LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE l8l 



at least to the careful reader, and on this wise. In reproducing 

 what Dioscorides had said about the labiate nettles he does it 

 under the following caption: " De Galiopsi simili Urticis herba, 

 Dioscorides."! Of such a caption the English version is, "Con- 

 cerning Galiopsis of Dioscorides, an herb resembling the nettles." 



Of course, that which resembles another thing is not that other 

 thing which it resembles; and nothing that was ever printed in a 

 book is plainer than that this author did not regard Galiopsis 

 as congeneric with Urtica. When in his Icones he sandwiches the 

 dead nettle in between two real nettles, and when as a heading 

 to his Chapter XXIII., in which both kinds are discussed, he places 

 that simple " De Urticis," he is purposely adapting himself to the 

 understanding of the half -taught root and herb dealers, and the 

 untaught old women, who call them all nettles indiscriminately. 

 In a word, Brunfels is a man of some learning and insight in matters 

 botanical, and also a man of discreet conservatism; holding it un- 

 wise to lay too openly before the general public every advanced 

 taxonomic view that is his own. 



In his indubitable though dissembled accepting of Galiopsis 

 as distinct from the nettles he cannot but have been impressed 

 by the fact that Dioscorides in making the segregation had done 

 so in deference to its flowers, which he described as being "slender 

 and purple"; and it may or may not have been in deference to 

 similarity in floral structure that closely appended to the Urtica- 

 Galiopsis series comes an unbroken line of three other galeate- 

 flowered labiate types. If, however, this be an example of 

 guidance by anthology to the recognition of affinity, still it is 

 a guide which Brunfels is as far as possible from following 

 steadily. The flowers of orchidaceous plants have as much 

 agreement in character as have those of labiates; but when he 

 comes to the grouping of what are known to us as the orchid 

 genera we find that all those which have two or three large 

 tuberiform roots are gathered into one place by themselves, ^ 

 while their merely fibrous-rooted kindred form a group quite 

 apart from these,-' various wholly unrelated types intervening 

 between the two orchid groups. This is all quite after the method 

 of antiquity; the method of those who, heedless of flowers, to the 

 knowledge of which they had not advanced, concluded things to be 

 allied because they were alike as to roots, and, it may be, as to 

 stem and foliage also. 



• Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. i, p. 155. 



* Ibid , pp. 103-110. 

 3 Ibid., pp. 181, 182. 



