LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 9I 



leged to announce it as a discovery of his own. In the most recent 

 and approved taxonomy of flowering plants, this point in ^^ an- 

 thology, first indicated by the ancient Greek, holds a most con- 

 spicuous place. Let the Greek himself explain what he means 

 by the origin and position, or insertion, of the flower; always 

 keeping it in mind that with him the leaves and the thread-like 

 parts in their midst are all there is to a flower, the ovary be ng the 

 fruit. " vSome produce the flower around the [base of the] fruit, 

 as do the grape vine and the olive tree. ... In the greater pro- 

 portion of plants the fruit thus occupies the center of the flower- 

 But there are not wanting such as support the flower on the sum- 

 mit of the fruit, as do the pomegranate, apple, and rose, all of which 

 have their seeds [ovules] underneath the flower. A few bear the 

 flower on the summit of the seed itself, such as the thistles, and 

 all that have their flowers in that manner crowded together." 

 It is a clear distinguishing between the hypogynous, perigynous, 

 and epigynous in floral structure; clear notwithstanding that the 

 one example brought forward to illustrate the epigynous insertion, 

 that of the flowers of the composites, was not from the modern 

 point of view well chosen; because then what he understood to be 

 the seed we regard as a fruit. If he had been accustomed to assign 

 names to what have proven to be his great discoveries in anthology, 

 he would have called this third mode of insertion the epispermatous. 

 He learned this springing of the "flower" from the top of the 

 "seed" to be characteristic of the whole family of the umbellifers, 

 and of the few rubiaceous plants that he knew, as well as of the 

 thistles and their kindred. It seems to me that what is more to be 

 wondered at in Theophrastan anthology than his distinguishing 

 of the hypogynous, perigynous, and epigynous modes of insertion, 

 is the fact of his having made out so positively, that the head in the 

 composites is not a flower, but that it is a dense cluster of separate 

 and distinct individual flowers, each complete in itself. Less than 

 three generations ago, eminent systematists were still writing up 

 the scales of such involucres as "sepals/' the whole involucre as 

 a "calyx," and the circle of ray flowers as the "corolla." At this 

 juncture the sublime old Greek will appear to have lived before 

 his time by more than two thousand years. 



In his study of flowers the arrangement of them was not un- 

 noticed. He observes that in most trees they appear as scattered 

 on all the branches, all appearing nearly simultaneously, so that 

 the flowering period of such is but short. In many herbaceous 

 and half-shrubby growths they are clustered together; and in 



