EARLIER HISTORY OF OUR DOGBANES. — I. 243 



f 



in the midst of the beaten paths of the garden. It is full of a 

 milky juice which exudes from any part of the plant that is 

 wounded. It is destructive of flies, if they alight on the 

 flowers. At Paris, in the Royal Garden, it may be seen in 

 abundance." 



With such fulness as this were the best botanists of the 

 generation preceding that of Tournefort accustomed to describe 

 new plants ; but for the botanists of the time there was much 

 more in this description of the new dogbane than most of us 

 of to-day will be able to get out of it without some very care- 

 ful looking into it. Indeed there are hordes of botanists in 

 several countries to whom Boccone*s account of the foliage of 

 his new plant will be meaningless, and therefore, to them, no 



description at all. Yet his phrase leaves of the larger andro- 

 saemum " has in it all of the following : leaves ovate, entire, 

 two or three inches long, firm, deep or dark green and gla- 

 brous, spreading away from the stem on little or no petiole. 



Now the plant A?idrosaemum officinale — called Hyp 



androsaemitm by I^innaeus — was very familiar to botanists of 

 southern Europe, and that phrase told distinctly to all that the 

 new apocynum suggested by its foliage and general bearing 

 the familiar androsaemum. And we of the present age, if we 

 know" the hypericaceous plant androsaemum, can assure our- 

 selves that Boccone's dogbane, whatever it may have been, 

 was not A. cannabinum, because that has not an ovate foliage. 

 Its leaves do not spread away from the stem, but are ascending, 

 and are of a color that is in strong contrast to that of andro- 

 saemum. Of course when it is said of the flowers that they 

 are like those of the pinkish or reddish lily of the valley, it 

 becomes if possible still more certain that he had some member 

 of that group of which Linnaeus A, aytdrosaemifolium is the 

 type. Is this plant of the old Paris Garden— the plant of 

 Joncquet and of Boccone — the ^. androsaemifolium of Linnaeus 

 and of later North American botany? That can not be 

 answered by any simple Yes or No. In reality the question is 

 twofold. Let us simplify by asking : Is it the A. androsaemi- 



folium 



answered 



