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. 





