LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 8l 



seems anomalous. To the average reader it will seem like a 

 curious hiatus in the Theophrastan leaf-morphology. The situa- 

 tion seems nevertheless readily to explain itself. One has but to 

 recall to mind the ancient botanist's strong inclination to regard 

 function first and form last everywhere in his organography. The 

 excessively enlarged and leaflet-like stipules of Pisum and some 

 other leguminous herbs have not the least appearance of being 

 functionally different from the other leaflets. They are larger 

 and also located a little differently from the others, but that is all; 

 and there is the best of evidence that a thorough training in modern 

 organographic refinements is requisite to the determination of the 

 enlarged basal leaflets of the pea- vine as stipules. The evidence 

 is this: that the most original and logical of great organographers 

 and terminologists, Joachim Jung, as late as the year 1662 of our 

 era knew nothing of any such organ as a stipule. Tournefort in 

 the year 1700 knew them not, and Linnaeus claims them as among 

 his own organographic discoveries, though unwarrantedly, as we 

 shall see later. 



There is, however, one particular kind of stipule which, unless I 

 misunderstand Theophrastus, drew his attention and elicited his 

 comment. It was a case in which there is about the strongest 

 possible contrast in appearance between the leaf proper and the 

 stipular appendage; that of certain umbellifers in which while the 

 decompound blade is deep green and almost capillarily dissected, 

 the large stipular development below it is pale, membranaceous, 

 wholly uncut, sometimes cup-shaped and hollow. Here again it 

 would seem to require our modern refinement in organography 

 to perceive in such a thin bladdery stipule and green capillarily cut 

 blade the different parts of one and the same organ. Theophrastus, 

 at all events, knew some umbellifers of this description, and wrote 

 concerning one species of the genus Ferula that it puts forth at the 

 nodes of its stem leaves and ^XaffroiJ The blastoi, one from each 

 node of the stem, have perplexed some of the botanical commen- 

 tators upon the text. I think they are the stipules. 



If Theophrastus does not anyw^here formally define the leaf,, 

 that may have been for the reason that, not at all comprehending 

 its function, it was not possible for him to define the organ, as he 

 had defined root and stem, physiologically. Nevertheless he did 

 state, in a most informal way, its very best morphological mark; 

 that by which it is almost always readily distinguishable from a 



> Hist., Book vi, ch. 2. 



