HISTORICAL. 21 



tus. He considered the word Nenuphar a corruption of the older Greek 

 nouphar. But his description of the European waterlily is the valuable 

 feature. The leaves, he says, are on long, terete, glabrous, porous 

 peduncles, are approximately round, firm, almost coriaceous, for the most 

 part floating on the water ; upper surface smooth, distinctly veined 

 beneath. Those which lie concealed below the water are thinner and 

 softer. Flowers solitary, on stems like the petioles, made of many floral 

 leaves, so that sometimes a single flower is composed of twenty-five to 

 thirty or even forty leaves, each of the shape of one's thumb or a leaf of 

 the greater Sedum. From the middle of the flower many yellow stamens 

 project. Bud oblong, its outer leaves [sepals] purplish green. Flowers 

 scentless, shining like the sun. Here, curiously enough, reappears the 

 myth of its retreat below the water at evening and emergence at sunrise. 

 The account continues : After the flower, there is produced a head like a 

 poppy or round apple, with black shining seed, larger than millet. The 

 rhizome ((radix) is about as thick as one's arm, knotty, black outside, white 

 and spongy within, odorless, tasteless, beset with and fastened in the 

 mud by fibrous roots. Bodseus calls this plant " Nymphaea alba major." 

 Two other varieties of " N. alba" and four of " N. lutea " are next de- 

 scribed, but they are all outside our present genus Nymphaea and need 

 not be considered here. At another place Nymphaea lotus is fully treated 

 under the name of " Lotus Aegyptia," giving all of Alpinus' figures. 

 Bodsus thinks this plant should not be classed with Nymphaea on account 

 of its bulbous root. He thus differs in opinion from Alpinus, and especially 

 from C. Bauhin 



Piso (1648) gives us the earliest account of an American Nymphaea, 

 in a Brazilian species. " Among those plants," he says, " which are 

 common to Europe and the western world is Nymphaea, called by the 

 Brazilians Aguape, by the Portuguese Galvaon, which is noticed everywhere 

 floating on the surface of pools and still waters. The leaves are similar 

 to our Nymphaea, with a great network of veins beneath." The flower 

 has a pleasant odor, and consists of four green sepals and about twelve 

 narrowly oblong, acute, white petals. Its medicinal virtues are also 

 detailed. Just what species is here referred to cannot be positively 

 identified, nor does the crude figure accompanying assist. But from the 

 character and number of the petals, and the fact that we know of but one 

 white day-blooming waterlily in Brazil, we have but little hesitation in 

 referring it, as did Caspary (1878), to N. ampla DC. 



Bontius, whose accounts of the East Indies were bound in with Piso's 



