LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE llj 



Anethum Colutea 



Anthericum Coriandrum 



Antirrhinum Coronopus 



Aparine Crataegus 



Aristolochia Cycas 



Arum Cj^donia 



Asparagus Cyperus 



There must be more than a hundred Theophrastan genera the 

 names of which are as familiar as these. A very considerable 

 proportion of them were then known only as consisting of a single 

 species, and are therefore of the kind which we speak of as mono- 

 typical; others were made up of from two to several, and the 

 species are mentioned by name at least, when not described. If 

 he establishes no new genus, and all of them which he enumerates 

 or describes were of common recognition, and under those same 

 names, even before he had penned a line on botany, this fact of 

 itself will demonstrate anew the truthfulness of the proposition 

 that the perception of genera and the naming of them are older 

 than history, and that plant names, generic and specific, are a part 

 of human language always and everywhere. 



As to the grouping of his genera, almost the whole story has been 

 told, at least by implication. There were the genera of trees, the 

 genera of shrubs, etc., in places apart; and there were ecological 

 groupings of wild plants and particular assemblages of genera of 

 things cultivated in field and garden; as to these last, the mere 

 retention of antiquated popular groupings which, in deference to the 

 cultivators, he was unwilling to ignore or displace. 



There occur in Theophrastus a number of passages which seem 

 like forecastings of a system based more particularly upon flowers 

 and fruits; a system the development of which was of course im- 

 possible then, or even at any later period preceding the invention 

 of the microscope. But the very impossibility of his having been 

 able to develop such a system is something which makes his few 

 and faint adumbrations of it interesting and remarkable. I shall 

 cite but two or three. 



Commenting on the cylindric spicate inflorescences of certain 

 cereals and grasses, he recalls that those of the plantains are so like 

 them and even the flowers so similar, and thinks it might not be 

 presumptuous to regard them as being interrelated.^ To the 

 average botanist of to-day the idea of any consanguinity as sub- 

 » Hist., Book vii, ch. lo. 



