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. 



