LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE I 25 



tion of binary generic names from Latin-written botany. But it 

 was imperative to show that such names are common with Theo- 

 phrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny, and thenceforward for well-nigh two 

 thousand years. Without knowledge of this fact the ancient 

 names can not be understood. Without understanding of names 

 as applied during such period, its taxonomy is an enigma, and the 

 setting forth of the history of taxonomy is impossible. To read 

 into that ancient Greek name Aster Atticus, as has been done 

 lately, the character of an ordinary binary plant name of the nine- 

 teenth century,^ — to fail to recognize in that a mere two-worded 

 generic name — seems to evince a condition of bewilderment as to 

 the whole subject of botanical nomenclature with ancient Greek 

 and later Latin authors. That the term Aster is generic and 

 Atticus specific can not well be believed to have been in the mind 

 of Dioscorides; for the genus was monotypic, and they did not then 

 give specific names to monotypes.^ Nevertheless, in genera of 

 several species generico-specific binaries quite like Aster Atticus as 

 to form were very frequent with Theophrastus ; though he applied 

 them to species and to varieties indiscriminately,^ as the subjoined 

 Latin versions of some of his binary names will show: 



Salix alba Triticum agrigentinum 



Salix helix Triticum africum 



Salix nigra Triticum assyricum 



Papaver rhoeas Triticum egyptium 



Papaver nigrum Triticum siculum. 



Papaver corniculatum Triticum thracium. 



Origanum album Olea domestica. 



Origanum nigrum Olea silvestris. 



Origanum creticum Phlomis alba. 



Origanum heracleoticum Phlomis nigra. 



Ecology. Among forecastings of method with Theophrastus, 

 that of the natural associations of plants in particular places is 

 very definitely presented. That which we have learned to desig- 

 nate as the ecologic he accepts as being a very natural kind of 

 grouping. "All are distinguishable as either terrestrial or aquatic, 

 just as we also primarily distinguish animals; for there are some 



' E. S. Burgess, Memoirs of Torrey Club, vol. x, (1Q02), pp. 57 et seq. 



2 Sixteenth-century botanical scholars knew this well. Cesalpino wrote 

 the name always as one word, Asteratticus, or else Asteracticus. 



^ It was the usage of nearly all authors down to and including Tournefort 

 in the year 1 700. A binary name meant either a genus, a species or a variety. 



