian roots and herbs, while commonly
filled with things which can not be the same as those which the
ancients knew and made much of under those names. If this was
really the case it would follow that the lives of those in illness calling
for a certain powerful remedy, were apt to be endangered by the
administration, either of some drug wholly inert, or else with pro-

1 Euricii Cordi Simesusii Medici Botanologicon. Coloniae, apud Joannem
Gymnicum, Anno 1534.

* The Botanologicon abounds in expressions deploring the adverse influence
of the religious dissensions of the time upon the universities of Germany.

266 SMITHSONIAN MISCELL VNEO US COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

perties aggravating rather than remedial to that ailment. It was a
strong arraignment of the whole united company of the doctors
and pharmacists of the time; and Euricius Cordus complains
bitterly of the oppositions and persecutions that had followed him
and driven him from place to place, while lecturing and writing
in endeavors to correct this ignorance. He was not philosopher
enough to comprehend that just this abuse and this feigned
contempt are the very highest encomiums: the only attestations of
his learning and genius which the envious horde of the criticized
and the offended know how to pay.

In this colloquy, the Botanologicon, there are given many partic-
ular instances of errors on the part of the physicians and druggists
as to plants. We have already noted, in our study of Brunfelsius,
how that author mistook German species of Corydalis for the classic
Aristolochia, thus, at once agreeing with, and confirming in their
ignorance, the whole array of the German doctors and druggists
of his time. l Euricius Cordus takes up this case as one which easily
establishes that for which he contends. One member of his party
reads from Dioscorides that Aristolochia has leaves like the bush ivy,
i.e. well rounded and entire.2 This which the Germans call by that
name has leaves dissected like those of rue. The leaves and
even the flowers of ancient aristolochia were described as having
an odor somewhat sharply aromatic; a quality of which there is
no trace in these fumariaceous herbs. The root of these, it is con-
fessed by all the party, are rounded and turnip-like, as Dioscorides
and all the others of olden time had described those of Aristolochia
rotunda; but that was the only point at which the Corydalis
answered to the Aristolochia description. The fact was plain that
people in comparing the plant with the ancient diagnosis of
aristolochia, finding that the root agreed, became at once blind
to all the points of disagreement. Among the many instances
of this kind of error the author presents that of the druggists
having mistaken the common wild plum of German woodland
borders for the acacia of the ancients.1 The acacia had been
described as a thorny tree, yielding a mild gum. In these two
points the wild plum was at agreement with the old acacia
description. They gathered this native German gum and made
the accustomed uses of it, believing all the while that in this
thorny tree they had the real gum-bearing acacia. Cordus invites

1 See page 173 preceding.
3 Botanologicon, p. 96.
» Ibid., pp. 77, 78.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 267

their attention to an important part of that classic diagnosis to
which they all the while have been blind; that which says that
acacia produces its seeds in a pod, after the manner of the lupine;
and Cordus asks his party how this gum-bearing thorny tree that
yields plums instead of legumes can possibly be believed to be the
acacia? It would be easy to mutiply by twenty the examples of
this kind which find mention and full demonstration in the
Botanologicon ; but the above must suffice. They are repre-
sentative.

A' most every one who has written a few chapters of botanical
history has made record of the fact that at first the botanists of
middle Europe wrongly expected to find, and as wrongly believed
themselves to have found there most of the plants that had been
described by ancient Greek and Arabian authors. The discovery
of the error and the correction of it have usually been credited to
botanists of later centuries. But Euricius Cordus is the man who
at the very outset, and himself a German, saw the magnitude of
this mistake, and so clearly exposed it, that despite the rage
of an incensed multitude of doctors and apothecaries, the reform
began at once. If Fuchsius in his great folio of pictures had in
many an instance corrected Brunfelsian errors as to the identity of
plants, it was largely if not altogether due to his having studied
and been guided by the Botanologicon. He pays full tribute to
the importance of this work in his Preface, which was not written
until after the demise of Euricius Cordus. In this Fuchsius says:
"In this work of restoring botany Brunfelsius was succeeded by
Euricius Cordus, a man of high integrity, great industry, distin-
guished as a poet, and a man of varied learning. What he accom-
plished for the elevation and advancement of botany so abundantly
appears in his Botanologicon as to need no further commendation
from us. But this I wish to say; that one so singularly qualified
seemed worthy of a longer life, in which to have contributed to
medical botany much more matter of the same high import. "

At the time when the Botanologicon appeared, the illustrated
folios of Brunfelsius were quite new, and the work is often referred
to. On one of the earlier pages of this botanical colloquy there is
such a record of contemporary opinion about the merits of Brun-
felsius' book as can not fail to be interesting, and for the sake of
which I shall attempt a reproduction of the whole passage.

MEGOBACCHUS. Since Gallus desires it, may we not all go out
and botanize a while?

RALLA. Please grant us this favor.

268 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

CORDUS. I am willing, and the more so as hoping to learn some-
thing from all of you.

NIGER. You learn from us?

CORDUS. Why not? I have sometimes learned botany from
illiterate women and peasants. I am not ashamed of gaining in-
formation from a child even, much less from you, men of learning.
So whenever it pleases you let us go forth. I will not keep you
back; nevertheless I, just as if none of you were here, shall follow
my usual practice of taking along a little book or two. I take the
greatest delight in these sallyings into the country, where I can
have before me fresh and growing those herbs which I have read
about at home, and may compare them with the pictures of others
which I carry in memory ; also taking such note of their names and
reputed virtues, as I may gather such from old women whom I meet
upon the way. By the use of all these means I am the better able
to arrive at a sound conclusion, or at least a more probable opinion,
about the identity of a thing.

GALLUS. I wish that Brunfelsius had followed your course; for
concerning a good part of his plants it will have to be said that he
named them not according to their descriptions, but after the opin-
ions of the ignorant vulgus.

CORDUS. How do you know that?

GALLUS. I have read his two volumes, and have compared them
with Dioscorides.

CORDUS. That was advisedly done ; and if there are errors, we must
overlook them, and stand by the things that are well and rightly said.

GALLUS. What if, in the meantime, by virtue of that authority
which a new and plausible work must carry with the unlearned,
those old errors which ought to have been eradicated, are only
made to strike root still more deeply ? I do not think this a matter
to keep silence about.

CORDUS. Speak out, then; and if you wish to, cry aloud.

GALLUS. This should be your province rather than mine.

CORDUS. Cordus himself is too unlearned to undertake that
piece of criticism. Let him address himself to the task who may
choose to; I shall only indicate, with all candor and open-hearted-
ness, some things which I do know and stand by; yet all the while
ready at any moment, and without a blush, to be taught by any of
you who may know better than I.

RALLA. What are we waiting for?

CORDUS. Young man, lay aside that genteel cloak, and carry
this little volume of Dioscorides.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 26p

NIGER. You advise well; this author alone suffices.
GALLUS. I have the two volumes of Brunfelsius.
CORDUS. If it please you, we will first enter this my little garden
by the house. 1

The conversation carried on between the five friends while on
this botanical excursion constitutes the body of this rare booklet of
185 pages, and gives a clearer insight into the state of medical
botany in middle Europe in the time of Brunfels, Fuchs, and
Tragus, than could be gathered from the most exhaustive study of
those author's folios themselves.

1 Botanologicon, pp. 26, 27.

CHAPTER IX
VALERIUS CORDUS, 1515-154

HITHERTO Valerius Cordus remains almost unknown except by
name. Not one of the four of his own countrymen who wrote
botanical history within the nineteenth century ever looked into
Cordus' writings — all of them published after his early death —
far enough to see whether he had been least or greatest among
German botanists of the sixteenth century.

Sprengel says that "Valerius Cordus, son of Euricius, if he had
lived longer, might have given to his works a certain maturity
which is conspicuously wanting to them";1 after which anything
but laudatory opinion he proceeds to give the young man full
credit for having travelled widely in many parts of Germany, and
for having discovered and published a goodly number of new plants.

Of a very different tenor is the language of Ernst Meyer: "A
splendid and all too transitory phenomenon was Euricius Cor-
dus' son Valerius."2 While in my view this opinion of Valerius
Cordus' merits is not extravagant, still Meyer, as it seems to me,
fails to show reason for such high praise. He does much better
than Sprengel; yet I am obliged to infer that he borrowed the
opinions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authorities on
Cordus, rather than as having made the young man's writings a
subject of careful examination. The estimate of the best botanists
of two generations after Cordus was an exalted one, as to his merits;
and that outside of Germany.

Sachs in his volume of history seems to have found it easy to
adopt Sprengel' s tone of indifference to this youth of rare genius.
"For the present," he says, "we pass by Valerius Cordus, Conrad
Gesner, Matthioli, and several others of no importance,"3 etc., etc.;
and this is the only reference to him which I have been able to find

J Hist. Rei. Herb., vol. i, p. 346.

2 Geschichte der Botanik, vol. iv, p 317.

* Sachs, Geschichte, p. 31.

270

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 271

save mention of the fact of his having observed the sensitivity of
certain leaves.1

Such conflict of opinion on the part of nineteenth-century
writers has seemed to make it incumbent on me to determine if
possible, out of Cordus' writings themselves, why it was that for
nearly two centuries before the nineteenth he was held in such
esteem by accomplished botanists of every nationality in Europe.

Life. Valerius Cordus was born in the year 1515 at Siemers-
hausen, where also his father Euricius Cordus had been born.
There is a beauty and a certain pathos in the story of how the
destined father while a boy had made fine progress on the road to
higher learning, and then by an early marriage, evidently in poverty,
seemed to have extinguished all hope of a scholar's career. Yet
when this son was born, the young father's zeal for learning
returned ; for to the child there must be given every advantage of
high education ; and he himself would be the educatoi of his Valerius.
In some way he managed, as we have already seen, to go to the
university of Erfurth, where he very soon obtained his first aca-
demic degree. Thenceforward he supported his family by teaching
and lecturing until other degrees had been gained, and he was
settled in the profession of medicine; meanwhile training his boy
carefully in the ancient languages, philosophy, and the sciences,
among them botany in particular. We have a biographer's
testimony to this. ' ' Valerius Cordus was imbued with an incredible
zeal for learning thoroughly not only medicine, but also the right
recognition of plants, to which latter his father Euricius, a physician
and also an illustrious poet, urged him by both precept and
example ; for he had reared the child even from the cradle in the
midst of herbs and flowers. "2

Cordus took his degree in medicine at the univers ty of Wittem-
berg, and there shortly after gave regular lectures on DioscorideSf
and with such marked acceptance that to the audience of medical
students certain professors joined themselves.3 It must have been
earlier than this that he prepared his Dispensatorium, or manner of
preparing all medicines, the only work of his that was printed in
his lifetime, and which was a great success. He had not even
intended it for publication, but appears to have written it as a pas,
time while with his uncle, Joachim Ralla, an apothecary at Leipzig.

1 Sachs, Geschichte, p. 579.

J Walter Riffius in Preface to first edition of Cordus Annotations on Dios-
corides, Frankfurt, 1549; also to Strasburg ed. of Cordus' works, 1561.
* Meyer, Geschichte, vol. iv, p. 317.

272 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

But the uncle thought so highly of the manuscript that he placed it
before the magistracy of the city of Nuremberg, and they ordered
it printed.1 It was first published in 1535, was often reprinted
during the next 150 years, and was even translated out of the
original Latin into French.2

The Annotations on Dioscorides, being a kind of abstract of
his Wittemberg lectures, were not published until five years after
his death, and were never by Cordus himself prepared for the press;
perhaps not even so much as once written down by him at any
time ; for the printer's copy, when it came to the printing, consisted
of the notes of a student who had been his auditor, whose note
book was found available.3

In this kind of work young Cordus is before us in but the ordinary
role of the early sixteenth-century botanical scholar, a master of the
ancient languages, delving deeply into the medico-botanical works
of Greek and Roman antiquity, and laboring to correct, amend, and
in some degree perhaps augment the ancient pharmacopeia. To
have been able to accomplish so much in this direction, and that
while yet hardly having attained to manhood, was in itself a proof
of genius. To understand the exalted character of this genius it is
only necessary to canvass what the youth had also attained to along
other and different lines at the same time.

In field work in Germany, for botany alone — not to speak of
geology and mineralogy, in both of which he was, for his time, an
expert — he had wrought out more results that had his older con-
temporaries, Brunfelsius, Tragus, and Fuchsius combined. In his
repeated journeyings to the great forests and wildest mountain
districts, it is estimated that he discovered several hundred new
plants.4 Sprengel has given the Linnaean names of some twenty-
five of these new discoveries of Cordus ; and that is perhaps double
or treble the number of novelties gathered in by the whole three
above named ; and they both were men of longer life and more or
less extensive travel. At the time when Cordus' field studies of
German botany were in progress nothing had ever been published
bearing on Germany in particular as to its plants. The investiga-
tor of the botany of its forests, fields, and mountains had no other
descriptive resources than the folios of Theophrastus, Dioscorides,
and Pliny. Even Brunfelsius' book, which had appeared when

» Meyer, Geschichte, p. 318.

' Haller. Bibliotheca Botanica. vol. i, p. 282.

' Meyer, Geschichte, vol. iv, p. 318.

* Haller, Bibliotheca Botanica, vol. i, p. 281.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY— GREENE 273

Valerius Cordus was sixteen or seventeen years old was, as to its
descriptive text, nothing but the reiteration of ancient botany.
Soon after the publication of that work Euricius Cordus had
publicly cautioned men against expecting to find all the trees,
herbs, and flowers of Germany described in the botanies of the
ancients, who had known but the plants of the very different region
of the Mediterranean Sea. This was nothing like an intimation
that the books of the ancient scould not be serviceable to students
of German botany, and might therefore well be closed and laid
aside. That would have been the proposition of an ignorant man
and a charlatan; never of one of reason and erudition. The fields,
the gardens, culinary and ornamental, the orchards, waysides, and
hedgerows abounded in plants cultivated or naturalized which, in
part purposely and in part fortuitously, had been brought into
Germany from the South and from the East ; and the discussion of
just these formed no small part of the phytography of anti-
quity. All this had been clear to the elder Cordus, and was as
easily comprehensible to the younger. But there must now be
conveyed a better notion than we have yet gained of the rare
subjective equipment wherewith young Valerius went forth to the
botanical conquest of the great German forests and unexplored
mountain districts. On this we have the following from a contem-
porary once before quoted.

" To the best possible education of an intellect naturally keen,
there was united in him that happy temperament to which nothing
is impossible, or even difficult of attainment. To these gifts he
added a truly marvellous industry and assiduity in research ; and
above all a most wonderfully retentive memory for everything he
either saw in nature or read in books. In this he so greatly
excelled as to be able to carry in mind in their entirety descriptions
of things which he had not seen but was looking to find; thus
having the descriptions always available whenever occasion called
for the use of them."1

Probably it is not unusual in modern botany for one who is
afield to carry in mind, as gathered out of books, the essential char-
acteristics of certain plants not yet met with, so that he is able to
recognize such the instant he first sees them ; but it will come as a
revelation to most botanists of the present, that just this thing
was being done almost four centuries ago, by a German boy in his
teens, and while as yet the only plant descriptions extant for him

1 Riffius, in Preface to Cordus' Annotations on Dioscorides.

274 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

to memorize were those of ancient Greek and Roman physicians,
philosophers, poets, and historians.

In the year 1540, when Cordus was twenty-five years of age, he
had in manuscript among other things four books which he had
entitled Historia Plantarum. The four books contain an aggregate
of 446 chapters, each devoted to one species; so that in this manu-
script he had described that number of species. The work embraces
a part of the results of his travels at home in Germany. Finished,
as to these four books, as early as 1540, the work was not
published until 1561, or seventeen years after Cordus' death. We
shall get an idea of the wealth of these pages in botanical matter
entirely new if we but glance at the contents of Book I. The first
four types described are, in modern nomenclature, Drosera, Gratiola,
Sagittaria, and Bistorta. Every one of them, at the time when
Cordus here described them, was new to science. Bistorta had been
figured by Brunfels, though guessed by him to be one of the dracon-
tiums of Dioscorides, and not described.

In the year 1542 Cordus went to Italy, dividing his time for nearly
two years between the universities of Padua, Ferrara, and Bologna,
where he made the acquaintance of Luca Ghini, reputed the most
accomplished botanist of his time, but of whose greatness only the
tradition remains, because he published nothing; thence he pro-
ceeded to Florence, Pisa, Lucca, and late in the summer of 1544, to
Rome. The misdirected and ungoverned zeal with which he prose-
cuted this summer journey in a southern climate cost the young
man his life. In the company of two friends and a servant, while
tending Rome ward, he ranged everywhere from the cool mountains
down to the heated and malarious marshes of the seaboard. Al-
most immediately on reaching Rome, Cordus fell ill of a fever and
died there in September, 1544, at the age of 29 years. His body
found its resting place there in the Church of S. Maria de Anima,
where there is a long Latin epitaph, ending with the lines1:

Ingenio superest Cordus; mens ipsa recepta est
Ccelo; quod terras est, maxima Roma tenet.

The botanical outcome of these Italian journeyings was a Book
V of the Historia Plantarum, consisting of descriptions of 25 plants
which he had studied in that country, as not having been met with
by him in Germany. This work was first published at Strasburg
in 1563; then again reprinted at late as 1751, in the large folio
entitled Opera Botanica Conradi Gesneri.

» Gesneri Opera Botanica, vol. i, p. 20 (1751).

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 2/J

Cordus left no dissertations on the philosophy of plants; but only
his descriptions of some 500 species ; and it is out of these fragments,
all posthumously published, that we gather proofs of his resplendent
genius.

Phytography. When some years after Cordus1 death the manu-
script of the Historic, Plantarum had been sent to the erudite
Conrad Gesner at Zurich, in hope that he would approve the work
and procure its publication, this worthy, in his letter of acknow-
ledgment— subsequently printed — says that the four books are
" truly extraordinary because of the accuracy with which the plants
are described."1

Almost a century and a half later Tournefort named Valerius
Cordus as having been "the first of all men to excel in plant de-
scription."2 Then coming down to the time of Linnasus we shall
find the very learned botanist and historian Haller still more point-
edly crediting Valerius Cordus with having been " first to teach
men to cease from dependence on the poor descriptions of the
ancients, and to describe plants anew from nature."3

This, then, appears to be Cordus' title to special distinction among
German botanists, of the sixteenth century. He is the inventor
of the art of phytography. This is saying very much, and the
warrant for it must be shown. In our study of Tragus we observed
that he, writing in Geiman, and for popular reading, also without
thought that his writing would ever have the helpful accompani-
ment of pictures, used an originality and a minuteness of detail in
his descriptions of many plants that were quite new in botanical
writing. It is one thing to write popular plant descriptions for
every class of readers, and quite another to institute a set form of
describing them, and that in the common language of the world of
learning, and as if for learned botanists only. Just this is what
Valerius Cordus did, thereby actually creating a phytography of a
new type. And this new phytography had in view the philosophic
end of doing away with the need of pictured illustrations. A
leading purpose of Cordus was to demonstrate that every species
could be so characterized in words as to be identifiable by de-
scription alone. It is, indeed, the only reason there ever was at
any time in botanical history for describing plants ; and the remotest
ancients, when one of them undertook to describe a plant at all
did it not so badly, but often very well. The trouble they made

1 Gesner, in letter to Hieronymus Heroldus, Cordus' works (1561), p. 85.

J Tournef., Inst. Rei Herb. vol. i, p. 26.

» Haller, Bibliotheca Botanica, vol. i, p. 282.

276 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

was through giving but the names and medical properties in the
majority of instances. Euricius Cordus had expressed himself in
print as to the unreasonableness of hoping to find the names of all
German plants in Dioscorides and Pliny; and the logical sequence
was, that German types unknown to the ancients ought to begin
to be named and described. Knowing the intense devotion of the
father to the son, and recognizing the zeal and ability of the latter,
it is not possible to think of Valerius Cordus' work of describing
German plants as having had other than this origin. It was like-
wise of deliberate purpose that the help of the engraver's art was
to be dispensed with, as being unnecessary where the verbal descrip-
tions are what they ought to be, except to the untaught, to whom
descriptions are useless ; for whom, however, Cordus did not pre-
tend to write.

That which I here affirm is a fact which became obscured, and
was in effect contradicted, by the editor and the publisher of Cordus'
posthumous works; for the folio appeared almost throughout
bedizened with woodcuts of plants, to the number of some 280
figures ; a condition of things which Cordus could not have dreamed
of as possible, and to which, living, it is most improbable that
he would have consented. It was by urgent demand of the
printer and publisher that figures were inserted. He evidently
considered them to be indispensable to the financial success of the
undertaking; and most probably he was right in that. The pro-
posal to publish Cordus' works came at the time when the new icon-
ographic movement that had been inaugurated by Brunfels thirty
years before was at its high tide of public favor; for Fuchsius'
larger and more specious volume with doubly numerous plates had
followed, and even Tragus had at last come out in an edition with
567 figures. It was not a time when the publisher would look for the
success of a volume of plant descriptions in Latin unaccompanied
by figures. The Strassburg printer, Rihelius, prospective publisher
of Cordus' Historia, was in possession of the plates of Tragus' work
and desired Gesner as editor to make use of them in as far as poss-
ible to illustrate the text. Gesner acceded to the proposition, and
did as well as he could, yet not altogether very well; for there
were some of Cordus' plant discoveries that were quite unknown
to Gesner; moreover, the latter sometimes erred rather sadly in
his interpretation of Cordus' diagnoses. Altogether, the attempt
to illustrate by those old woodcuts the beautiful texts of Cordus
has led to much misunderstanding and many errors in the inter-
pretation of his chapters ; the errors being in the main such as have

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 277

arisen from incautiously concluding the identity of a given plant
from the figure which Gesner by mistake associated with the descrip-
tion, rather than from the description itself.

This is not the place for indicating severally the errors made,
as editor, by Gesner; but it may be well just here to call attention
to the serious mistake made by Tournefort when, justly lauding
Cordus' merit as a phytographer, he said also that he" did not disdain
to make use of plates. " 1 He had not read Gesner's letter prefatory
to the History, with its apology for the introdution of the plates;
and many another since — even Linnaeus among them — has been
chargeable with the same oversight, to his own humiliation.

I suppose Valerius Cordus is the first in all history to have formu-
lated for himself a definite plan or model of botanical description.
There is a plan which he follows with such uniformity as to leave not
the least room for questioning that he had studied it out for him-
self; and he presents it by example only, without formal announce-
ment, without explanation, defense or apology, and on its obvious
merits. In this plan of his we have the first foundation, and the
.actual beginning of modern phytography; therefore we must
analyze it carefully.

1 . There must be a plant before him, a living one ; for, while in his
day herbarium specimens, especially of uncommon plants, were in the
possession of some botanists and pharmacists for purposes of identi-
fication, Cordus would not have had the temerity to offer the diag-
nosis of a dead fragment, or even of a more complete dead specimen,
for a plant description. That innovation on phytography was not
attempted until two centuries later.

2. The subject must be mature, or at least in flower; the fruit
to be waited for if it must be, and described later; for Cordus
describes flowers, fruits, and seeds invariably if at all available.

3. He begins with those parts of the plant that are most obvious
as it stands living before him. If the foliage is most conspicuous,
and the stem insignificant, as in a dandelion or a sundew, he begins
with the foliage, proceeding thence to the stem; otherwise the stem
is first described, then the foliage.

4. The flower is taken up next in order, the actual diagnosis of
it being preceded by a mention of the time of year when the flower-
ing occurs. As to the floral organs, while neither calyx nor corolla
has its name as a separate part, he manages to describe both, and
always very accurately.

1 Tournef., Inst. Rei Herb., vol. i, p. 26.

278 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

5. Fruits and seeds are described with great precision. In the
case of capsular fruits if the cells are several he tells the number of
them and notes the lines of dehiscence, often giving not only the
color and the form of the seeds, but the number of rows they form
within the capsule.

6. The root is always the last part of the plant which Cordus
describes. This, as has been remarked in an earlier chapter, is
the inconspicuous or at least the hidden organ, the one that has to
be unearthed often with difficulty; and if physiologically and
biologically speaking the root is the first of plant organs — and
Cordus must have known this, or at least might have learned it
from Theophrastus — phytographically it is perhaps well enough
regarded as the last ; for it is perfectly natural that a man in describ-
ing a plant should begin with those parts that are obviously before
his eyes, and then proceed in a search for those that are hidden away.

7. In describing herbaceous plants Cordus never fails to state
the natural duration of the species if he knows it. Everything with
him is annual, or biennial, or perennial. He is far more careful
about this than most botanists of the present.

8. To the morphology of things he adds faithful reports of the
odors and flavors, whether of foliage, flowers, or roots; and he is so
distinctively phytographic as to make the briefest possible mention
of medical qualities. This all the more clearly reveals in him a
purpose to separate between descriptive botany and economic
botany ; for as a young physician he was particularly distinguished
in pharmacy.

The boldest innovation that was made by any botanist of the
whole sixteenth century, in whatever part of Europe, was that of
Valerius Cordus when he proceeded to describe anew, and according
to his own phytographic scheme, some of the best known and even
best described plants of Dioscorides. And yet the ultimate success
of the innovation might have been foreseen, doubtless was fore-
seen, by the young author. The reader must here be given one
example of Cordus' new description of a very old medicinal plant;
contrasting his with that of Dioscorides.

DIOSCORIDES, Book II., Ch. 162. "ARUM, called Lupha by the
Syrians, sends up leaves like those of Dracunculus, but larger and
less spotted; stem purplish, nine inches high, bearing something like
a pestle, upon which the red seeds grow ; root like that of Dracunculus
white."

VALERIUS CORDUS, Hist. Book I., Ch. 50. "ARUM in early spring
sends up its leaves each rolled together like a cloak and the roll

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY— GREENE 279

slenderly pointed; these gradually expand and assume the outline of
an ivy leaf, though they are much larger, sometimes attaining the
length of nine inches, ending in a point, but widening below, yet
receding into a sinus where joined to the petiole. In certain locali-
ties the leaves are purple spotted. At the same time of the year
it sends up another rolled up cloak1 which rests at the summit of a
short upright stalk, and which about the middle of May opens to
something like the form of a rabbit's or a donkey's ear, and
shows within that which may be likened to the pestle of a mortar,
is of about the length of the little finger, erect, oi a dull purple or
ashy color, and rests on a kind of roughish tubercle, beneath which
there is another tuberculation of the same size, but paler as to
color. This last-named tuberculation, after the one above it and
the pestle have withered, grows to the size of a walnut and takes
on the aspect of a bunch of red berries, each berry containing a seed
or two a little smaller than a lentile. This thing ripens at about the
summer solstice, and the knot of shining berries and its stalk are all
that remain visible of the plant at that time ; and when these have
fallen away everything disappears. The plant is from a bulbous
perennial root of the size of the first joint of the thumb, white,
delicate, which is found in a shrunken and withering state under the
growing herb, yet after the withering of the herbage is found
increased in size and firm. It sends out many eyes or tubercles by
means of which the plant is propagated. Every part of the herbage
exhales a heavy odor, and is so acrid in flavor as to affect the tongue
and palate of him "who tastes it as if he had swallowed thistles or
briers. The plant inhabits shady places in deep woods, or old and
shaded drains and ditches, or along hedges. Some cultivate it in
gardens."

Cordus' descriptions of new types discovered by himself do not
differ in plan from the above. Some such are longer, others shorter,
according to the requirements of the plant itself as examined by
him in minute detail. One sees that in them all the same attention
is given to the morphology, and also to the life history of the plant
in as far as this is known to him. In his practice of describing each
species both morphologically and biologically, he is a herald of our
late nineteenth and early twentieth century writers who, now
that we have the microscope, give life histories with minuteness
of detail before impossible.

It will also be observed that Cordus' descriptions of plants

i Cordus' Latin word here is involucrum.

280 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

are lengthy. The writing them over again in the descriptive
terminology of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century phytography
would reduce the number of words by at least one half, if not by
two thirds, yet would not greatly improve them as to their definitive
quality. But the same thing may be said of hundreds of more than
equally lengthy descriptions of species published very recently.

Vegetative Organs. One meets with a new term or two in
Cordus relating to vegetative organs; and new terms, with a man of
his mentality, mean new thoughts. Foremost among such new
terms of his is coliculus, i.e., cauliculus, or caulicle, diminutive of
caulis, a stem. This caulicle appears as the very first word in the
descriptive account of an herbaceous plant newly discovered in
Cordus' day, now known as Calla palustris. The only organ this
plant has which Cordus could possibly have identified as any kind of
stem is that part now for some time known as its rootstock, or
rhizome. The account given of these caulicles is, that they are
spread about over the ground, are about a foot long, of the thickness
of one's little finger, are green, glabrous, and jointed; that from each
joint white fibrous roots descend into the ground, and broad-
bladed leaves arise above them,1 etc., etc. Every other botanical
writer all through the long ages had called every such thing a root.
Theophrastus alone, and that seventeen centuries earlier, had gone
so far as to register a doubt about the propriety of classing them
with roots. Cordus is the first to publish a decision that they
are primarily of the nature of stems. Note also that the name he
assigns this organ is one that accentuates its stem characteristics,
veiling those conditions which had led to its having been de-
nominated a root. Such prudence in the selection of a name for
the organ evidences a philosophic mind. He might have named the
thing as rootstock or a rhizome; thereby, however, veiling those
stem characteristics which he wished to impress, and accentuating
the very things which had led to their being mistaken for roots ; and
so the adverse critic would have made light of the whole affair;
pointing out that one says it is a stem, yet names it by a name which
seems to say that after all it is a kind of root. It is very possible
by the injudicious naming of a scientific discovery to retard the
acceptance of the discovery itself.

Cordus must not be thought of as having regularly defined these
horizontal root-like stems, or as having even recognized them in
all their phases as being of the nature of stems. Their distinctly

» Hist. PL, p. 95.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 281

articulated and leaf-bearing character is in many cases far from
being obvious. Such plants as iris and acorus are credited by him,
as they always of old had been, with having thick fleshy horizontal
roots. But he is none the less first to name as stem any form or
phase of rootstock or rhizome, and all the merit of such fine organ-
ologic discovery belongs to him.

The occurrence of adventitious roots at the lower joints of large
culms Cordus remarks upon admiringly. He names them fulcra,
not perceiving that at their very earliest starting forth from aerial
joints they are roots. He makes the subjoined comment on them
as he has studied them in the Indian millet: "The plant has many
obliquely descending and quite firm roots, but is not content with
these ; for when the culm obtains its growth and begins to be top
heavy with leaves and the growing spike, it sends down from its
inferior joints certain braces which, when they reach the ground
put forth roots and fibres. Through Divine Providence, by means
of these braces the plants more securely maintain themselves
erect against the force of winds."1 The same is stated more suc-
cinctly and briefly in his account of Indian corn.2

There are intimations that Cordus is not content with the notion
that leaves may -spring from roots immediately, but that leaf
bearing should be the prerogative of stems, or of that which repre-
sents them. When having in view a plant the leaves of which form
a rosette hardly raised above the level of the ground, he seems
purposely to avoid writing them down as radical leaves, or root
leaves, and is wont to describe them as radiating "around" the
root. It is an evasion, certainly; but it subserves its purpose;
for he thereby escapes the necessity of saying that they grow from
the root. But again, in describing some garden biennials, like the
carrot, the part to which the leaves are attached is visibly distinct
from the fusiform root, though it is extremely short, too short to
be called a stem, and he denominates it the caput,3 the head above
the root. Only tardily has botany come to approve, formally,
this one of the improvements in organography which it owes to
Cordus. It is now taught that such apparently radical leaves grow
from what is called a crown, and is understood to be but a short-
ened and thickened stem; but the teaching is still ineffectual to
altogether prevent our occasional speaking and writing about
stemless plants and root leaves.

' Hist. PI., p. 143-
1 Ibid., p. 112.
* Ibid., p. 103.

282 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

To the fundamentals of leaf morphology I have not found this
author contributing very much that is new; but his descriptions
show him always carefully discriminating between the equally and
the unequally pinnate in compound leaves. Not that these leaves
have yet been formally designated as "compound." They have
not been, nor will they be so named until after the lapse of more than
a century after Cordus' time. The epoch is one of discovery, not
of always naming the thing discovered.

But Cordus is the man who first reaches the conclusion that an
organ need neither be green colored nor horizontally explanate
in order to be a leaf. It seems to have fallen to his lot to describe
but two orobanchaceous types. In the case of the first of them it
is evident he had not yet seen that the colorless scales investing
the base of the stem have the nature of foliage; for he says "the
plant is destitute of leaves."1 Some years after this, travelling in
Italy, he becomes acquainted with another and much more scaly
member of this alliance. His opinion respecting what the scales
are now undergoes a change. ' The dense investiture of scales
upon the stems of this plant, all of them pointing vertically, are to
be interpreted as being its leaves."2

Anthology. Among botanical authors of his time Cordus alone
gives some attention to inflorescence. He is the first after
Theophrastus to have noted the distinction of the centripetal and
centrifugal in anthesis ; or, to state it otherwise, of the indeterminate
and determinate in inflorescence; and every historian of botany
appears to have overlooked this. Meyer writing on this topic little
more than a half century since says that, in as far as he is aware,
all the way from Theophrastus down to the times of Link and
Robert Brown, no mention was made of these distinctions.3 Cor-
dus' writings antedate those of the worthies last named by almost
three centuries; and Meyer can not have taken the time to read
them; for it is a very common thing with this German youth, in
describing plants spicate or racemose as to their flowering, to say
that the expanding of the individual flowers proceeds from base to
summit of the axis, and that thus the succession of the flowering is
prolonged indeterminately as it were, and may continue indefinitely,
through a long season. In the case of loose inflorescences such as
the corymb and the umbel he does not make note of such differ-
ences. But in the crowded, though quite spherical flower-cluster

' Hist. PL, p. 89.

J Ibid., Book v, p. 5.

* Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. i, p. 166.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY— GREENE 283

of Echinops sphaerocephalus, he observes and records it that the
first flowers to open are those at the summit of the cluster and
that the succession is from that point downward to where the
globose head is joined to its peduncle.1

It will be taken for granted that Cordus had received from
Theophrastus the suggestion of the centripetal and centrifugal in
inflorescence; but there is one excellent definition of a particu-
lar kind of inflorescence which modern botany receives from this
German youth of the sixteenth century ; that of the word umbel.
The word itself as a botanical term is as old as botany, and was in
the first place suggested by the mechanism of an umbrella 'or sun-
shade, which in more than one way certain inflorescences recall.
There are two things essential to an umbrella, and these not equally
conspicuous. The more obvious part is the rounded and expanded
externally more or less convex surface ; and there is also the frame
work beneath supporting it in expansion. Now while the modern
botanist is taught to look not at the expanded surface, but at the
structure of the framework beneath for the evidence that a flattish
topped inflorescence is an umbel, it was quite otherwise with the
botanists of antiquity, and with all of them before Valerius Cordus.
Brunfels, Fuchsius, Tragus, and this young botanist's wisest con-
temporaries held the broad flat clusters of the elder and the vibur-
num to be umbels equally with those of carrot and caraway, parsnip
and fennel ; no heed being given to the complexity of the supporting
framework in the elder, or to the simplicity of it in caraway and
fennel. Even the small heads of those composites the yarrow and
the tansy were said to be arranged in umbels. It is in the midst of
his own new and improved description of the common yarrow that
Cordus suggests the need of distinguishing between umbel and
corymb; and that nothing should be called an umbel the stalklets
of which do not all arise from one and the same point.2 This is
done with the utmost modesty, the revolutionizing proposition
being enclosed in a parenthesis. He sees the important distinction
between umbel and corymb, names briefly the characteristic of the
original and true umbel, and quietly passes on, leaving it to be
inferred that other flattish-topped inflorescences not answering
to this clear definition of the umbel may be called the corymb ; and
his practice proves this to have been his purpose. We shall be
interested in observing later how long after Cordus botanists in
general saw the need of distinguishing between umbel and corymb.

1 Hist. PL, p. 87.

2 Ibid., p. 139.

284 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Just here, however, it may be observed that when the vast family
of the composites first gained clear recognition, Corymbifera
became at once the family name, and remained steadily in use for a
century and more ; and Cordus made the first beginning of calling
the inflorescences of many commonest composites corymbs.

Those modified leaves now known as bracts, and collectively
as an involucre subtending inflorescences and flowers, first ob-
tained mention and description by Cordus. In Daucus they so
conspicuously embrace the umbel, and are so very unlike the proper
foliage that he is careful to bring out in writing all their peculiarities1 ;
the first step in the direction of giving taxonomic significance to
the involucre in the family of umbellifers. Recalling that that com-
paratively modern and well advanced anthologist Tournefort wrote
down the involucre of every araceous plant as its "petal,"2 it is
interesting to note that this German youth more than a hundred
and fifty years before Tournefort denominated it an "involucrum, "3
as do we of to-day ; for the spathe is but one type of involucre.

The calyx under Cordus makes noteworthy though by no means
great progress toward gaining recognition as a part of the flower.
Quite in conformity to the definition which we found in Fuchsius'
vocabulary Cordus calls that a "calyculus" which is synsepalous
and either becomes a part of the fruit, or at least a protection to the
growing and mature seeds. All labiates and borrageworts will
readily be accredited as having calyxes. But how will it fare in
this regard with the solanaceae. In the some half-dozen genera of
this family then known in German gardens there was not one,
Hyoscyamus excepted, which could exhibit an organ answering to
the then accepted definition of a calyx; and, curiously enough
Tragus, and even Fuchsius, when they name the "calyx " of Hyos-
cymus, mean nothing but the operculate, and therefore literally
chalice-shaped, capsule.4 The real calyx goes with Tragus for a
"vasculum," while Fuchsius makes no reference to it whatever.
One can not but regret that Cordus did not describe Hyoscyamus;
it would have been so interesting to have seen what he with his
perfect originality of view would have made of the anthology and
carpology of a type so marked. But the youth was much engaged
in bringing from German meadows, river banks, and woods repre-
sentatives of genera unknown to the ancients, and describing these.

• Hist. PI., p. 90.

2 Tournef. Inst., p. 158.
» Cordus, Hist. PI., p. 102.

* Tragus, Stirp. Comm., p. 132; Fuchs, Hist. Stirp., p. 833.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 285

The presentation of his views about calyxes in solanaceous plants
will be helped by a list of the genera which at that period, over
and above Hyoscyamus, were in German gardens. They were
Solanum, Atropa, Mandragora, Melongena, Physalis, Capsicum
and Stramonium, or Datura. The last had been credited with a
calyx by Tragus, though not technically, or as being an organ
regularly so named, but only as a cup-shaped green thing forth
from which ' ' the flower proceeds. " 1 The corresponding part of the
plant Physalis Fuchsius had described collectively as "rounded
pouches resembling bladders, "2 and Tragus calls them simply " blad-
ders."3 These I think are all the references made by Fuchs and Bock
to anything like a calyx in their* eight or nine solanaceous genera.
Of course the small, flat, hardly more than disk-like calyxes of proper
solanum, mandragora, capsicum and their like, would not be noticed
by them in any way. They were no part of the flower, nor had any
significancy. With Valerius Cordus everyone of them — the tubi-
form cup of Datura, the globiform-inflated and closed bladder of
Physalis, the prickly saucer-shaped thing holding the mere base of a
melongena fruit, and the almost flat green disk visible at the basal
end of a pepper pod — is a "calix" or "caliculus. " This was a
most significant innovation ; the employment of an old term in such
wise as to make of it a strictly scientific term. Hitherto ' ' calyx ' ' had
been used in botany from the remotest times as signifying any
organ that happened to be cup-shaped, the ovary of a pear or quince
or pomegranate in their early stages, a cup-shaped corolla, the cup-
shaped corona within the perianth of a jonquil or daffodil, or even an
operculate dry seed-vessel. Any one of these was a "calyx" in
pre-Cordian terminology. Now, according to this use of the term,
which makes its first appearance in Cordus' descriptions of solana-
ceous plants, calyx is not calyx by reason of its shape, but because
it holds always one and the same place-relation to "flower" and
to the fruit that succeeds the flower This principle of the location
of an organ, the place which it visibly occupies as next some other
organ, rather than its form or coloring or texture, is one which,
long after Cordus' day came to be received a^ absolutely fundamen-
tal in anthology. Morphologically considered the whole doctrine of
the flower, as almost every reader will know, rests on this basis,
and most securely. Therefore Cordus' mere application of this
principle to the identifying of calyx in all its extremes of form

1 Tragus, p. 896.
» Fuchs, p.88i.
* Tragus, p. 304.

286 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

throughout the one family of the nightshades must rank among
the most important contributions ever made to anthology; for
it was the first hint ever given of a truly scientific classification of
floral organs.

The truthfulness of this last statement will remain unimpeached
notwithstanding that Cordus did not name the calyx as forming a
part of the flower. It was too early for the expression of anything
so iconoclastic as that. From the earliest dawn of botany down
through uncounted ages, a circle of green-colored leaves, no matter
what their size or form, or where placed, had been a circle of leaves,
and a whorl of leaf-like organs colored otherwise than green had
been a flower. Even in the mind of young Cordus this appears to
have been a. prejudice too deeplyseated to fade away even before the
light of his own brilliant discoveries. He never admitted the calyx
to the rank of a floral organ; though he seeems upon the verge of
doing so. In describing the "flower" of the white water lily he
actually sets apart, as too different from the others, those four
outer members which are green externally and which also, as he
says, completely enfold all the others, and he gives to them col-
lectively a name by which they must be distinguished from the
many and narrower white "flower leaves"; the name is not calyx
but "tunica. "l He does not, however, look on them as partaking
so much of the nature of a calyx as of ordinary flower leaves. He
observes that they are not altogether of that green color which at
first glance they seem to be, but that at summit and marginally
they are of the same texture and whiteness as the others. They
impress him as being modified flower leaves, whereas the green
things at the back of buttercups and others like them are but
reduced and modified ordinary leaves. The terms calyx and calicu-
lus I have failed to find Cordus making use of at all except for such
as are synsepalous. If such a circle is quite chorisepalous, or even
approximately so, he calls it a circle of leaves simply. He does
not overlook the fact that such chorisepalous circle has a particular
function, and that in immediate relation to the flower; and here
again he seems as on the verge of extending the use of the term
flower so as to make it include the calyx; but he never quite does
that. His manner of expressing himself in such cases is exempli-
fied in his description of what he calls Hepatica alba, which is his
name for a new genus of his discovery, its equivalent in modern
nomenclature being Parnassia; the type, P. palustris. Here is his

' Hist. PL, p. 99.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 287

account of what is now called the calyx in that species. " Beneath
the flower itself there are five very small leaves within which the
flower before it opens is enclosed. "1 Certainly that which envelops
a flower before its expansion can be no part of that flower. There
is here a more than whispered call for a new extension of the use of
the word flower; a new definition of that organ, by the terms of
which the calyx shall be recognized as a part of it. All .this will
come, but by no means speedily.

There is one use of the term calyx frequent with Cordus which
practically implies chorisepaly. I refer to his habitual writing
of the involucres subtending the flower heads of all cichoriaceous
plants and some of the true composites as the calyx. This was
a complying with the terms of the then accepted definition of a
calyx as that which enfolded at first the flower, after that the fruit.
As a somewhat special application of the term this, perhaps intro-
duced by Cordus, seems strongly to have commended itself to
future generations; for, long after the "flower" of chicory and its
cognates had been seen to be an inflorescence, this term calyx
remained in use instead of involucre. With Tournefort in 1700
it was still a calyx. Linnaeus a half century later modified the
expression in so far as to write it " calyx communis " ; but this need-
ful modification was afterwards ruled out. A number of prominent
botanists, even down to the middle of the nineteenth century, wrote
down the involucre even of the sunflowers as a calyx, and the bracts
composing it, as sepals.

To the morphology of the corolla — if one may use that term in
writing about a time which far antedates the term's invention —
Cordus adds a few items of high import to phytography. Botany
has now not many expressions which it could as hardly do without
as the terms papilionaceous and bilabiate ; for they at once recall, and
respectively designate, two large and important families of plants.
Fuchsius in one instance speaks of a certain " flower" as having the
form of a butterfly.2 In as far as I have been able to discover
the idea of comparing the pea blossom to a butterfly originated with
Fuchsius' brilliant contemporary Conrad Gesner.3 Neither of these
appears to have used the expression "flore papilionis forma" in
connection with any more than the single species Pisum sativum;
but this evidently suggested to Cordus the possibility of something
better than the antique usage of describing a vetch blossom as

* Hist. PL, p. 153.

3 Hist. Stirp., p. 628, under Pisum (1542).

3 Historia Plantarum, p. iQ2 (1541).

288 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

being like that of a lupine, and the lupine flower in turn being com-
pared to that of a pea. And his appears to have been the botanical
eye that was first to perceive in the flowers of the whole long line
of beans, peas, and lupines, and of broom and cytisus, and laburnum
tree, only more or less marked deviations from — mere modifications
of --that pea-blossom type which Gesner had compared to the
insect called a butterfly ; and by and by the adjective term papilion-
aceous was coined by him. Such readers as may not have access
to Cordus' works may be interested in following the gradual genesis
of that useful adjective in the young master's mind; and this can
be shown by citing his expressions in precisely the order in which
they occur in the succession of his pages. I therefore give these
in the footnote.1

Of equal service to all botany was his invention of a term that
should at once indicate and describe the corolla of the Labiatae. His
term is "flos hians," the gaping flower, or corolla as we now say.
Nor does it require but a moment's reflection to become convinced
that the expression gaping, or yawning corolla is more perfectly
and exactly descriptive of the most common and typical corollas of
labiates than is the term bilabiate ; for certainly that which one sees
clearly in the form of such is, not a pair of lips, but a wide-open
yawning mouth, exposing even the throat itself. Terminology
certainly lost something of the accurately definitive when later
authority displaced Valerius Cordus' "yawning" flower and substi-
tuted the less fitly chosen bilabiate.

It was yet far from the time when any taxonomic use would be
made of the different ways in which members of floral circles are
enfolded in the bud. Cordus was first to observe some such dif-
ferences, and to name them in his plant descriptions. In describing
Iris he notes that the parts of the flower are convolute in the bud.2

» "Flores parvi, * * * papilionum figura." (Hist. Plant., 99').

"Flores * * figura papilionibus similes." (Ibid., p. 100).

"Flores * * * papilionum figura." (Ibid., p. 101).

" Flores papilionibus similes." (Ibid., p. lay2).

"Flores * * * * figura papilionum." (Ibid., p. 1.37).

"Pediculus * * parvis oblongis papilionaceis flonbus circumdatus. (Ibid.,
p. i642).

" Flores forma papilionacei et oblongi." (Ibid., p. i662).

"Flores * * producit * * papilionaceos, quales in omnibus leguminibus
est videre(!)." (Ibid., p. 187').

The reader must not fail to note that, when once the term papilionacea
has presented itself to Cordus' mind he thenceforward employs it constantly.

* Hist. PL, p. 133.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY— GREENE 289

Similarly he describes the corolla of Datura as being laid in folds
before expansion. 1 It will not be assumed that in first writing these
things down he had any thought of their important bearing upon
affinities. He may have had; but whether so or no the terms he
chose are so perfectly correct for the kinds of prefloration which they
indicate, that no reformer of terminology has sought to displace
them, and they remain in common use to-day.

The word petal was still unheard and unwritten in our science. It
will be proposed by an Italian botanist two generations later. It is
evident Cordus has realized to some degree the desirability of some
term by which flower leaves shall be distinguished from ordinary
foliage; for where flowers are choripetalous he uses the diminutive
foliolum (leaflet) instead of folium ; this, however, not as an inviolable
rule, nor in such wise as to preclude the application of the term to
ordinary green leaves that are of very small size. Also such
elongated and more or less strap-shaped flower leaves as radiately
encircle the middle of a flower, or head of flowers, Cordus repeatedly
describes as resembling rays, "radii"; the earliest adumbration of
the term now long in use for this kind of corolla.

The disk-corollas in the composites that have rays were still
undiscovered. They were seen in the mass only and were always
written of as the "stamina," therefore quite undistinguished from
the central parts of a buttercup or anemone blossom. Cordus alone
I find in one instance so writing of the "stamina" of one particular
composite as to prove that he had seen the individual "stamen"
as he could have called it, and had found its form peculiar. The
plant is Tussilago; and having described the rays, he says that the
stamina in the midst of them are "in form like minute lilies."2
No matter what he calls the thing, it is plain that he is the dis-
coverer of the disk-corolla in composites.

If both stamens and pistils are numerous, small, and slender
in the same flower Cordus makes no distinction between them in
name. In this case all are "stamina"; thus in Pulsatilla all the
threads in the midst of the flower are stamina ; but those occupying
the very center he observes as ' ' changing into a tuft of long hairs at
the base of each of which there is a seed as in clematis. " If, how-
ever, in flowers at once many-stamened and many-pistilled the pis-
tils, being without styles, have no capillary aspect in the aggregate,
then the two sets are not confused and the inner ones are not

1 Hist. PL, p. 90.

2 Ibid., p. 93.
* Ibid., p. 121.

290 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

"stamina. " This is apparent in the account which he gives of thal-
ictrum flowers. He says they are "very small, and consist of pen-
dulous stamens only; but after the falling away of these, very small
oblong black seeds remain. MI In the case of larger flowers, where
the stamens are fewer and easily counted, it becomes clear that by
"stamen" Cordus means primarily the filament; this doubtless
partly because in very many instances it was all he could find. There
are no "apices" to the inner "stamina" of pulsatilla or clematis;
none to the forked styles of the many cichoriaceae and compositae
which he examined, and he always calls these the stamina. Even
in the solanum type of floral structure, where five stamens, almost
all anther, form a central column forth from whose summit one
slender style-thread protrudes, Cordus, seeing them all, denomin-
ated all six indiscriminately "stamina."2 Evidently his mind was
exercised by these small things, in the morphology of which he saw
enough to prevent him at least from calling them indiscriminately
stamina and apices as others of his time were doing. In the large and
therefore convenient flowers of lilies he saw and took note of the
transverse position of the anthers, but would not name the things
by any name at all. The stalks which these rested on were what he
called stamina. The term apex he seems to have wished to trans-
fer to the style and stigma and to have it apply to that part of the
flower only.3 He takes particular notice of dust — rubiginosus
pulviusculus — which the lily anthers shed before collapsing. Again
in describing the anthers of Paris he sees this same kind of dust, and
there proceeds to assign it a name; even the name which it has
always since borne; for he describes these parts as being "luteo
polline conspersa. "4

Since the most ancient times what they knew as a fruit they had
recognized in its germinal state resting at the bottom of the flower»
or else below it ; but in every stage from the tender germinal condi-
tion forward to its maturity they had called it the "fruit" simply.
Cordus makes the first inroad upon this time-honored usage.
That which we know as the ovary he uniformly declines to write of
as the fruit; as if perceiving an absurdity in making this small
and tender mere promise of fruit, identical with the future actual
fruit, even in name. He does not, however, formally propose a

' Hist. PI., p. 973.
* Ibid., p. 90*.

i Ibid., p. i392. Also in the flower of Paris, p. 152, he calls the stigmas,
not the anthers, apices.
4 Ibid., p. 152.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 29 I

universal name for this hitherto really nameless thing. Where, as
in the water lilies and in some others, it is rather large and conspicu-
ous within the flower, he applies to it that already much and
variously used term capitulum; but in the more numerous cases of
smaller flowers, where it appears as only a small protuberance in the
bottom of the blossom, he writes of it as the tuberculum. The
ovary, then, like the pollen, is one of Cordus' discoveries, so to
speak, in anthology. Furthermore, this tuberculum, as he calls it,
is openly recognized as an integral part of the flower as a whole.
The proof that he so received it is found in the language he em-
ploys in describing the paeonia. Having given the characteristics
of the flower leaves, he passes from these to the two large ovaries
occupying the center. These he calls a pair of horns, cornicula,
mentioning that they are hedged about by the yellow stamens, then
proceeding to state that these two cornicula ' ' remain after the other
parts of the flower have fallen, " then grow to be an inch and a half
long,1 etc., etc. The idea that corolla, stamen, and pistils collectively
constitute a flower could not be expressed more unmistakably;
and it is the earliest record I have met with of such a proposition.
Theophrastus, as we have seen, first classified flowers as leafy and
capillary, so that a mere tuft of stamens only, unattended by leaves
of any kind, was a flower. Then, with a wild rose blossom before
him he construed the yellow stamens as being, not a circle of floral
organs, but a capillary flower within a leafy one. Thus the rose had
two flowers; the very central axis, globosely enlarged below, was
the ' ' fruit " even then , and no part of the flower. This Theophrastan
anthology of two flowers in one, rather than one flower made up of
two sets of organs, was everywhere accepted in Cordus' time.
Tragus had reproduced it, though with augmentations, even to call-
ing the petals "rose leaves," and the stamens the "rose flower."2
Now in Cordus' procedure we have an illustration of how the making
of one little distinction, and the invention of a word that accentuates
that distinction, may revolutionize a science. The man had seen
an inaccuracy in the practice of calling by the one name of fruit both
the little tubercle lying at the bottom of a cherry blossom and the
subsequent ripe cherry. That mere floral sign and promise of a
fruit he determined to name a tubercle. Logically a fruit is no part
of any flower; as logically this "tubercle" is a part of it. In rose
and paeony there are not three flowers one within another, but one
flower made up of three different kinds of parts. We shall not be

•Hw*. PL, p. 135 .

2 Tragus, Stirp. Comm., p. 988.

SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

likely to meet with any other one botanist in the whole history of
our science who so greatly advanced the morphology of the flower
as Valerius Cordus. To the finishing of morphologic anthology
only two things remained to be done. The calyx was to be added
to the category of floral organs, and the "flower leaves" awaited a
distinctive name; for the "foliolum" proposed and used by Cordus
did not satisfactorily meet the demand. It was not sufficiently
different from folium. The discovery of the functions of certain
floral parts, though of the very highest importance, awaited not the
coming of a more astute botanist, but the invention of mechanical
aids to natural vision.

Among a number of Cordus' signal new discoveries in anthology,
one must not omit to mention the flowers of the genus Ficus. Every
botanical authority from Theophrastus forward had averred that
fig trees have no flowers, and that the fruits are only fruits and noth-
ing more from their first small appearing to their ripening. Cordus
says : ' ' When the figs are half grown they develop in their interior
(what you may be surprised to know) what appear to be crowded
stamens, of a pale purplish color, standing forth from the fleshy
part, and all pointing toward the central hollow, to each of which
there suceeds a flattened yellowish seed. M1 It is most remarkable
that, two hundred years after this clear description of fig flowers,
Linnaeus should have placed Ficus among the genera of cryptogams.

Fruit and Seed. Not Brunfels, nor Fuchs, nor Tragus shows
sign of ever having read Theophrastus' scientific definition of a fruit.
As far as my careful reading has gone the Greek's term pericarp
first reappears in Cordus; and he uses it frequently. Then, in
his full descriptions of various plants it comes out that he has made
sections, longitudinal and transverse, of many pericarps, so as to be
able to record the number of the seeds when they are not too numer-
ous, or the number of rows in which they arrange themselves when
the number of the seeds is too great to be told. While the elder
German authors have quite minutely and well described the
curious and beautiful seeds of cardiospermum, this youth, as if
belonging to a later generation and to a later century than the

» Hist. PL, p. 184. In my copy of Cordus, and presumably in the whole
edition, a word has been omitted by the printer. As printed, the first line
about fig flowers reads: "Flores, ut omnes tradiderunt, fert, sed statim
parva fructuum rudimenta." This is wholly unintelligible, as a sentence,
until you supply the negative non before fert, so that the reading shall be,
" non fert. " Cordus' manuscript was not printed until seventeen years after
his death.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 293

sixteenth, makes note of the fact that these same seeds are attached
to the central part of their pericarp1; thus suggesting long before
the botanical world had apprehended its taxonomic usefulness, the
several modes of placentation.

He is accustomed to peer into and take note of every aspect of
the various dry dehiscent fruits that he meets -with in the gardens
or in the wilds. In describing species with capsular fruits he tells
whether its capsule is one-celled or several-celled, naming the lines
of dehiscence, the commissures, the partitions, if there be any, the
septa, and the compartments themselves the loculamenta. Then
the seeds are reported on, not only as to the method of arrangement
but as to every item of their form, the color and texture of their
testa, and the color and flavor of the nucleus — so he names it-
when they are large enough to be tested by the sense of taste.

Cordus has not, like Tragus, followed up the suggestions of Theo-
phrastus about the cotyledons; for that belongs to the garden
student, who plants seeds and watches their germination and first
appearing above ground; and Cordus is more zealously devoted
to wild botany. To him, however, must be conceded priority in the
matter of distinguishing between spores and seeds on the one hand,
and between spores and pollen on the other; this also without his
ever having seen either an individual spore or an individual pollen
grain. For the clearer understanding of Cordus in this particular
field of enquiry we must recall Tragus' having so studiously and so
laboriously gathered what he and others believed to be the seeds of
the fern osmunda.2 That he called them seeds implies the belief
on his part that young ferns could be produced from them. But
then, the superstitious Tragus seems also to have believed that
trees could be reproduced both by their proper seeds, and also by
that flower-dust which Cordus afterwards named pollen.3 Among

» Hist. PL, p. 89.

2 See page 238 preceding.

3 Tragus at page 1073 has the following as to the reproduction of junipers:
"Maio mense' tenuissimus ac luteus pulvis e juniperis in auras avolare
conspicitur, quod semen illius esse animadverti. Post hunc quern diximus
pulverem baccae prorumpunt exiguas, virides, quae altero demum anno an-
tumno appetente, quod illi tempor maturitatis est, coeruleo tinguntur colore,
etc., etc. E nucleis lapidosis, qui in hisce baccis continentur, novae Juniperi
plantulae fruticomt. " If in this passage semen is used botanically the mean-
ing can be no other than that junipers may grow from pollen. If, what is
improbable, he employs it in a zoological sense, as meaning that the dust
which he says sails away upon the air is needful to the fertilization of the
seed within the juniper berry, then he is the first to proclaim the modern doc-

294 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

nature students of four hundred years ago I know not who else
is so far from accepting things on other people's guess or hearsay as
Valerius Cordus ; in whom I have not yet read a line that savors of
the fabulous or superstitious; and that, for the period, is much to
say of any author. Concerning the propagation of scolopendrium
he says: "Phyllitis has no stem, or flower, or seed; nevertheless,
from the vermiform patches on the back of the leaf, when these are
resolved into powder and are scattered abroad, it is propagated."1
Substantially the same proposition is repeated with emphasis at
the end of his description ofAspidium filix mas: "Although it has
neither stem nor flowers nor seeds, it nevertheless propagates it-
self by means of the yellow and hairy powder that is produced on the
back of the leaf and is blown away by the wind."2 Again, of
trichomanes it is said: "It grows copiously on moist shaded rocks,
although it produces no stem, or flower or seed. But it reproduces
itself by means of the dust that is developed on the back of the
leaves, as do all kinds of ferns; and let this statement of the fact
once for all suffice."3 From this point forth he proceeds to
describe a half dozen other ferns in close succession, carefully bring-
ing out the form and arrangement of their fruit-dots or lines not
omitting even the indusium, but not again mentioning their seed-
lessness or their means of propagation.

This positive and reiterated assertion that ferns have no seeds,
yet propagate by organs so infinitesimal that he has never seen
one, ^ implies that what ferns shed from the back of their fronds is
understood to be of a different structure from that of seeds. It is
an easy matter for one frequenting the native haunts of certain
ferns to see their prothallia both with and without the first diminu-
tive fern leaf; and it can not reasonably be doubted — indeed
Cordus by his strong language compels us to think — that he had
seen these things, and had assured himself that the germination of
ferns is most different from that of seed plants ; thence inferring
to a certainty that those particles, invisible except in mass, are
things different and distinct from seeds.

trine of bisexuality in plants. He who knows Tragus' belief in the repro-
ductibility of even seed plants apart from any kind of seed or germ, will not
very readily accept this latter interpretation of his language.

iHist. Pi., p. 113.

J Ibid., p. 169'.

3 Ibid., p. 170.

4 The individual spores of ferns were first seen some seventy years after
Cordus' demise.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 295

Taxonomy. Cordus' Books I and II are devoted to herbaceous
plants, Book III to woody growths great and small. He accepts,
then, and without objection, these anciently established first Grand
Divisions of the plant world. The primary division of the herbace-
ous plants is not made from the point of view of affinities, but is
ordered historically rather, as one may say ; for while the heading of
Book I is "Concerning Divers Herbs," that of Book II reads,
"Plants whose History was either inexactly transmitted by the
Ancients, or else altogether omitted. " Such headings do not seem
to promise much of taxonomic doctrine, or of the tacit expression
of it by grouping. Members of the same natural family, and
species of the same genus will almost inevitably be distributed
partly to Book I and partly to Book II.

Despite these seeming obstacles to ready expression, and while
there has never yet been any attempt to relegate all genera to fami-
lies, or even formally to characterize any of those several families that
have always been recognized, still Cordus advances well beyond all
his predecessors in this significant part of botanical systematizing.
When, as sometimes happens, his general plan has led to the placing
of some type away from its real cognates, he is apt to give the hint
that such genus thus isolated in his book belongs to a certain family.
An example of this occurs in connection with his new description
of the old genus Lupinus. His first word is "Lupinus is a legu-
minous plant. "* He seems to be offering this as a piece of taxono-
mic information that is needed. He is not presenting his readers
with an empty platitude. When writing of Faba 2 and Cicer,3
and Phaseolus* he does not tell that either one is a leguminous
plant. All the world knows that these are, and have been so
classed immemorially. The family of leguminosae of antiquity
consisted of such papilionaceas as yielded edible seeds and were
therefore food plants. Important though they were, they could
not be harvested and threshed after the manner of harvesting the
frumenta, or cerealia. The individual pods had to be collected by
hand; hence the very name legumina. Lupinus was not one of
the leguminous plants with the ancients. Its seeds were bitter, but
endowed with active medicinal qualities. It was by virtue of botan-
ical principles quite new in Cordus' day that he dared to say Lu-
pinus is a leguminous plant. The family was now receiving

1 Hist. PL, p. 137.

2 Ibid., p. 166.

3 Ibid., p. 99.

* Ibid., p. 1275.

296 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

new accessions, not of plants newly discovered, but of such as had
been known very anciently but not admitted to the group, but now
ready to be received because new and truer criteria of relation-
ship were being exploited, and gaining recognition. Cordus, as we
have seen, had been the discoverer of the papilionaceous flower -
the expression tells but the truth — and one immediate result of the
discovery was, the augmentation of the ancient group of the legu-
mina by the referring thereto of every genus the mere form and
plan of whose corolla was at agreement with that of beans and peas.
Anthology, dormant if not dead for fifteen centuries, has come to
life, is developing with some rapidity, and the ancient taxonomy
that had been constructed largely according to vegetative characters,
culinary uses, and medicinal properties, is being steadily but
quietly displaced. The chief agent of this radical taxonomical
reform at this period is Valerius Cordus. We must follow him in
his bringing in of one other new accession to the family of the legu-
minous. The type had been well known to the ancient Greeks.
They had given it the name which, as a genus, it has always borne
from their day to ours, Glycyrrhiza, Sweetroot. No use was known
for any part of the plant but its root. Anciently no one would
have called it a leguminous plant; and for this very reason Cordus
argues the case of its proper admissibility to membership in the
family. In the place of a concluding note, supplementing a fine
description of the plant in all its parts, in the course of which he has
announced having found the flowers, though small and crowded, to
be precisely papilionaceous, he says, "The roots have a very sweet
flavor, moderately astringent, and a trifle acrid, to which there is
added the mere trace of a certain bitterness that belongs to all
leguminous plants; for even this plant is as certainly referable to
the leguminosae as the peas and beans themselves ; in view of which
decision it seems fitting that I should make mention of this one
sensible quality that it has in common with all the leguminosae ; for
perhaps not every one would prove to have the sense of taste suf-
ficiently cultivated to be able to perceive it and attest its presence. " l
One is obliged to pause a moment in admiration of the calm,
judicious conservatism of this youthful botanical genius, as it
reveals itself in the last of those lines. He has discovered, and as
modestly as possible he announces the discovery, that by their
floral structures alone the family relationships of hosts of plant
genera may be determined, and unmistakably. The detection of a

> Hist. PL, p. 164*.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 2p/

principle so manifestly valid, and so surely destined to revolutionize
completely all botanical system, can not but have fired with
enthusiasm a man only some twenty years old— a year or two more,
possibly, and quite as possibly a year or two less— but in his writing
how completely does he repress all enthusiasm. Profoundly
respectful toward venerated authorities of two thousand years
before who had held that agreement as to properties was required
in order to establish the fact of interrelationship, he investigates
licorice root to find that also by qualitative criteria as well as by
floral structure the plant proves itself a member of the legumin-
osae. In this repression of excessive enthusiasm for the new, and
continuing to respect the old principles, some later celebrities are
in unfavorable contrast to Cordus; for they so greatly magnified
the value of the new anthology, as to write intolerantly and even in
derision of the old ideas that vegetative characters and sensible
qualities have taxonomic weight.1

We must follow Cordus a few steps further in this path of the
discovery of relationships; for he is making distinct and lasting
landmarks in the history of plant families.

Tracing backwards the history of the Cucurbitace<z, we reach no
point, however ancient, at which gourds, pumpkins, squashes,
melons, and cucumbers were not recognized collectively in their
status of a family, or larger genus, as such a group was at first
named. In their mode of growth, their coarse, rough herbage, and
even as to the structure and qualities of their familiar large firm-
fleshy fruits, they were in a comprehensive way at one. Any
cultivator of them, however untaught, would be botanist enough
to see that. Meanwhile there were two or three other types, long
and familiarly known, which had never been thought of by even the
most skillful botanists, as cognates of gourds and cucumbers. They
were the bryonias and the momordicas. According to such signs
of consanguinity as availed with the ancients, these could never
have been thought of as possible cucurbits. They were not large,
coarse, harshly almost hispid plants, but were small, compara-
tively smooth and delicate in texture; and the bryonias, so far
from yielding any fruit the least like gourds and melons, put forth
bunches of small, soft, pulpy berries, red or black, more like those
of nightshades. In the second place there were no mild qualities
in these plants, no parts were edible. They were actively medi-
cinal, and some of them powerfully narcotic-scented. It was no less

i See Tournefort's Elemens (1694). also Linnaeus' Philosophic Botanica

298 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

than a master stroke of the new taxonomy, Cordus' bringing in of
momordica and bryonia to augment the series of genera of the
cucurbitaceae.1 He had examined their small flowers, dissected
the little bryony berries, and compared their plan of structure
with that of their robust innocuous neighbors of the fields and gar-
dens, and by these tokens had found them all to be of one lineage.

Singularly the little soft-leaved weed Lithospermum arvense had
never been thought of as in the least degree akin to the coarse,
rough, stinging borrage and bugloss and anchusa; but Cordus
describing the plant in every part with a minuteness and accuracy
unapproached by any earlier writer, concludes it all with the propo-
sition that its affinities are with the anchusas and echiums. "It is
of their kindred ; something which the ancients did not apprehend. "2
It had been through a comparison of their inflorescences, and by a
recognition of the same floral plan and fruit characters that he had
become able confidently to add lithospermum to the family of the
borrage-worts ; and yet not by these alone ; for he avers that as to
properties also it is much like the others.

In his delimitation of the genus Ranunculus Cordus defers
unwontedly to floral characters, and slights those of root, stem, and
foliage. This is very interesting as proving that the trend of his
mind has been strongly in the direction of what has come to be the
established and settled first principle of classification.

Upon this point the subjoined list of his Ranunculus species will
be instructive. They are given in the order in which he places them.
The equivalents of them, that is to say the identification of them, in
modern nomenclature is somewhat doubtful in only one or two cases.

Cordus Modern

1. Ranunculus palustris Ranunculus sceleratus.

2. Ranunculus Sardous Ranunculus Sardous.

3. Ranunculus tertius Anemone ranunculoides.

4. Ranunculus quartus Anemone nemorosa.

5. Ranunculus quintus Ranunculus arvensis.

6. Ranunculus flammula ? Ranunculus repens.

7. Ranunculus coronarius R. acris, double-flowered.

8. Ranunculus octavus ?R. acris, single-flowered.

9. Ranunculus nonus Ranunculus bulbosus.

10. Ranunculus leptophyllus Pulsatilla vernalis.

11. Ranunculus undecimus Anemone silvestris.

12. Ranunculus platyphyllus Ranunculus flammula.

1 Hist. PL, pp. ii42-ii9.
* Ibid., p. 94.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 299

A genus Ranunculus of such composition as that perfectly
illustrates taxonomy in its stage of transition from where, as at
the first, it was almost wholly dependent on vegetative characters,
to where it relies almost as entirely upon those of flower alone ; and
this at a time when as yet the calyx has received but little attention
and has not been admitted to the category of floral organs ; and the
wholly petaloid sepals of Anemone, Sylvia, and Pulsatilla form as
good a "flower," i.e., corolla, as do the flower leaves of a rose or
pasonia. It is also a stage at which the fruit is not yet accorded
the taxonomic weight that was allowed it fifty or sixty years after
Cordus by Cesalpino. In the eyes of a twentieth-century botanist
the .above is a curious medley to be called a genus Ranunculus;
and what is more, no one anterior to Cordus had done as badly as
that. The remotest Greeks seem to have admitted to Ranunculus
no species not thereto referred by most botanists of the nineteenth
century. Here there are added to the genus, and admirably indeed,
a considerable list of true buttercups unknown to antiquity; but
over and above these a trio of representatives of anemoneous genera
that differ much among themselves. This kind of a genus Ranuncu-
lus, for that period, explains itself readily. It is plain that Cordus
has yielded for once to enthusiasm for the newly rising anthology;
that he has attempted the abandonment of the old reliance on
vegetative characters, and is putting things together more with
reference to the structure of the flower. Throughout this series there
is always a five-leaved or six-leaved "flower, " a circle of indefinitely
numerous stamens within that, and in the middle a compact head of
many "seeds." ' If the time had then arrived for the formal state-
ment of the generic characters of such a group, we know that it
would have been on this wise that Cordus' Ranunculus would have
been characterized by him; to which morphologic diagnosis it
would have been appended that certain acrid properties prevade the
entire line of species. When I say that we know he would have
done this, I have before me this proof, that the clear mention of
just such common characteristics forms a part of the description
of each leading species. One may take Cordus' separate diagnoses
of any one line of related species and cull from them to a certainty
that which to his view is the generic character. Not that this is
peculiarly true of Cordus ; for with equal certainty does one gather
out of Brunfels' and Tragus' groups of square-stemmed opposite-
leaved axillary-flowered aromatic herbs — or those otherwise vege-
tatively marked — the characters of their more crudely conceived
genera. What distinguishes Cordus is — we must once more insist —

300 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

this one rather steadily maintained appeal to floral organs, while for
the time quite too much neglecting the vegetative; and also too
little heeding very marked differences in the fruits of things; for
he is perfectly aware that one of his ranunculi has "seeds" with
long feathery tails, that another has them densely woolly-coated
and compacted into the closest kind of a head, and that in a third
they are rather few, and more like those of a Thalictrum than they
are like the seeds of buttercups.

On the whole, and as thus studiously looked into, this Ranunculus
of Cordus is one of the most significant chapters of taxonomic
history ever written; for herein is illustrated as nowhere else the
transition from an old taxonomy to a new one. By its making too
little use of fruit characters it calls for the carpologically established
genera of a Cesalpino1 ; but by the very pronounced corollism of such
a chapter Cordus most clearly presages Tournefort.

We shall fall short of a fair comprehension of all that is in this
chapter of taxonomy, unless we as carefully consider his disposal
of two other types not referred by Cordus to Ranunculus, but so
placed as immediately to succeed that genus. These are:

Cordus Modern

Chelidonium minus Ficaria ranunculoides.

Chelidonium palustre Caltha palustris.

These bring the number of ranunculaceous species in this
unbroken line up to fourteen. That, in as far as it goes, is very good ;
yet there will seem quite a glaring inconsistency in the man's having
excluded Ficaria from a genus to which he has already admitted,
over and above many good ranunculi, three anemones and a pul-
satilla. If the last four could go into Ranunculus, why not — and
much more easily — Ficaria? There never is in any age any other
so ponderous a dead weight upon scientific progress as so-called
"authority, " and the prejudices it entails. Those particular anem-
ones and the pulsatilla were plants in Cordus' time newly discovered ;
northern types of which no ancient Greek or Latin authority had
ever heard. They hardly yet had well established Latin names,
or fixed places in the new books of botany. It was easy for Cordus
to name these what he would, and to place them where he would,
without risk of seeming to set himself superior to ancient and revered
authority. The case of Ficaria was as different as possible. All
antiquity had known this plant. From Dioscorides forward

1 Cesalpino was but four years younger than Cordus, but lived to old age.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 30!

through the ages its name had been Chelidonium minus. Cordus,
as a university lecturer on Dioscorides, by the acuteness and origi-
nality of his genius, had made himself famous at the age of twenty-
three years. To have given any Dioscoridean plant a new name
would have been venturesome. He had been bold enough when,
afterwards, in his own Historia Plantar um he had indicated the
plants' intimate relationship to Ranunculus rather than to true
celandine. This, to my mind, seems the explanation of the incon-
sistency referred to. The inconsistency is, however, more than
condoned by the neat item of constructive taxonomy with which it
is intimately connected.

I have never been able to comprehend the view point of the pro-
fessedly natural systematist who fails to perceive a most intimate
relationship as subsisting between Ficaria and the plant called
Caltha palustris. With Cordus the type last named was new.
The German peasantry had always known the plant, and had their
several vernacular names for it; but the botanist became con-
vinced that botanically it was unnamed and undescribed; and then,
like an accomplished expert in the detection of affinities — a master
in taxonomy — locates it close against Chelidonium minus, i.e.,
Ficaria, and to accentuate the expression of this relationship, names
the new type Chelidonium palustre,1 this to be understood, I doubt
not, as a binary generic name, just as Chelidonium minus was un-
derstood to be ; for no one now thought of this as a mere species of
the celandine.

Even as to the conception of a species Cordus is so far in ad-
vance of his own time as to appear quite abreast of Tournefort,
who nourished a hundred and fifty years later. Among the botanical
fables that have passed for history, none is more familiar than that
Linnaeus was first to clearly recognize varieties; but Cordus seems
to realize the difference between species and variety as well as if
he had lived in the nineteenth century. The instances of his men-
tioning varieties are not numerous, but they suffice to show that
he discriminated them readily enough. The double-flowered
buttercup which he calls Ranunculus coronarius2 he describes with
the utmost brevity, remarking that it is not a proper species, but is
a "factitious" thing of the gardens.

In giving full account of the Viburnum Opulus and its ornamental
variety the Snowball Bush which appears so different he is careful
to say that there is really no difference between the two save this,

» Hist. PI., p. 122.
J Ibid., p. 120*.

302 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

that the latter, instead of having both kinds of flowers, the fertile
and small and the sterile and showy, has but the sterile kind.
Plainly, he regards it as but a freak, a variety of the other. It is
a,lso worth noting that his is the earliest mention in history of this
universal favorite, which he says grows wild along with the other,
but is rare, except in gardens and pleasure grounds to which they
transferred it from its native wilds.1

The question of the degree of relationship subsisting between
the two kinds of Dipsacus, or teasel, has exercised the minds of
successive generations of taxonomists early and late. Cordus
appears to have settled it at the outset in the right way; or at
least in a manner to satisfy the requirements of the modern evolu-
tionary. He almost fills a folio page with his fine description of
the original wild and useless D. silvestris, and then disposes of the
cultivated and singularly useful D. sativus in five lines; even these
five relating in the main to the mechanical serviceability of the
hard, prickly heads; presenting as the only morphological distinc-
tion between this and the former, the harder, firmer texture and
convenient curvature of the prickle-like bracts investing the head.2

A philosophic botanist, writing for the philosophic, need not
more explicitly avow his belief that Dipsacus sativus is but a
usefully variant offspring of Dipsacus silvestris; nor need he more
clearly express his understanding that the wild thing, being the
type of the species, is the thing for the botanist to describe in full.

Illustrations have been given already of Cordus' superior skill
in bringing into line related genera, as if members of a natural
family; but these taxonomic notes must not be concluded without
allusion to one of the most striking manifestations of his ability to
segregate, amend, and improve larger groups. Perhaps the best
example of all is one that occurs in his early lectures on Dioscorides.
The pharmacists of the time have a group of plants which they
know as the Lactariae, that is, milky-juiced herbs. Those best
informed understand the species of the euphorbiaceous genus Titky-
malus to be meant by this name Lactariae, so says the lecturer; but
then, he adds the suggestion that so many other herbs besides these
have the faculty of shedding drops of milky juice when their stems
are cut or broken, and the milks of these different herbs are so dis-
similar as to their properties — some being innocuous, others poison-
ous— that the plants ought clearly to be distinguished in groups.

' Hist. PL, p. 190.

2 On the history of the Dipsacus controversy, and its nomenclature, cf.
Greene, Pittonia, vol. iii, pp. 1-9.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 303

''Let us, then, indicate three groups by their (morphologic) dif-
ferences. Let the first be the Tithymali, the second the Intybaceae.
Then we shall have a third group that is of neither the Tithymali
nor the Intybacese. We shall now proceed to demonstrate how
these two may be distinguished. Tithymalus is a genus of many
species every one of which has elongated leaves devoid of any kind
of indentation or division. All intybaceous herbs have their
leaves more or less erose or incised all around the edges. The
greater proportion of the tithymali have an umbellate inflorescence
and all of them, even those not umbellate have each flower and
fruit subtended by a pair of opposite leaves. But the flower
stalklets of the intybaceae bear each a flower composed of small
leaves compacted together, yellow as to color, Chondrilla minor and
Cichorium excepted, in which they are either blue or white. The
flowers of intybaceous plants resolve themselves into a kind of wool
called a pappus. Never so the tithymali, for all of them have a three-
celled fruit with a single seed in each cell. The seeds of intybaceae
with their pappus sail away on the breeze. The tithymali eject
their seeds forcibly and with a sound. The milk of the intybaceae
is bitter at first taste. That of the tithymali is at first taste mild,
even not so unlike that of cow's milk, but after that it begins to
burn the mouth and throat, and if applied to the skin may blister it ;
which the mild juices of the intybaceae never do. Now these herbs,
which I have thus distinguished by their proper marks from the
Intybaceae, are called the Tithymali and may be known by that
general [i. e. family] name. To the Intybaceae belong all the species
of Lactuca, both kinds of Chondrilla, Intybus sativus, and silvestris,
commonly known as Cichorium, also Hieracium, and whatever
other plants are like them [i. e. organologically], and have a milky
juice.

"My third assemblage r f lactiferous plants can not be distributed
among these two groups, neither do they of themselves constitute
an alliance ; for they are not united by any resemblances which
they have in common. But they are not very numerous. Ficus,
Erinus, Scammonia, and Cissampelus are among them; each seeming
to belong to an alliance of its own. M1

Cesalpino, of the end of the sixteenth century, will be praised
in future millenniums for having founded Systematic Botany. But
had Valerius Cordus lived to only twice his nine-and-twenty years,
it is easy to conceive that the great Italian might have missed his
laurels.

1 Cordus, Annot. in'JDiosc., p. 74', of Cordus' works, edition of 1561.

304 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

Nomenclature. Euricius Cordus having demonstrated that many
a plant type native to Germany and well known to Germans
was entirely unknown to the Greeks and Latins of antiquity,
his son Valerius proceeded to name and describe such types, so that
they might take their places — so that each might become the sub-
ject of a chapter — in books of botany. Valerius Cordus was the
first man in history to establish many new genera of plants. I do
not know that any one author between Dioscorides and Valerius
Cordus proposed more than one or two new genera. This man all
at once proposed so very many that his book is a great landmark
in the history of genera. What we are here interested in finding
out is whether in the naming of his new genera Cordus either tacitly
or openly subscribes to any particular principles of generic nomen-
clature. From what we know of his antecedents as the carefully
instructed favorite son of a celebrated Greek and Latin scholar,
we shall reasonably expect to find him constructing his new names
after classic models; making no inroads upon ancient usage. Let
us make a selection of his new names, that the student of nomencla-
ture may observe the manner of their construction.

Cordus Modern

Anblatum Lathrasa.

Balsamella Impatiens.

Coralloides Dentaria.

Drosion Alchemilla.

Isophyllon Bupleurum.

Limnesion Gratiola.

Lycostaphylos Opulus.

Millegrana Herniaria.

Moschatella Adoxa.

Helianthemum Helianthemum.

Oxycoccus Oxycoccus.

Pneumonanthe Pneumonanthe.

Rorella Drosera.

Sagitta Sagittaria.

Thamaecnemum Vaccaria.

It will be seen that by far the greater proportion of these fifteen
generic names is regularly Greek-made; some five are as plainly
Latin, while one only, and that the first of the list is very barbarous
Latin; for Anblatum is said to be the old German name Ohnblatt
(leafless) written over into Latin and supplied with the convenient
terminal. It may be remarked that there is not one in this list

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 305

of fifteen generic names that ought ever to have been displaced. It
will hardly be possible to point out one of them which is not as good
as its modern equivalent. Yet Helianthemum is the only one of
the fifteen that never has been set aside; and the suppression of
the rest is mainly to be attributed to Linnaeus' recklessness in the
matter of priority in nomenclature.

While most of Valerius Cordus' new generic names are of the
universally acceptable one-worded type, it is clear from the follow-
ing list that he did not find the binary sort objectionable.

Cordus Modern

Chelidonium palustre Caltha.

Chelidonium phragmites Corydalis.

Hepatica alba Parnassia.

Pentaphyllum palustre Comarum.

Trifolium palustre Menyanthes.

Here again I apprehend a difficulty on the part of many a reader
to see that these two-worded names are purely generic; we are so
perfectly accustomed all our life long to read every such name as
being half generic, half specific; and so I affirm again that not one
of those second and adjective terms is a specific name at all. Collo-
quially, and in our vernacular, we make use of two-worded generic
names most freely without thought of impropriety. When we
speak of Rose (=Rosa), Christmas Rose ( = Helleborus), Rock Rose
( = Cistus) and Guelder Rose (=<^pulus) we have no such thought as
that all these are so many different kinds, or species, of Rose. No
more had Valerius Cordus any such thought as that the four types
which he knew as Chelidonium majus, Chelidonium minus, Cheli-
donium palustre, and Chelidonium phragmites were four kinds or
species, of Celandine. To his mind they were as clearly four dis-
tinct genera as their respective modern equivalents Chelidonium,
Ficaria, Caltha, and Corydalis are different genera to the mind of the
botanist of to-day.

Nevertheless there were people in Cordus' time and before that, -
untaught, unbotanical botanists — to whom such binary generic
names were a stumbling block ; people who supposed that the above
four were but so many kinds of celandine, being misled by the
reiteration of the substantive part of the name; and Cordus, while
himself creating some such double generic appellations, suppresses
several of the older ones in favor of new ones of one term ; and this
as if to correct in each instance a deep-seated popular error. The
labiate plant known now as Glechoma had long been known in Latin

306 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

as Hedera terrestris, a name which caused it to be thought of as
really a kind of ivy. Cordus proposes that botanists shall call it
by a new name Cham<zclema.1 Similarly what had always been
called Trifolium acetosum, or sour clover, seeing they really mistake
it for a kind of clover, Cordus proposes shall be known as Oxys.2 The
genus, by the way, was so known for two centuries after Cordus
had proposed it, and until Linnseus without the shadow of a reason
for so doing, changed it to exalts .

In respect to the construction of new generic names Cordus
represents the most rigidly classic type of nomenclator in this, that
he creates no meaningless names. Every appellator of this kind
that he makes is framed in allusion to some characteristic, either
organologic, or ecologic, or qualitative, of the type itself, and is there-
fore full of meaning. The nomenclature of genera in even the
remotest antiquity was not universally so ; for they had in ancient
times the genera Artemisia, Eupatorium, Euphorbia, Gentian a,
P&onia, Valeriana, and several others which, like these, were
named in honor of eminent medical botanists. Not one, however,
of Cordus' many new genera is dedicated to any person whether
historical or mythical. Even Theophrastus, Nicander, Dioscorides,
and Pliny were not to be commemorated in generic nomenclature
until after the lapse of more than a century and a half from the date
of Cordus' death.

As regards the principle of priority, it is to be observed that he
stands by it and contends for it only in the case of names that are
of great antiquity. For instance, he finds that the name Eupatorium
has been displaced from its ancient type so that the plant is every-
where in his time known under the name of Agrimonia. He will
enter into no compromise with this kind of error. While as he says,
"Almost all physicians and pharmacists of to-day call it Agrimonia, "
he declines to head -his chapter with that appellation, and writes
Eupatorium instead, regardless of the convenience of the erring
multitude. It is taking boldly the ground that the scientific man
must be true to history in his plant naming; and that it belongs
to the doctors and druggists to correct their errors according to
the light of history. This is nothing less than the most tenacious
adherence to the principle of priority; the restoring of an ancient
name, where the whole concourse of those in a business way inter-
ested will be opposed to the restoration, and he knows it.

' Hist. PL, p. 161.
J Ibid., p. 173.
3 Ibid., p. 169.

LANDMARKS OP BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 307

We have observed Brunfelius suppressing so ancient and classic
a generic name as Chelidonium minus in favor of a new name,
Ficaria1 ; this presumably on the ground that the latter is short, one-
worded, and free from ambiguity. Cordus, as if intolerant of any
change that should relegate to synonymy so old a name, continues
the old binary in use, not deigning to cite Brunfelsius' Ficaria
even as a synonym.2

Specific nomenclature, as far as Cordus is concerned, remains in
statu quo. All specific names are binary. There is not in him the
trace of a tendency to combine name and description in one phrase.
No botanist of the nineteenth century was any further from that
than he. But he is no more careful than his contemporaries to
avoid the use of those meaningless things, the numeral adjectives,
as specific names. He has an even dozen species of Ranunculus,
and the names of three are R. octavus, nonus and undecimus.
The use of these cabalistic appellations, however, perfectly demon-
strates that he had no idea of any other than binary names for
species in genera that were more than monotypic.

Anatomy and Physiology. Almost every page of original plant
description in Cordus bears evidence of his having been accus-
tomed to examine the interiors of organs. We shall hardly expect
him to lay any foundations of a science of plant anatomy; for he
knows nothing of any artificial aids to vision. The vegetable cell
will not reveal itself to him, nor anything else that is too small to
be seen with naked eye. But he makes sections of roots, stems,
leaf-stalks, fruits of all kinds, and even of seeds, and records the
anatomical aspects of them all. Neither Grew nor Malpighi, had
he lived at the time of Valerius Cordus, could have done more.

One meets with these records of anatomic and physiologic obser-
vation only as distributed up and down the pages of the whole
volume and forming part of the regular descriptions of genera and
species; and they are so very numerous that one may here repro-
duce but a small selection of them.

That stemless aquatic, the common European sagittaria, is a
large plant noteworthy on account of small size of the leaf-blades
and the flowers, in contrast to the great dimensions of the leaf-
stalks. The bulk of the plant as a whole consists of mere leaf-
stalk. It is certain that by way of enquiry into this matter Cordus
has dissected those leaf-stalks ; for the first clause of his description
of the plant is this: " Sagitta has triquetrous petioles, very thin and

1 See pages 182, 185 preceding.

2 Hist. PI., p. 122.

308 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

spongy as to the inside, a yard high or sometimes longer, or shorter,
all according to the depth of the lakes in which it grows."1 In
like manner he has examined the interior of the flower stalk in its
turn, ascertaining that while smaller than the petioles it is also of
"spongy texture, and of remarkably light weight."

The water lilies are plants large in all their parts, so that viewed
in cross section they exhibit clearly their structural characteris-
tics, and he notes them fully. What he takes for the main root
of Nymph&a alba he reports to be as thick as one's wrist lying
horizontally along the mud, knotted on at the places where the
leaves of former seasons were inserted, are quite black on the
outside, but of a clear white within, and of a very spongy and
porous substance. The fibres that descend from these into the
ground he reports to be outwardly greenish-white, quite white
within and also porous. The stalks that support the flowers
and leaves in this species he finds to be terete, and to have
open tubes extending throughout their whole length within. The
yellow water lily rootstock he finds less knotted on the outside, and
white both without and within ; otherwise like the former, but with
coarser fibrous roots and these still more spongy; the petioles,
obtusely angled rather than terete, show smaller tubes in the middle.2

There was a coarse rank dry land herb, the teasel, Dipsacus sil-
vestris, which lent itself as readily to Cordus' anatomical inspection.
He says it is of but biennial duration; that its root, of a finger's
thickness, during the first year of its life is fleshy; the second it is
of a ligneous hardness, and in that condition dies after the plant has
flowered and fruited. The tall stem of the plant he remarks is
heavy enough to warrant the inference that it is solid ; nevertheless
he finds it hollow throughout in the very center. Even the large
egg-shaped head that bears the flowers and the seeds on its surface
he has cut across in each direction to find that within it is filled
with what he calls a woolly pith.3 And this inspection of the interior
of stems is made not only in easy and inviting cases, but everywhere.
Seldom is there wanting to any of his plant descriptions the clause
that tells of the internal structure of its stem, as being solid, or
hollow, or as filled in the center with pith ; and the color of the pith is
also often given. Manifestly the cutting of stems across is as much
a part of his work with herbaceous plants as it is to note the
exterior of them as terete or angled, smooth or rough, even-surfaced,

• Hist. PI., p. 86'.
1 Ibid., p. 99.
' Ibid., p. 105*.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — -GREENE 309

or striate, or fluted; and he is particular about mentioning every
such characteristic. Of still deeper interest are his dissections of
all manner of fruits, fleshy and capsular, and of seeds; but on
account of the taxonomic signiricancy of their results, these have
been reiated under another heading.

The intimations of what seemed like a sense of feeling in some
mimosaceous foliage had been one of the wonders of plant phenom-
ena as observed by ancient Egyptians and Greeks. Cordus had
seen no mimosa, or sensitive acacia, but in two plants frequent in
German gardens he observed the foliage remarkably sensitive to
varying meteorological conditions. In his very full and minute
description of the licorice plant the first remark about the foliage,
after having stated its character as a compound leaf, is that its
leaflets exude some substance by which they adhere to one's fingers
when handled; then he proceeds to describe the several different
degrees of enfoldment or of expansion which the leaflets exhibit
according to the altitude of the sun on clear days, and how they
keep themselves folded together all day long if the sky be cloudy
or the weather wet or cold; concluding with the observation that
all this is true of the leaflets only, and that the leaf-stalk itself does
not alter its position at any time of the day, and that in all kinds of
weather its attitude is the same.1 This last remark is called for
by what he had said in an earlier chapter about nyctotropic move-
ment in the common foenugreek.2 In this he says the nightly
folding together of the leaflets is accompaniedby a deflection of the
whole leaf, petiole and all.

In every description of a twining species of herb Cordus men-
tions the direction of the circumnutation, whether as following the
course of the sun or as taking the contrary direction. Of these
phenomena he is the first of all writers to make record, I think.
He was the first to describe the plant called sundew,3 and its phy-
siology interested him. Its description occupies the first chapter
of the Historia, and as a new genus he would like to call it Rorella*
He seems to have perfectly established it, that what seems like
dew on the leaves of the plant is really an exudation ; for he says
that in the very driest weather the plant is still sprinkled all over

' Hist. Pi., p. 1642.

2 Ibid., p. 100.

3 Ibid., p. 86.

* Tragus had known Drosera rotundifolia, and has it figured as a species of
Polytrichum, P. minus (Stirp. Comm., p. 528). He said its habitat was "dewy
rocks, " and had no idea that the " dew " on its leaves was an exudation.

310 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

with those minute drops that have the appearance of dew. He
has done what was in his power to ascertain at least the qualities
of those minute glistening drops. He has tasted, and reports
the flavor to be a little bitterish, with also a hint of the acidulous,
and slightly acrid.

The plant physiologist of to-day, interested in the functions of
the root tubercles of leguminous plants may find in Valerius Cor-
dus the earliest mention of these organs. I do not find him taking
note of them except as occurring in the cultivated lupine of Europe.
Accustomed to give a full account of every kind of root, even to its
medicinal usefulness or uselessness, he says of that of the lupine that
it is "slender, woody, white and without useful properties, parted
into a few slender fibres upon which there sometimes grow small
tubercles."1

Ecology. We have already been learning that even from the
most primitive times every botanist was an ecologist; at least to
the extent of observing and recording the special environment which
every kind of wild plant affects, and sometimes to the mentioning
of some of its associate species. Valerius Cordus, being well
skilled in both chemistry and mineralogy, goes beyond all his pre-
decessors in that he names the petrography of a plants' habitat,
or otherwise indicates the constituency of the soil in which it is to
be looked for. We can in no other way so well present this, his
own new aspect of matters ecological, than by the translation of a
few of his passages.

The fern called hart's tongue, best known as Scolopendrium, but
which Cordus knew as Phyllitis, he says, "grows on shaded and
rocky declivities of mountains ; loves a rich soil, though not springing
from the soil directly, but from the moss that covers the rocks,
especially limestone."

To Saxifraga Aizoon he attributes the habitat of "Limestone
cliffs, especially where they are wet and overgrown with moss. "

Describing two species of Sanguisorba, that which he calls 5.
major "inhabits low clayey pasture lands that are subject to in-
undation from rivers," while 5. minor also "grows in clayey soil,
or even gravelly, but on open sunny slopes and along roadsides. "*

He seems to take a special interest in the ecology of such plants
as he has himself first discovered and described as new. The

' Hist. PL, p. 137.

2 Ibid., p. 113.

3 Ibid., p. 92.

* Ibid., p. 144.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE T, I I

cranberry is one of these. * He says he found it growing "in wild and
very wet and soft mossy bogs ; often with the sundew not far away. MI
Then, under his description of the sundew itself — also new — we
learn that he found that, though as a neighbor to the cranberry,
yet in soil distinctly of another character, that is, "in very wet
sandy places."

In the case of that new generic type which he denominates
Moschatella (=Adoxa, Linn.) he mentions its most interesting
associates. ' ' It grows in shady places, under trees, in soil very rich,
along with the fumariaceous kind of Celandine ( = Corydalis cava)
and also the ranunculaceous Celandine ( =Ficaria ranunculoides 3). "
Cordus knows at least one specific type which, as he observes,
has a way of establishing itself upon some diversity of soils, and
adapting itself to several different kinds of locality; and the phases
which it assumes according to its altered environment so much
interest him that he gives a particular account of them. The
subject is the shrub Spartium scoparium.* He says: "It inhabits
rough places on mountains in a hard reddish soil somewhat sandy,
as in Hesse, etc. ; but sometimes occurs on the lowest plains in mere
sand and gravel, as about Nuremberg, etc. Nor should it be left
unmentioned that while on sandy plains it is a low bush seldom
exceeding a yard in height; on the mountains, where the soil is
better, it approaches the dimensions of a tree, with a trunk from
seven to nine feet high and so thick that one can not span around
it, supporting a head of virgate branches so dense as to intercept
and hold all the snow of a considerable storm, so that the traveller,
passing through such a wood in winter, may walk on almost bare
ground under arches of snow overhead."

There is no indication that the author would distinguish even
as varieties these rather strikingly different phases of the shrub.
He regards them as the natural products of different conditions as
affecting a simple species. It is the well skilled botanist's view,
whether of the sixteenth century or of the twentieth.

Pomology. The recognition of marked varieties in the same

species of cultivated fruits — varieties originating under cultivation

—is so very ancient that there is no hope of one's ever tracing it to

i Hist. PL, p. 140.

3 Ibid., p. 86.

i Ibid., p. i72b. ,

4 Ibid., p. 189, as Genista angulosa; where" the editor, Gesner, made the
inexcusable error of inserting Tragus' wood cut of the extremely different
Genista sagittalis.

312 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.54

its beginnings. Also before the dawn of history men had learned
that valued varieties of fig, olive, grape, and other fruits could not
be depended on to come true to seed. Seedlings of these were apt
to prove degenerate, as they called it; and the propagating of them
by layers, and especially by grafting, had been invented as the sure
means of preserving and perpetually reproducing choice varieties.

They who wrote of fruit culture two thousand years ago and
more mention by name great numbers of varieties, not only of fig,
olive, and grape, but also of peaches, cherries, and other fruits ; some-
times favoring the reader with a few hints of the differences sub-
sisting between two varieties; but I have met with nothing like
descriptive lists of the varieties of even such common and variable
fruits as figs, olives, and grapes, in the writers of antiquity; nothing
that was written for the purpose of enabling the reader to identify
the varieties. I can not discover that any one anterior to Valerius
Cordus, engaged in this kind of an enterprise.

There are long chapters in Cordus' book which so read as to
make it certain that in the course of his botanical expeditions to
many parts of Germany, as well as at home, he made everywhere
very special studies of the different varieties of apple and pear
which were under cultivation in the orchards of the time, and that
he wrote a careful description of each on the spot, and that so full
that the properly qualified reader would be able to indentify the
different kinds by the description alone. I say the qualified reader,
meaning of course the educated; for every line of Cordus' pomologic
writing, like all the rest of his botany, is in Latin ; and a knowledge
of the Latin terminology of descriptive botany is essential to the
full understanding of him here.

With the intention, then, of interesting the botanical fraternity
in this diversity of cultivated varieties, he describes as many as
fifty named varieties of pears, and thirty-one of apples, all of which
he has found in one part or another of Germany.1 The original
German names are always given, then the name is turned into
Latin as if for the convenience of the botanists, all of whom in the
time of Cordus, like the other educated people, find Latin the only
adequate medium of scientific converse. The excellency of these
pomologic diagnoses can more readily be seen than described, and I
therefore present English translations of two or three of them ; and
since it is his practice to describe one variety partly by comparison
with another, I shall take up three descriptions that are consecutive.

1 Hist. Pi., vol. iii, pp. 176-182.

LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 313

Also inasmuch as most of the pears which one sees in the fruit
marts of to-day are quite pear-shaped, I shall begin with one which
Cordus knew that was globose as an apple.

"KAULBIRN, that is, Globe Pear, is almost as round as a globe,
except that at base it ends in a blunt and scarcely manifest protu-
berance. It is hardly two inches long, seldom at all exceeding that,
and the diameter is a trifle greater than the length. The color is
altogether pale green; the flesh very tender, melting in the mouth,
and of a mild delicious flavor, and by its abundant juiciness satis-
fying thirst, delightfully fragrant when pared. This matures at
the beginning of autumn, and is very perishable. It is cultivated
about Eisleben.

" HAUFFBIRN, that is, Hemp Pear, is similar to the Globe, but a
little larger, in color green, with darker spots and dots; in flavor
answering to the Globe, but the flesh not as tender and juicy;
matures at the same time and soon decays. This also is grown at
Eisleben.

" GLOCKENBIRN, that is, Bell Pear, is abruptly narrowed below
into a narrow neck, this again at the very base widening into a
blunt head-like protuberance, the fruit as a whole having the con-
figuration of a bell,1 whence it has its name. The color is yellow,
well specked with green, the length a trifle less than three inches,
the diameter not more than two inches. Rather fragrant when
pared; the flavor that of the Hemp Pear; matures at the same
time with that and is perishable. Grown in quantities at
Eisleben.

"KUNIGSBIRN, that is, Royal Pear. Large and ventricose, some-
times four inches long, the diameter somewhat less ; color blue-green,
but on the side exposed to the sun faintly reddening. Flavor a
trifle astringent, flesh somewhat juicy and vinous, assuaging thirst.
Matures at the end of September and is not very perishable. "

It is perhaps less difficult to describe apples well, than pears;
and all those familiar to Cordus are very vividly depicted. We
present two or three:

"HARTLINGE WEISS, that is, White Harding. Somewhat
depressed-globose, the height about two inches, the diameter two
and a half or somewhat more. Colored reddish-yellow on the sun-
ward side, elsewhere greenish-white, dotted with specks that seem
to lie beneath the transparent epiderm. Flesh tender though firm,
juicy, of an acid-vinous and excellent flavor; the fruit fragrant

: That is to say, a hand bell, with its handle.

314 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54

for a considerable period after having been stored. Ripens in
early autumn and keeps until the end of winter.

" Grown almost throughout Germany.

"SAFFRANECKE. Saffron Apple. In quality scarcely second to
any apple, this is also nearly globose and but an inch and a half in
diameter, the breadth not rarely a little exceeding the length.
Color something between green, yellow, and pale saffron; in warm
and dry seasons adorned with dots and narrow streakings of scarlet
and orange ; in moist and cloudy summers devoid of any such mark-
ings. Flesh tender, sweet, slightly acidulous, luscious, and with a
kind of spicy pungency which commends it to any palate. More-
over, it is delightfully fragrant. Begins to ripen in early autumn,
^nd keeps until the vernal equinox, and frequently even longer.

"Cultivated at Hildesheim, particularly in the orchards of the
monks at the monastery in Sulta, located outside the city.

"HARTLINGE ROT. Red Harding. Either much flattened at the
ends and orbicular, or now and then quite globose ; in size also as
variable, but on the average perhaps about two inches high, and
two and a half in breadth. Color rose-red, marked with long blood-'
red stripes. Flesh rather solid and dense, yet very tender, juicy,
acidulous, and with a peculiarly luscious flavor. Rather pleasantly
scented. Ripening in early autumn, and the most enduring of all
apples, sometimes keeping until the middle of the next summer, and,
according to the statements of some, even longer than that.

"It is found in almost all orchards of nearly every part of
Germany."

I apprehend that a skillful pomologic artist should be able to
draw and color these apples and pears so vividly word-pictured by
this perhaps the very first of descriptive pomologists, and for the
history of pomology it may be doubted that there are extant any
more important chapters than these written by Valerius Cordus
three hundred and seventy years ago.

Commemorating Valerius Cordus, Plumier established the genus
Cor dia in the year 1703.

INDEX

Abiogenesis, Tragus on, 236, 237
Abrotonum, genus, 116
Absinthium, Seriphium, 212

vulgare, 212
Acacia, Arabica, 132

metamorphic kinds of, 138

Senegal, 132

wild plum mistaken for, 266
Acanaceae, family, 114
Acanthus, genus, 116
Acarna, name of thistle, 113
Acer pseudo platanus, 237
Achillea, genus, 246
Acines, leaves mistaken for, 258
Aconitum, genus, 116
Acorus Calamus, 123
Acte, Greek for Sambucus, 119, 208
Adam, Melchior, biographer, 220, 222
Adanson, M., criticises Pliny, 159

dedicates genus to Nicander, 145

historian of botany, 16

on early authors, 1 7

views of botany comprehensive, 1 6
Adiantum, genus, 216
Adonis aestivalis once thought an

Anthemis, 214

Adoxa, discovered by Cordus, 311
/Egilops, genus, 116
Aerial roots, Theophrastus on, 75
Estivation noted first by Cordus,

288, 289

Affinities, of Bryonia seen first by
Cordus, 298

of Capsicum not seen by Fuchs, 210

of Capsicum suggested by Tragus,
252

of Datura seen first by Fuchs, 209

of Glycyrrhiza shown first by
Cordus, 296

of Momjrdica shown first by Cor-
dus, 298

Agamemnon and famous trees, 135
Age of trees, Theophrastus on, 134
Agricultural botany, of antiquity,
144

treatise by Cato, 146

work by Columella, 151

work by Varro, 148

poems of Virgil, 149

Agrimonia, genus, 255

Agrostemma Flos Jovis, 123

Agrostis, genus, 116

Aira, genus, 1 16

Alse, early term for axils, 199

Alder tree, once believed flowerless/

88
credited with flowers by Theo-

phrastus, 88

Theophrastan ecology of, 127
aments of, described by Tragus,

228
Alexander the Great, scientific staff

of, 133
Alexipharmica, work of Nicander,

145

Alexius, Greek rhizotomus, 49, 505
Algae held to be plants by Theo-

phrastus, 73

Alliaria, Tragus on ecology of, 257
Almond flowrers studied by Theo-

phrastus, 85
Alnus oblongata, 121
Alopecurus, genus, 116
Alphabetic sequence, abjured by

Tragus, 239

not used by Brunfels, 176
precludes rational system, 176
Althea, genus, 116
Amaryllis, part of early Lilium, 42
Amelanchier vulgaris, 123
Aments, of alder described by Tra-

gus, 228
of hazel described by Theophras-

tus, 83
of pine overlooked by Theophras-

tus, 88

of willows, Tragus on, 2 29
Ammi, genus, 185
Amygdalus Persica, 34
Anagrammatic names, 219
Anatomy, Theophrastus on, 67, 97-

101

of mullein by Tragus, 225
of many plants by Cordus, 307-309
Anazarbos, birthplace of Dioscorides.

Anblatum, old name of Lathraea, 304
Anchusa, genus, 1 1 6

3i6

INDEX

Ancient husbandry, 150-153
phytographic method, 102, 103

Andes, birthplace of Virgil, 149

Anemone nemorosa first published,
186

Anethum, genus, 117

. \ngiosperm, Theophrastan term, 94,
141

Anguillara, L., Italian botanist, 155

Animal and plant, Linnaeus on, 73
Theophrastus on, 63

Anise, as Theophrastan gymno-
sperm, 94, 95

Anspach, Fuchs' life at, 193

Antennaria dioica, 211

Anthemis of Fuchs, 213

Anthers, early names for, 233, 290
coloring of, noted by Tragus, 234
dust of, named pollen by Cordus,

290, 291

versatile insertion noted by Cor-
dus, 290

Anthology, little regarded by Brun-

fels, 181

of Cordus, 282-292
of Fuchsius, 203-205
of Theophrastus, 82-90, 211
of Tragus, 227-236

Antirrhinum, genus, 1 1 7

Aparine, genus, 117

Apetalous flowers, Theophrastus on,
85, 86, 141

Apices, early name of stamens, 233,
290

Apium, genus, 260

Apodixis Germanica of Tragus, 220

Apple blossoms studied by Theo-
phrastus, 85

Apuleius quoted by Brunfels, 173

Aquilegia, ecology of, 257

Arabian vegetation, Theophrastus
on, 133

Arboreal growths, Theophrastus on,
126

Arbutus flower perplexes Theo-
phrastus, 90

Archaic philosophy of plant life, 61

Arctostaphylos, genus, 164

Aristolochia, Corydalis mistaken for,

173, 266

Aristotle, bequests of, to Theo-
phrastus, 56
evolutionist, 241
father of biologic research, 131
founder of first botanic garden, 56,

97

friend of Theophrastus, 55, 56
Armeniaca vulgaris, 34
Arnoglosson, Greek for Plantago,

208, 216
Arum, genus, 117

early descriptions of, 278, 279
Theophrastus on anatomy of, 112

Arundinaceae, family, in
Arundo, genus, 75

Donax, in

Asarum, ecology of, 257
Ash tree, Theophrastus on leaves of,

79

Asparagus, cladodes of, 79
Asphodel, roots of, 75
Aspidium filix mas, 294
Aster, genus, 125
Asteracticus of Cesalpino, 125
Aster Atticus, 125, 216
Athenaeus, early medical botanist,

144

Athenian olive tree, 134
Athens, ancient garden at, 97
Atropa Belladonna, 209
Aurelius, Marcus, patron of Galen

161

Australian metamorphic trees, 138
Avicenna, early Arabian botanist,

I31

Avicennia officinalis, 33

Balsamella, early name of Impatiens,

3°4
Banister's Catalogue quoted, 36

early names of Virginian oaks, 36
Banyan tree, Theophrastus on, 74
Barbaras, Hermolaus, cited, 179

commended by Fuchsius, 196-11^7
Bark, wood, and pith, Theophrastus

on, 97
Barley, germination of, Theophrastus

on, 96
Batrachium, Greek for Ranunculus,

119

Bauhin, C., on Trifolium, 31,32
Beccabunga, Tragus on habitat of,

259
Beech tree flowers, first account of,

228
Bibliotheca Botanica of Haller, 263,

272, 275

Universalis of Gesner, 171
Bidens, genus, 120
Biennials and annuals, Theophrastus

on, 68
Binary generic names, approved by

Cordus, 305

examples of, in Brunfels, 185
suppressed by Linnaeus, 185
prevalent in vernacular, 124
used by Fuchsius, 2 1 6
used by Theophrastus, 123
used by Tragus, 255
Binary specific names, before Theo-
phrastus, 59

employed by Brunfels, 191
examples of, in Banister, 36
universal with Cato, 146, 147
used freely by Bauhin, 3 1

INDEX

Binary specific names — Continued.
used by Cordus, 307
used by Theophrastus, 125
Biologic, nomenclature, 190

sequences of Theophrastus, 100
work begun by Aristotle, 131
Bipinnate leaves, first mention of, 80
Birch flowers noted by Tragus 228
Birds, fancied parents of orchids, 237
Bistorta, genus, 274
Blastoi, Theophrastan term, 81
Blitum, Theophrastus on, 95
Bock, Jerome, and Otto Brunfels, 171
Boerhaave, H., Adanson on, 17
Borraginaceae, family, 183, 252
Borrago, genus, 183
Botanic garden of Aristotle, 56, 97
Botanical, names, origin of, 27, 43
nomenclature, 189-191
principles of Cordus, 295, 297
terminology, 23, 26, 29
vocabulary of Fuchsius, 197
Botanische forschungen des Alexan-

derzuges, 103
Botanists, Linnaeus' classification of,

52
Botanologicon, work of E. Cordus,

265, 269

Botany, aims of, 13
ancient elementary, 63
antedating all books, 43
antiquity of, 37
beginnings of, 21-24, 43
definitions of, 7, 43
descriptive, two methods in, 101
distinct from plant industry, 7
divisions of, by Sprengel, 20

by Tournefort, 14
duty of historian of, 14
economic, antedating systematic,

61

German fathers of, 10, 165-168
historians of, 14-20
history of, in general, 9
initial book of, 189
medical, antedating systematic, 61
philosophic history of, 44
philosophy of history of, 13-51
physiologic, suggested by Varro,

148

suggestions of prehistoric, 70
terminology of, 23, 26, 29
Theophrastan, Bretzl on, 101, 133
Box'tree, phytographic leaf type, 103
Bracts, mentioned first by Cordus,

2-84
Brandenburg, Margrave of, and

Fuchs, 193, 196

Brassica, ancient varieties of, 146
Bretzl, H., on Theophrastan phy-

tography, 101
Bromus secalinus, fabled origin of,

Brown, R., on inflorescence, 92, 282
Browne, P., dedicates Catonia, 147

dedicates Varronia, 149
Brunfelsia, genus, 172
Brunfelsius, Otho, anthology of, 174

authors quoted by, 172

authorship of, other than botani-
cal, 172

career of, Sprengel on, 169

censured, also commended, by E.
Cordus, 268

commended by Fuchs, 197

criticised by Fuchs, 174, 176

disregards priority in names, 190

genera credited to, by Sprengel,
185, 186

illustrates roots with care, 45

life of, 169-192

physician at Berne, 171

phytography of, 172

plants first published by, 186, 187

teacher at Strassburg, 169-171

visits Tragus at Hornbach, 171
Brunsfels, J., father of botanist, 170
Bryonia, affinities of, seen first by

Cordus, 297
Buckwheat, Tragus on germination

of, 239

Bulbaceae, Theophrastan family, 114
Bulbs, as defined by Fuchs, ioS

Theophrastus on, 75
Bupleurum, genus, 246
Burgess, E. S., on Aster Atticus, 125
Bursa pastoris, 250
Butterfly-shaped flower, noted by
Fuchs, 2 1 5

ignored by Tragus, 233

dwelt on by Cordus, 288

Cabalistic names, 219, 307
Cadiz, birthplace of Columella, i 50
Caesar, Julius, and Varro, 147, 148
Calamagrostis, genus, 1 1 <>
Calamintha, genus, 116
Calamodes, Theophrastan group, 1 1 1

112
Calamos Euosmos, generic name,

123

Calendula, genus, 185
Calla palustris, 280
Callias, slave of Theophrastus, 57
Callio, frieid of Pheophrastus, 57
Callisthenes, friend of Theophrastus,

57

Caltha palustris, 280
Calyx communis of Linnaeus, 287
Calyx, crude early ideas of, 93, 203,

284

of poppies, Tragus on, 230
Camelina, genus, 250
Camerarius, Joachim, 264
Campaniform, anthologic term, 233
Campanula, genus, 233, 250

INDEX

Capillamenta, anthologic term, 86,

205, 234

Capnos, Greek for Fumaria, 185
Capsicum, genus, 210, 252, 285
Capuciaria, early generic name, 214
Cardamine, genus, 186

pratensis, 247

Cardiospermum, genus, 1 54
Carduaceae, family, 118
Carthamus, genus, 186
CaryaPersica, old name for Juglans,

123
Castalia, alba, 122

Lotus, 122
Castanea, genus, 186

vesca, 123

Castle Brunsfels, 1 70
Catkins, error of Tragus on, 229
Cato, Marcus Porcius, 146, 147
Catonia, genus, 147
Caucalis, genus, 255
Celastrus, genus, 116
Cenchrus, genus, 116
Centaurea, genus, 124
Centaurium majus, old generic name,

124
Centaurium minus, old generic for

Erythraea, 124
Cerasus, genus, 116
Cercis, genus, 1 16
Cervix, old botanic term, 198
Cesalpinus, A., 10, 30, 32, 300
Chamasclema, genus, 306
Chamaedrys, genus, 162, 185, 259
Chamsepitys, genus, 162
Chamaerops humilis, 131
Cheiranthus, genus, 249
Chelidonium majus, old generic

name, 124
Chelidonium minus, old name of

Ficaria, 124, 185
Chelidonium palustre, old name of

Caltha, 300
Chondrilla, genus, 303
Chrysion, Greek name of Cheiranthus,

184

Cincinnalis herba, old name of Ver-
bena, 185

Circumnutation noted by Cordus, 309
Cissampelus, 303

Cissus, old name of bush ivy, 139
Cistus, genus, 232
Citrus, aurantium, 34

limonium, 34

medica, 34, 133

Classes Plantarum of Linnagus, 17
Classification, by calyx, 17

by color of bark or wood, 29

by corolla, 17

by ecology, 17, 125-127, 258-260

by flower only, 42, 118

by fruit and seed, 30, 34, 41

by inflorescence, 17

by leaves, 26-33, IT3. 242, 246

by qualities, 17, 182, 209, 247, 248

by roots, 42, 242, 249

by stems, 32, 107, in, 179, 242,
247, 253

by vegetative organs generally,

239, 240

Cleidemus, rhizotomus, 49 .
Clematis, genus, 217, 253
Clethra, Greek for Alnus, 121
Coccymeles, Greek for Prunus, 121
Cocos nucifera, 132
Colocasia, genus, 112
Colors of roots, Theophrastus on, 76
Columella, Lucius Junius, 150, 151
Columellia, genus, by Ruiz and

Pa von, 151
Commissure, Cordus' term for suture,

293

Cones, Theophrastus on, 94
Consolida, early generic name, 177
Convallaria, genus, 42

majalis first described, 225, 226
Convolvulus, Theophrastus on, 89

Tragus on, 253
Coralloides, synonym of Dentaria,

3°4

Cordia, genus by Plumier, 314
Cordus, E., work of, 263, 269

Fuchs' estimate of, 267
Cordus, Valerius, anthology of, 282-
292

Dispensatorium, work of, 271

ecology of, 310, 311

on fruit and seed, 292-294

Gesner's praise of, 275

Haller's estimate of, 275

Historia Plantarum, work of , 273,

275

life of, 271-274

Meyers' praise of, 270

nomenclature of, 304-306

on physiology, 309, 310

on plant anatomy, 307

on vegetative organs, 280-282

phytography of, 275-279

pomology of, 311-314

Ralla, J., uncle and patron of, 271

Riffius, W., biographer of , 271, 273

Sachs' neglect of, 270

Sprengel's view of, 270

taxonomy of, 295, 303
Corolla, term unknown anciently,

140

Coronopus, genus, 117, 254
Corydalis, genus, 305

bulbosa, 173

cava, 311

H alien, 173

mistaken for Aristolochia, 173, 266
Corylus, avellana, 87

tubulosa, 87
Corymbiferae, family, 284

INDEX

319

Cotula, genus, 154

Cotyledons, Theophrastus on, 96

Tragus on, 238, 239

used taxonomically, 1 7
Cratgegus, Aria, 121

torminalis, 121
Crate vas, rhizotomus, 167
Cresarchus, friend of Theophrastus,

57
Criteria of affinity, 1 7

Cucurbita, genus, 116
Cultivated plants, origin of, 114
Cuscuta, genus, 253
Cyamus, genus, 122
Cyanus, genus, 255
Cycadaceae, family, 132
Cycas circinalis, 132
Cyclamen, genus, 224
Cymo, slave of Theophrastus, 57
Cynoglossum, genus, 183
Cyperus, genus, 1 1 1

Damascenus, Nicolaus, author, 143
Daphne, Greek for Laurus, 33
Datura, affinities of, first seen, 209

Cordus on calyx of, 285

Metel, 208

praefloration of, observed, 289
Daucus, genus, 284
Dead Nettle, 179
De Causis Plantarum of Theophras-

tus, 58
Deciduous trees, Theophrastus on,

128
Definition of, botanic terms by Fuchs,

197-206
. botany by Sprengel, 20

corvmb by Cordus, 283

leaf by Theophrastus, 78

root by Theophrastus, 73

umbel by Cordus, 283
Delimitation of, genera by Tragus,
242

of Ranunculus by Cordus, 298
Delphinium Consolida, 177, 213
Demotimus, philosopher, 57
Dendrologic scene, ancient, 131
Dendrology of, Arcadia, ancient, 130

Arabian deserts, 133

India, 132
middle Europe, 130
southern Europe, 103
Theophrastus on, 128-134
Dens Leonis, generic name, 124
Dentaria, genus, 304
De Re Rustica of Cato, 148
Description of, alder aments, 228
Arum by Cordus, 278
Arum by Dioscorides, 278
Cranberry vine, earliest, 311
Cyclamen by Tragus, 224
Digitalis by Fuchs, 218

elder tree by Theophrastus, 104
hazel aments, earliest, 227
hazel flowers by Tragus, 228
lily of the valley, earliest, 225, 226,
mullein by Tragus, 225
Parnassia, earliest, 287
stamens by Cordus, 234
stamens by Tragus, 234, 235
sundew by Cordus, 309
Descriptions, importance of, 18

of Dioscorides overestimated, 1 54
Deserts of Arabia, plants of, 132, 133
Development, influenced by environ-
ment, 127, 137
Diapensia, genus, 178
Diary of Tragus, 119
Dicotyledonous seeds, Theophrastus

on, 96
Digitalis, early history of, 120, 215,

218, 233, 256

Diogenes Laertius, biographer, 57
Dionysius, painter of plants, 167
Dios Anthos, old generic name, 123
Dios Balanos, old generic name, 123
Dioscorea, genus by Plumier, 155
Dioscorides, Pedanius, 151
Anazarbos, birthplace of, 152
authority of, in pharmacy, 151
describes vegetative organs, 152
early editions of, 152
early translations of, 153
Galeopsis, genus by, 180
manuscript copies of, 167
noted commentators on, 155, 271,

272

plant families of, 154, 174
plants known to, 152
Sprengel on, 151
supremacy of, in pharmacy, 1 53
taxonomic suggestions of, 155
unites Ebulus to Sambucus, 154
Dipsacus, genus, 113

anatomy of, by Cordus, 308
sativus, as variety, 302
silvestris, generic type, 302
Discovery, adventitious roots, 281
alder flowers by Tragus, 228
caducous sepals by Tragus, 230
Caltha palustris by Cordus, 301
dicotyle seeds by Theophrastus, 96,

141

disk florets by Cordus, 288, 289
Drosera by Tragus, 309
fern spores by Cordus, 294
fig flowers by Cordus, 292
indusium of ferns by Cordus, 294
new types, importance of, 18, 20
Parnassia by Cordus, 286
pollen by Cordus, 290
praefloration by Cordus, 288-289
praefoliation by Cordus, 278
snowball bush by Cordus, 301
tubercles on lupine roots, 310

320

INDEX

Discovery — Cont^nut:a

white clover by Guiditius, 187

wood anemone, 186
Diseases of trees, Theophrastus on,

Dispensatory, medical, earliest, 270,

271
Distinction between like and unlike,

fundamental in science, 21
Distinction, earliest, of anatropous

and orthotropous, 96
of angiosperm and gymnosperm,

94, 141

of annual and biennial, 141
anther and filament, 234
apetalous and petaliferous, 85
aquatic and littoral, 127
biologic and phytographic, 66
choripetalous and sympetalous,

89, 90

compound leaf and simple, 90
corymb and umbel, 283
dead nettle and true nettle, 244
equally pinnate and unequally,

282

flower bud and leaf bud, 159
flowering and flowerless, 141
Galeopsis and Urtica, 181
gemma and germen, 159
herbaceous and suffrutescent, 109
hypogynous and perigynous, 91
leaf and cladode, 79
leaves sessile and petiolate, 78
modes of tree growth, 129
monocotyle and dicotyle, 96
parenchyma and prosenchyma, 99
rhizome and root, 45
roots, subterranean and aerial,

74

spores and seeds, 293
stamen and pistil, 234
variety and species, 146, 147, 311
Distinctions, earliest, in aestivation,

288, 289

in anatomy of trees, 97, 100
in circumnutation, 309
of color in roots, 76
of configuration in leaves, 79
in dehiscence, 278, 293
of duration in leaves, 67
of flavor in roots, 76
in floral insertion, 91
of herb, shrub, and tree, 67
in inflorescence, 92, 282
of margin in leaves, 79
morphology in roots, 75
morphology in stem, 77
permanency in organs, 64
placentation, 292
posture in stems, 77
praefloration, 288, 289
of root, stem, branch, 61
structure in stems, 112

surface in leaves, 82
texture in roots, 75
texture in stems, 67
tissue in plants, 97
venation in leaves, 1 1 1
Dodonaeus, Rembert, on Dioscorid- >

153
on genus Trifolium, 31

Dolichos, Greek for Phaseolus, 121
Donax, Greek for Arundo, in

name of slave of Theophrastus.

57
Dorsten, botanical author, 39

Draba verna, earliest account of,
187

Drosera, figured as new, 304, 309
described first by Cordus, 309
named at first Rorella, 309
physiology of, by Cordus, 310

Drosion, same as Alchemilla, 304

Ebulus and Sambucus, 240
Echinops, Cordus on, 283
Echium, genus, 154, 183
Ecologic groupings, by Theophrastus,

127

by Tragus, 256-259
Ecology of V. Cordus, 310
Elder flowers, Theophrastus on, 90
Elecampane, leaf type, 224
Embryology, early notes on, 95-99
Environment, Theophrastus on, 127,

132, 138

Epigynous insertion first noted, 91
Eranthemon, old name of genus

Adonis, 213

Erasmus and E. Cordus, 263, 264
Eresus, birthplace of Theophrastus,

54
Erinus, Cordus on, 303

Eryngium, genus, 113
Erythraea, genus, 124
Eucalyptus, metamorphosis of, 138 •
Eudemus of Chios, rhizotomus, 49
Eupatorium, Cordus on, 300
Euphorbia, Cordus on, 306

antiquorum, 306
Excurrent growth of trees, 120

Faba, genus, 295

Faba suilla, old name of henbane,

185
Fabius Columna, writer, on Dioscon-

des, 153
Fabled abiogenesis, of mural herbs,

237-238

of maples, poplars, willows, 236-237
change of barley to wheat, 137
change of cabbage to turnip, 261
change of flax to darnel, 136
change of turnip to mustard, 261
change of wheat to chess, 135

[INDEX

321

Fabled — Continued

first founding of families, 106

first founding of genera, 106

first recognition of varieties, 106,

300

origin of binary nomenclature, 119
origin of botany, 3 7
origin of orchids, 237

Fables about flowers, fruits, trees, 59

Fabric, of leaves, Theophrastus on,

100
of stems, Theophrastus on, 97

Families, Adanson's specialty, 17
established by Cordus, 302
indicated by Tragus, 252-255
named by Theophrastus, 114

Family names, ancient, 27

Fancied consanguinity, Adonis and

Anthemis, 214

Alopecurus and Plantago, 118
Antennaria and Hieracium, 211
Aristolochia and Papaver, 118
Beccabunga and Shim, 259
Convolvulus and Humulus, 253
Drosera and Poly tri chum, 309
Hellebore and Veratrum, 118
Hypericum and Ruta, 244
Lamium and Urtica, 179, 244

Father of, biology, 136
botany, 52
Roman learning, 147

Fathers of botany, 167, 168
iconography, 167, 168
phytography, 223

Fee, A. L., on botany of Virgil, 150

Fern, seeds, Tragus on, 238
spores, Cordus on, 293

Ferula opopanax, 145

Ferulaceaj, 27, 113

Ficaria, genus, 182, 300
ranunculoides, 182, 300

Ficus, Africana, 146
Bengalensis, 133
Herculana, 146
hiberna, 146
marisca, 146
Saguntina, 146
Sycomorus, 130
Telana atra, 146

Fig tree, as flowering, 292
as flowerless, 83, 292
as fruiting on trunk, 130

Fir tree, ecology of, 126
excurrent growth of, 130

Flavors, as indicating affinities, 250,

251. 3°3
of milky juices, 303

of roots, 76, 296

of seeds, 251, 293
Flax and darnel, 136
Flocci, early name of stamens, 86
Floral structure, of composites, 289

of crucifers, 211

of fig, 292

of gooseberry, 234

of labiates, 288

of leguminous plants, 288

of paeonia, 291

of pulsatilla, 289

of rosaceous trees, 90, 234

of rose, 291

Floral symmetry unnoticed, 209
Flos Solis, early name of Helianthus,

124
Flower, in ancient botany, 84

criterion of affinity, 42, 118

knowledge of, delayed, 174

theory of origin of, 140
Flowering of hazel, affirmed, 88

denied by Fuchs, 227

reaffirmed by Tragus, 227
Flowering of juniper disputed, 88, 89
Flowering of oak, anciently unknown,

83

affirmed by Theophrastus, 83
Foliage, phytographic types of, 102—

Fritillaria once part of Lilium, 42

Fruit, criterion of affinity, 30, 34, 41
first scientifically defined, 93

Fruit and seed, Cordus on, 292-294
Theophrastus on, 92-96
Tragus on, 236-239

Fruits, locations of, on trees, 129,
130

Fuchsia, genus by Plumier, 197

Fuchsius, Leonhardus, anthology of,

203

artists employed by, 195
cabalistic names used by, 219
criteria of affinity used by, 210
criticised by Tragus, 227
Digitalis founded by, 218
early work of, 1 94
fruit and seed treated of by, 205,

206

genus dedicated to, 197
Historia Stirpium, work by, 195
inflorescences indicated by, 201
life of, 192

medical works of, 193
Memmingen birthplace of, 192
nomenclature of, 215-219
organography of, 197-201
physician to Brandenburg, 193
phytography of, 206, 207
professor at Tubingen, 193
taxonomy of, 207-215
terms defined by, 197-206
university life at Ingolstadt, 193
unpublished work of, 196

Fumaria, genus, 185
ecology of, 257

Fumariacae, 265

Fumus terrae, early name of Fumaria,
185

322

INDEX

Functions of organs, Theophrastus
on, 74, 75

Fungi, as doubtfully plants, 73
as undoubtedly plants, 73
early mention of poisonous, 144
early treatise on edible, 144

Galenia, genus, 164
Galenus, C., Adanson on, 164

Haller on botany of, 162

ignores phytography, 163, 168

native of Pergamos, 160

physician at Rome, 161

profoundly learned, 160

widely travelled, 160
Galeopsis, genus, 179
Gansblum as generic name, 187
Gart der Gesundheit, early work, 167
Genera, anthologically founded, 42,
117

based on leaf characters, 26, 29, 3 i—

33. "3

carpologically founded, 300

ecologically founded, 258, 259

interrelations of, debated, 114

major, early term for families, 208

many monotypic, 241

reduced number of, 242

term as used by Fuchs, 207
Generic names, primeval, 27

Theophrastan, 116, 117

of two distinct words, i 24, 125, 216
Genista angulosa, 311

sagittalis, 3 i i

Genus, various meanings of, 115, 116
Georgica, of Nicander, 144

of Virgil, 149

Geranium, names of species of, 219
Gesner, C., bibliographer, 143

Bibliotheca Universalis, work of,
171

editor of Cordus' works, 276, 310

on Greek botanists, 143

Opera Botanica of, 274
Ghini, Luca, 10, 273
Gleditsch, Adanson on, 17
Glycyrrhiza, Cordus on, 296
Gooseberry flower, Tragus on, 234
Grape wood, anatomy of, 96
Greek botany before Theophrastus,

60

Guiditius, J., artist to Brunfels, 171
Gymnosperm and angiosperm, 141

Haller, Albert, Adanson on, 17
Bibliotheca Botanica, work of, 52,

263

criteria of affinity relied on by, 1 7
estimate of Theophrastus, 52
on Galen as botanist, 162
Hans Weyditz, artist to Brunfels, i 7 r
Hawthorn, early ecology of, 126

flower of, Tragus on, 234
Hazel, anciently thought flowerless,

88

aments first described, 87
flowering first announced, 88, 227
flowering denied by Fuchs, 227
flowers described by Tragus, 227
Head, term as used by Fuchs, 206
by Theophrastus, 92
by Tragus, 230

Heart, earliest term for pith, 98
Hebrew classics as to botany, 23
Hedera Helix, metamorphosis of , 139
phytographic leaf-type, 102
roots, aerial first noted, 74
Hedera Terrestris, generic name,

124, 254

changed to Chamaeclema, 306
changed to Glechoma, 124
Heidesbach, birthplace of Tragus, 221
Heinrich Fullmaurer, artist to Fuchs,

Helenium, genus, 225
Helianthemum, genus, 305
Helianthus, genus, 1 24
Heliotropism, noted by Varro, 148
Helix, formerly held bigeneric, 139
Hellebore, early experience with, 49

popular name of, 231
Hemerocallis part of Lilium, 42
Hepatica, genus, 176, 186

alba, earliest name of Parnassia,

286, 305

Herb, term of many meanings, 109
Herba Apollinaris, old name of hen-

bane, 185
Herba fumaria, early name of Fuma-

ria, 185
Herba, Sacra, early name of Verbena,

185
Herbaceous stems, early classifica-

tion of, 78
studied anatomically by Cordus,

3°7
Herbarum Vivas I cones of Brunfels,

165, 185

Hercules' Athenian olive tree, 134
Hermolaus Barbarus, commended

by Fuchs, 196
Hesiod and Homer, 20, 51
Hesperis matronalis, 249
Hessus, Eobanus, and E. Cordus, 264
Hibiscus trionum, 232
Hieracium, Cordus on, 303

Pilosella first figured by Fuchs, 2 1 1
Hieronymus Herbarius, 220
Hieronymus Tragus, 220
Hilum recognized by Theophrastus,

96
Hipparchus, friend of Theophrastus,

57
Hippocrates, Greek physician, 144

work of, translated by Fuchs, 192

INDEX

323

Hippon, rhizotomus of note, 58, 114,

!7S
Historia Naturalis of Pliny, 157

Historia Plantarum, of Theophrastus,

58, 228

of Valerius Cordus, 274, 275
Historia Stirpium of Fuchs, 195
Historian of botany, duty of, 14
Historians of botany, methods of,

14—16

History antedated by science, 21
History of botany in general, 9
Hollyhock, Tragus on, 230
Holly-leaved oak, ecology of, 126
Holly tree, ancient habitat of, 130
Homer and Hesiod, 20, 51
Homo, genus characterized by Lin-

naeus, 73

Hordeum, genus, 1 1 1 .
Hornbach, residence of Tragus, 171,

222

Hortus Sanitatis, 167, 173, 195
Hotbeds in ancient gardens, 151
Hugo Bretzl on Theophrastus, 101
Humboldt, Theophrastus compared

to, 132

Humulus, genus, 253
Hydrophilous plants of Theophras-

tus, 126

Hyoscyamus, genus, 185, 284
Hypericum, description of, 245

olympicum, 145
Hyphene coriacea, 131
Hypogynous insertion first noted,

91, 141

Icones, Herbarum Vivae, of Brunfels,
165, 169, 192

artist of, 171
Iconography, in use anciently, 167

German fathers of, 167, 168
Ilex, Greek name of an oak, 41
Impatiens, genus, 304
Indusium of ferns seen first by

Cordus, 294
Industrial botany, 60
Industrialist and systematist, 29, 59
Industrialists' use of word fruit, 93
Inflorescence, Cordus on, 282, 283

Fuchs on, 201, 202

Meyer on history of, 282

Theophrastus on, 92, 93, 141
Initial book of botany, 189
Insertion of flower, Theophrastus on,

90, 141

Intybaceae, family, 303
Intybus sativus, 303

silvestris, 302, 303
Inula Helenium, 224
Involucrum, term used first by Cor-

dus, 279

Iris, aestivation of, first noted, 288
Isatis, affinities of, 250

Isophyllon, prior name of Bupleu-

rum, 304

Italian efforts to restore botany, 196
Ivy, noted plant anciently, 103
leaf of, a descriptive type, 103
Ixos, Greek for mistletoe, 74

Januensis, Simon, author, i 73
Jecoraria, genus, 176
Jerome, Saint, on Theophrastus, 56
Juglans, genus, 29, 40

alba, 29

nigra, 29

regia, 29
Juli of hazel, Theophrastus on, 87

Pliny on, 87

Julus, Latin for ament, 87
Juncaceous plants, Theophrastus on,

112

Jung, J., student of leaves, 80, 81
Juniper, ecology of, 88, 126
flowering of, 89, 90

Kalamos, same as Calamus, 77

Kalmia, genus, 33

King's Torch, popular plant name,

225
Kuntze, Otto, and Gansblum, 187

Labiatae, 179, 181, 201, 242, 288
Lactuca, genus, 302
Laertius, Diogenes, biographer, 57
Lamarck dedicates Virgilia, 150
Lamium, genus, 215

maculatum, 179
Lappa, genus, 254
Lappae, family, 254
Latinity, as to nomenclature, 29

not necessary to system, 29
Laurus nobilis, 33

Theophrastan leaf- type, 102
Layandula, genus, 202
Leaf, anatomy of, 101, in

criterion of affinity, 31-33

faces of, 82

physiology of, 81

transient organ, 64
Leaves, classifications of, 104, 128

descriptive types of, 102-104, 224

margins of, 105

outlines of, 102, 105
Lepidium, genus, 247, 250

ruderale, 247

Lesbos, ancient name of Mitylene, 54
Leucippus, tutor of Theophrastus, 55
Leucoion, Greek for Matthiola, 184,

231
Life, seat of, in plants, 131

of plants, how shortened, 92
Lily of the valley first described, 225,

226

Limnesion, genus, 304
Linnaeanism of Sprengel, 20

INDEX

Linnaeus, C., amendments of, 217
classifies botanists, 52
compares plant and animal, 73
dedicates genus Galenia,i64
generic names by, 185
ignores subterranean stems, 76
judgment of, as to Theophrastus,

52

nomenclator, 119, 216, 305

opinion of, as to Aristotle, 52

refers fig tree to cryptogams, 83

Species Plantarum of, 23

zeal of, for Cesalpino, 30
Lithospermum, genus, 298
Lobel, M. de., Adanson on, 17
Longevity of, Leonicenus, 264

Theophrastus, 56

trees, 134

Lonicera, genus, 253
Lotus, genus, 32
Lupha, genus, 278
Lupinus, properties of, 310
Lycopersicum, genus, 164
Lycopus europasus, 243
Lycostaphylus, prior name for Opu-
lus, 304

Macedonia, ancient trees of, 126
Magnus, Albertus, botanist, 165
Malpighi, and Theophrastus, 97

ignored by Tournefort, 1 5
Malus, genus, amplified, 34

communis, ancient varieties of, 34
communis, mediaeval varieties of,

3i3, 3U

Malvae, early name of Malvaceae, 254
Mandragora, genus, 285
Manes, slave of Theophrastus, 57
Maranta, commentator, on Dioscori-

des, 153

Marcellus Virgilius, Fuchs on, 197
Marchantia, genus, 176
Margrave of Brandenburg and Fuchs,

193, 196

Marine, aquatics, Theophrastus on,
128

fig tree of Theophrastus, 128

littoral plants, 128

oak, a coral, 128
Maro, Publius Virgilius, 149
Marrow, ancient name of pith, 98
Marrubium palustre, 243
Martyn, J., on botany of Virgil, 150
Matricaria, genus, 213
Matrix, Theophrastan word for pith,

99

Matthiola, genus, 231, 249
Matthiolus, A., commentator, on

Dioscorides, 153
Medicago, genus, 31
Mediterranean region, trees of, 103
umbellifers of, 113

Melampyrum of ancients, 121, 136,

137

Melanthus, father of Theophrastus,

54

Melilotus, genus, 31, 32
Melissa, genus, 186
Melongena, genus, 284
Memmingen, birthplace of Fuchs, 192
Menestor, rhizotomus, 58
Mentha, genus, 243
Menyanthes, genus, 3 1
Mesophyll noted by Theophrastus, i o i
Mespilus, Amelanchier, 121

anthedon, 121

cotoneaster, 121

Metamorphosis in trees, 138, 139
Metaphysical definitions in biology,

74

Meteorology and plant life, 72
Method of Theophrastus, 60-72
Metrodorus, Greek painter of plants

167

Meyer, A., artist to Fuchs, 195
Meyer, E. H. F., on Aristotle ,"5 5

on inflorescence, 92

on Nicander, 147

on Valerius Cordus, 92
Mimosa polyacantha, 80, 133
Mimosaceas, metamorphoses of, 139
Mistletoe, Tragus on^ 257
Mitylene, native island of Theophras-
tus, 53
Modern botany and Theophrastus,

140

Modes of flowering in trees, 9 1
Molo, slave of Theophrastus, 57
Momorr'ica, genus, 253, 297
Monachella, old name of larkspur,

214
Monophyllous flowers, Theophrastus

on, 90, 91
Monotypes, early preponderant, 241

Theophrastan, 116, 121

Tragus on, 242

without specific names, 216
Morphologic descriptive types, 103
Morphology, disregarded, 210

distrusted by Theophrastus, 76, 77

of flower, Theophrastus on, 83

of leaf, Theophrastus on, 81, 83
Moschatella, prior name of Adoxa,

31°

Moss, sundew taken for, 309
Mosses, Tragus on, 258
Mulberry tree as flowering, 86
Mullein described by Tragus, 225
Mushrooms, Nicander on, 145
Myosotis, genus, 183
Myrtus, alba, 146

conjugnlis, 146

nigra, 146

Nasturtium, aquaticum, 247

INDEX

325

Nasturtium — Continued

hortense, 247

officinale, 247

pratense, 247

Natural sequences of Tragus, 238
Nelumbo speciosa, 122
Nenuphar, genus, 190
Neriurn, odorum, 33

oleander, 33, 133
Nicander of Colophon, 144, 145

on agriculture, 144

on mushrooms, 144

on poisonous plants, 144
Nicandra dedicated by Adanson, 146
Nile region, ancient dendrology of,

Nomenclature, of Brunfels, 184-197

of Cordus, 304-307

of Fuchs, 215-219

generic, universal, 29

of monotypes, 216

point of departure for, 189

specific, necessity of, 30

of Theophrastus, 118-125

of Tragus, 254-256

vernacular, 27, 36, 41, 42, 51, 118
Nummularia, genus, 253
Nymphaea, genus, 190

alba, 122

Lotus, 122

lutea, 122

Nelumbo, 122

Oaks, flowers of, first described, 227

genera of, 41

longevity of, 134

Pliny on, 41

Ray on, 41

Ocimoides and Ocimastrum, 218
Odors, as indicating affinities, 210,
244—248

of roots, Theophrastus on, 76
Olea, genus, 125, 146

albiceris, 146

colminiana, 146

conditiva, 146

domestica, 125

liciniana, 146

salentina, 146

sergiana, 146

silvestris, 125
Olive blossoms studied by Theo-

phrastus, 89

Orchids, fabled origin of, 237
Organography, importance of, 25
Organs, permanent and transient, 63

vegetative and reproductive, 63
Origanum, album, 125

creticum, 125

heracleoticum, 125

nigrum, 125
Orobanche, genus, 76
Oryza, genus, in

Osmunda regalis, 237
Ostrya vulgaris, 121
Ovary, as part of flower, 291

as no part of flower, 64, 290

of junipers minute, 88
Oxalidaceous type as Trifolium, 32
Oxalis acetosella, 3 1
Oxyacantha, genus, 121
Oxys, prior name of Oxalis, 31

Pados, Greek for Padus, 121
Paeonia, Cordus on, 291

Tragus on flowers of, 230
Papaver, and Nymphaea, 188

corniculatum, 125

nigrum, 125

rhceas, 125

Papaveraceae, Tragus on, 230
Papilionaceous, term used first by

Cordus, 288

Parenchyma first distinguished, 99
Parietaria, genus, 186
Paris, genus, Cordus on, 290
Parmeno, slave of Theophrastus, 57
Parnassia, genus, 305

palustris, 286
Pear, flowers of, Theophrastus on, 85

mediaeval varieties of, 313
Pedantries of botany, 37, 39
Pentaphyllum palustre, 305
Pergamos, birthplace of Galen, 160
Pericarp, Theophrastan term, 93 «

reappears first with Cordus, 292,

293

Pes corvinus, early name of Ranun-
culus, 1 88

Petal, term wholly modern, 140
Peuce, conophoros, 121

Idaia, 121

paralios, 121
Phaseolus vulgaris, 121
Phases of plant life, diversity of, 73
Phenologic notes, of Theophrastus,
128

of Tragus, 260

Philosophia Botanica quoted, 185
Phlomis, alba, 125

nigra, 125
Phyllitis, spores of, 294

ecology of, 310
Physalis, genus, 285

somnifera, 209

Physiology of plants, Cordus on, 307,
310

Sprengel on, 20

Varro's suggestions of, 148
Phytographic, leaf- types, 102-104

sequences and biologic, 66
Phytography, ancient and modern,
102, 103

artificial and natural, 102, 103

Cordus first to excel in, 275

examples of early, 45, 277

326

INDEX

Phy tography — Contin u< '< /

importance of, 18

of Brunfels, 172

of Cordus, 275-280

of Fuchs, 206, 207

of Theophrastus, 101-105

of Tragus, 223
Pilosella, major, 2 1 1

minor, 211

Pinnate leaf, named by Theophras-
tus, 70

new study of, by Cordus, 80
Pinus, Halepensis, 121

maritima, i 2 i

picea, 121

pinea, 87, 121
Pisum sativum, 287
Pith, distinguished by Theophrastus,
100

components of, 101
Placentation, studied by Theophras-
tus, 94

observed by Cordus, 293
Plantago aquatica, generic name, 216,

255
Plantago, coronopus, 254

major, 188

minor, 188

Plant life, many phases of, 73
Plant organs, list of, ancient, 61, 63
Plants, as cultivated or wild, '175

of deep fresh water, 127

interrelations of, debated, 114, 115

of lake shores, 127

marine aquatic, 127

marine littoral, 127

of marshes, 127

poisonous, Nicander on, 145

of river banks, 127

sleep of, known of old, 133

Theophrastan main divisions of,

107-1 i i

Platanus orientalis, 104
Plato, Theophrastus auditor of, 54,

74

Plinia, genus, i 59
Pliny, C., Adanson on, 159

Historia Naturalis, work of, 157
records Greek iconographers, 167
tragic death of, 157
views of nature, 158
Plum flowers studied by Theophras-
tus, 85
Plumier, C., dedicates genus to

Brunfels, 172
to Cordus, 314
to Dioscorides, 155
to Fuchs, 197
to Tragus, 220
Poem of Nicander on agriculture,

144

Poems of Virgil, botany of, 149
Pollen discovered by Cordus, 290

Polygonum aviculare, ecology of, 257
Pomology, of Cato, 146, 147

of Columella, 151

of Cordus, 311—314

of Varro, 147—149
Poniphylus, overseer in Theophra-

tus' garden, 57
Pontus, choice fruit varieties from,

148

Poplar, black, from .Crete, 129
Poppy, Tragus on calyx of, 229

water lily related to, 118
Populus alba, tassels of, 237
Porta, J. B., Adanson on, 17
Potentilla, genus, 186
Prssfloration, not yet noticed, 209

first noted by Cordus, 288, 289
Praefoliation first noted, 278
Prince Ludewig patron of Tragus, 222
Prince of Philosophers, Linnaeus on,

52
Priority, Cordus as to, 306

Fuchs' conservatism of, 215

Linnaeus reckless of, 305

Tragus' indifference to, 255
Prunus Cerasus, 121

insititia, 121

Padus, 121

Psoralea bituminosa, 3 1
Pulicaria, genus, 120
Pulsatilla, first figured, 190

stamens of, 289

vernalis, 298
Punica granatum, 34
Pyrola, genus, 185

Quercula minor, 185
Quercus, as once restricted, 41

alba, 36

castaneae folia, 36

Hispanica, 36

marina, 127

rubra, 36

salicifolia, 36

Raceme, uses of term, 201, 202
Ralla, Joachim, and Cordus, 271
Ranunculus acris, 188, 248, 298

arvensis, 298

bulbosus, 1 88, 298

coronarius, 301

flammula, 298

leptophyllus, 298

palustris, 298

platyphyllus, 298

sardous, 298

sceleratus, 248, 298
Ranunculaceous types in Trifolium,

32
Rapunculus, old name of Campanula .

249

Ray, John, on Quercus, 41
Ray-flowers, first named, 289

INDEX

327

Retzius, A. J., on botany of Virgil,

!50

Rhizophora mucronata, 33
Rhizotomi, ancient, 45, 50

modern, 51

Rieti, birthplace of Varro, 147
Riffius, Walter, and V. Cordus, 271
Rihelius, Strassburg, publisher, 276
Riparian ecologic group, 127
Rivinus, A. Q., Adanson on, 17
Root, emphasized by rhizotomi, 45

investigated by Theophrastus, 24

neglected by later systematists, 45

primitive notion of, 25

subordinated by Cordus, 278
Roots, classified, 73-77

colors of noted, 76

flavors of noted, 76

functions of stated, 73
Rorella, oldest name of Drosera, 304

physiology of, 309
Rose, Christmas, 231

China, 231

of Sharon, 232

Guelder, 232

wild, 230

Rotate, corolla-type, 232
Ruellius castigated by Tragus, 228
Ruscus Hypophyllum, 33
Ruta, genus, 245

Sagitta, old name of Sagittaria, 304
Sagittaria, anatomy of, 307

genus, 274
• Salix, alba, 125

helix, 125

nigra, 125
Sambucus, genus, 208

and Ebulus, 154, 240

aquatica, 231

described by Theophrastus, 90

nigra, 104

Sanguis mercurii, 185
Sanguis mustete, 185
Sanguisorba major, 310

minor, 310

Sanicula Europa^a, 177
Santolina, genus, 245
Saxifraga, Aizoon, 310
Scammonia, genus, 303
Science, antedates history, 21

exacts truthfulness, 30
Scolopendrium, ecology of, 310
Scro'phularia, genus, 186

major, 182

minor, 182, 185

nodosa, 182
Scrophulariaceas, 260
Sedum acre, 258

telephium, 182
Seed of fig, Cordus on, 292
Seedlings, Theophrastus on, 58, 95

Tragus on, 238, 239

Seeds, Cordus on, 292, 293

Theophrastus on, 67, 95, 96

Tragus on, 236-239
Senecio vulgaris, 176
Serapion, author quoted, 173
Seriphium, genus, 213, 214
Serpentarias, family, 255
Shepherd's Purse, 250
Sida, Greek for water lily, 122
Siemershausen birthplace of Cordus,

271

Simon Januensis quoted, 173
Sinapis, genus, 251
Sisymbrium Laeselii, 210, 212
Sium odoratum, 259, 260

non odoratum, 259, 260
Smilax, genus, 253
Snowball bush, first account of, 301
Solanaceas, 252
Solanum, genus, 252

melongena, 209

nigrum, 209
Sorbus domestica, 121
Spartium scoparium, variations of,

311
Speckle, V. R., artist to Fuchs, 195

Spinacia, genus, 186

Spodias, Greek for wild plum, 121

Sprengel, C., on Cordus, 270, 271

as historian, 19, 20, 165

on priority, 185

Spruce, Macedonian, ecology of, 126
Stamen described by Tragus, 235
Stamens confused with pistils, 86

Fuchs' account of, 204
Stapelius, editor of Theophrastus, 58
Stellate corolla, 233
Stem, Cordus on, 280

Fuchs on, 199

Theophrastus on, 76, 77

Tragus on, 243, 245, 253
Stigma, Cordus on, 290
Stipula, term as used by Fuchs, 200
Stramonium, genus, 285
Suber, Latin for cork oak, 41
Sundew, described by Cordus, 309

figured by Tragus, 309

named Rorella, 309

physiology of, 310
Symphytum officinale, 177

petraeum, 177
System, universal need of, 20

of Cesalpino, 30

of Tournefort, 14, 15

Tagetes, genus, 216
Tamarindus indica, 133
Tamus communis, 123
Taxonomic ideas of Tournefort, 14

suggestions of Dioscorides, 154
Taxonomy of Brunfels, 174-183

of Cordus, 295-303

of Fuchs, 207-215

[VDSX

Taxonomy — Continued

old and new, 300

of Theophrastus, 106-118

of Tragus, 239-254

principles of i6th century, 212

transitional stage of, 300

of the untaught, 29, 37, 40
Tenore, M., on botany of Virgil, 150
Testiculus canis, 185

vulpis, 185

Teucrium, genus, 259
Thalictrum, genus, 290, 300
Thamecnemum, genus, 304

Theophrasta, genus, 142
Theophrastus, of Eresus, 52-142

on accessory trunks, 94

on aerial roots, 74, 141

on algae as plants 73

on anatomy of plants, 63, 67, 97—

99
on animal and plant, 64

anthology of, 82-90

Aristotle's friendship for, 56

auditor of Plato, 54, 74

binary nomenclature of, 59

botanic garden of, 56

classifies roots, 73-75

confuses stamens and pistils, 86

contemporary of Alexander, 133

on deciduous trees, 128

defines fruit, 93

defines root, 73

Demetrius, patron of, 56

dendrology of, 128-135

on diseases of plants, 134

distinguishes cotyledons, 141

on domesticated plants, 69

on ecology, 125—127

on embryology of, 95, 99

on fungi as plants, 93

on germination, 95, 96

on leaves, 76-81

on longevity of trees, 134

Malpighi and, 97

on morphology, 73

on nomenclature, 118-125

on palms, 131

on placenta ti on, 94

on plant-geography, 132-133

on plant-world and man, 61

on roots, 24, 66, 76, 141

on sensitive foliage, 80, 133

on spines in place of leaves, 79

on stipules, 80

on transmutation, 135-139

on wood of palms, 100
Thlaspi arvense, 247
Thlaspidium, genus, 247, 250
Thrasyas Mantinensis, rhizotomus,

48, 49

Tithymali, family, 303*
Tithymalus, genus, 303
Tormentilla erecta, 178

Tournefort, J. P. de, on departments
of botany, 14

on genera of oaks, 41

as historian, 14, 16

ignores plant anatomy, 1 5

taxonomic principles of, 14, 15
Toxicodendron vulgare, 47
Tragia, genus, 220
Tragus, Hieronymus, 220-262

Anthology of, 227-235

Ecology of, 256-260

forerunner of Linnaeus, 236

on fruit and seed, 236-238

life of, 220-222

nomenclature of, 254, 255

phytography of, 223-226

taxonomy of, 239-253

on transmutation, 261, 262
Transmutation, Nico on, 160

Theophrastus on, 135-139

Tragus on, 261, 262
Trapa, genus, 255
Trees, popular nomenclature of, 28,.

29, 35, 36
Trifolium, amplified, 31

acetosum, 31, 306

arvense, 203

bituminosum, 3 1

cochleatum, 3 1

corniculatum, 3 i

hepaticum, 3 1

hybridum, 27

palustre, 31

pratense, 27

repens, 27, 187

Triphyllon, Greek for Psoralea, 31
Triticum, ancient kinds of, 125
Trixago minor, 185
Tussilago, genus, 289

Umbelliferae, Theophrastus on, 77
University of , Basle and Brunfels, 169
Bologna and V. Cordus, 274
Erfurth and E. Cordus, 263, 264
Erfurth and Fuchs, 192
Ferrara and E. Cordus, 264
Ferrara and V. Cordus, 274
Ingolstadt and Fuchs, 193
Leipzig, and E. Cordus, 264
Marburg and E. Cordus, 265
Padua and V. Cordus, 274
Pisa and V. Cordus, 274
Tubingen and Fuchs, 193
Wittemburg and V. Cordus, 271
Urtica dioica, 179
iners, 180
labeo, 1 80
mortua, 180

Vaccinium arctostaphylos, 164

Myrtillus, 235
Valeriana, genus, 186, 242
Valerius Cordus, 270-314

INDEX

329

Valla, G., quoted by Brunfels, 173
Variations of Spartium, 3 1 1
Varieties, ancient means of propa-
gating, 59

of apples, mediseval, 313, 314

of cabbage, ancient, 146, 148

of cherries, ancient, 148

of fig, ancient, 148

of grapes, ancient, 147

of myrtle, ancient, 146, 148

of olive, ancient, 146

of pears, ancient, 147, 148
mediseval, 313

of wheat, ancient, 125
Varro, Marcus Terentius, 147-149

agriculture, treatise on, by, 148

genus dedicated to, 149

most learned man in Rome, 148

naval commander at seventy, 147

suggests plant physiology, 148
Varronia, genus, by P. Browne, 149
Vegetative organs, Cordus on, 280-
282

Fuchs on, 197-200

Theophrastus on, 72-82
Veit Speckle, artist to Fuchs, 195
Veratrum and Helleborus as allies,

118
Verbena, old synonymy of, 185

fcemina, 177, 251

mascula, 177

officinalis, 176

recta, 210

supina, 185, 210
Vernacular, family names, 27

generic names, 27

specific names, 27
Veronica, Anagallis aquatica, 259

Beccabunga, 259

Chamaedrys, 259

Teucrium, 259

Viburnum Opulus, 231, 232, 301
Vigonius, J., quoted J>y Brunfels, 173

Viola alba, 184, 216, 231

aurea, 184

hirundinaria, 184

lutea, 231

martia, 231

nigra, 184

purpurea, 231
Violet, Dame's, 232

Dogtooth, 232

Violet-form corollas, Tragus on, 233
Violets, cruciferous, 231

proper, 231

Virgil, Latin poet, 149, 150
Vitis aminea, 146
majuscula, 146
minuscula, 147

apiciana, 147

gemina, 147

helvola, 147
minuscula, 147

murgentina, 147

vinifera, 217

Vitis alba, generic for Bryonia 217
Vtis Idsea, generic for Vitisidaea, 216
Vitis nigra, generic for Clematis, 217
Vocabularies, of botany, primitive,

59. l61
Vocabulary, botanical, of Fuchs,

197-206

Vulnerary herbs, names of, 177, 178
Von Sachs, Julius, errors of, 140, 143,

172

on German Fathers, 166
on Theophrastus, 52, 140, 143

Walnut, 29, 40, 123, 126
Water lilies and poppies as allied, 1 18
Willow catkins, Tragus on, 229
Willows first grown from seed, 228
Wood anemone, first published, 186

Xanthium, genus, 255
Zizyphus, genus, 34