LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE III 



will include such phytologic ambiguities — for such they were in his 

 day and for ages afterward — as lichens and fungi? There is no 

 room for doubt that one consideration was the very rational 

 one, that botany may not safely begin at any point where doubt 

 may arise as to what realm of nature the subjects of study belong 

 to. The title of trees in general to be regarded a part of the plant 

 world is secure; that of no other growths more so; while judged 

 by his own criteria of phytologic rank, the very highest place must 

 be accorded to trees. In his view they were the most perfectly 

 organized of all. 



Inasmuch as the fourth and last Grand Division rroa, the Grass 

 Plants, i. e., the Herbaceous, is the largest of all as to numbers 

 both of individuals and of species and as regards their almost 

 universal prevalence, it will naturally be here that we shall look 

 for further expression of taxonomic idea; suggestions of grouping 

 subordinate to that of TToa, the herb. 



The most comprehensive of his subordinate groups is that which he 

 denominates HaAa/JGoS?^?,^ which comes into Latin as Arundinaceae ; 

 its type being that superb grass Arundo Donax. In an author 

 so primitive one does not look for any rigidly formal diagnosis of 

 a group. Calamodes in itself is diagnostic. It will include all 

 plants that recall calamus, that is, Arundo Donax. In one place 

 he has written that the leaves of this, and other things which he 

 cites, seem to be made up of nerves only, comparing them with 

 those of the grape and fig, which he says have not only nerves but 

 also flesh and epidermis in their make-up.- The interpretation 

 of this is that he has become aware of the differences of anatomical 

 structure subsisting between the leaves of endogens and exogens. 

 His group Calamodes — better written, after the usage of his Latin 

 translators, Arundinaceae — embraces Arundo and the cereals 

 Triticuni, Secale, Hordeum, Oryza, and others; that is, he names 

 these as types. By their leaf characters all other gramineous 

 plants cultivated and wild; known or unknown, fall within the 

 lines circumscribing his Arundinaceae. And what else besides the 

 true grasses? In one place he names as among the arundinaceous 

 certain plants the leaves of which in so far depart from the typical 

 as to present an angular cross-section, and these seem to him as if 

 made up of two leaves joined by their edges to something like a 

 keel. It is the conduplicate and keeled leaves of such things as 

 Cyperus and Sparganium, as any botanist would know from the 



» Hist,, Book i, ch. ro. 

 2 Ibid., ch. 17. 



