LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE I09 



herbaceous — that is, dies back every autumn after the fruiting 

 and is renewed again in the summer. In late autumn and early 

 winter, while the dead or half- dead upright and parallel summer 

 branches are still present, surmounting the shorter tuft of truly 

 woody lower branches, the bush would vividly enough recall a 

 faggot bundle. Even where abounding, as such growths do on 

 open plain or stony mountain slope throughout all half- arid regions 

 of the world, they must have been used as faggots always. He 

 who ki^ows familiarly such ancient garden plants as the lavender 

 and sage and rue, and the wild half-shrubby artemisias and other like 

 composites of all dry climates, will perceive readily that cppvyavov, 

 the faggot bundle, lent itself to Theophrastus' scientific purpose in 

 this instance. He might have created a new term; but the con- 

 servative prefers to make new use and application of some old and 

 familiar term. The public never takes kindly to new names. 



In distinguishing the category of the sufErutescent, the Greek 

 had proceeded analytically. In establishing upon all herbaceous 

 plants one comprehensive group under one name, his procedure 

 was synthetic. It was not indicating a single new group hitherto 

 unrecognized and naming it. It was the synthesis of a number 

 of groups long recognized and separately named ; the putting 

 together of such, to constitute a single more comprehensive assem- 

 blage, and under one name. 



A glance at the actual situation in which we English-speaking 

 people find ourselves as to our terminology of the herbaceous will 

 help us to apprehend clearly the Theophrastan standpoint. We have 

 no single word by which we venture commonly to designate the 

 aggregate of things herbaceous. If in our fundamentals of botany 

 we still follow Theophrastus in writing or speaking of tree, shrub, 

 and herb, that is at once the beginning and the end of our using the 

 term "herb" thus comprehensively. Thenceforward we ignore it and 

 write or speak about "herbaceous plants"; this for the manifest 

 reason that "herb" used by itself has almost universally a special 

 meaning of which it seems impossible to divest it. An herb is some- 

 thing, neither tree nor shrub, which is either medicinal, aromatic, 

 or culinary. The other terms in common use for subordinate 

 groups of herbaceous plants are vegetable, weed, grass, and worst 

 of all the word "plant" itself; for this, as first introduced into our 

 English speech, and as almost universally employed down to our 

 day, signifies only things herbaceous, yet not all; for neither weeds 

 nor grasses are commonly called plants, in our tongue, except 

 technically. Thus our category of the herbaceous includes the 



