108 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTION VOL. 54 



blems before 1 ; 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. 



