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. 



