LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY —GREENE I9I 



tion of this sort of plant. It may have been named and described 

 somewhere nevertheless. He is resolved to print the figure, and 

 leave it to others who have more leisure than he, to study it in the 

 light of all descriptions to them accessible. ^ Meanwhile the thing 

 may be known by one or other of those German names by which 

 the common people know it. 



8. The student of botanical nomenclature should here note 

 well the distinction which Brunfels tacitly makes between the Latin 

 names used by Latin botanical writers, and those invented in their 

 mother tongue by the common people. It is plain that with him 

 they have not the same status. The vernacular name cannot figure 

 among the Latin synonyms. It is upon no equality with them. 

 His action and his words together bring it out clearly that, in 

 his mind, there is a botanical nomenclature, and synchronously 

 with it a kind of plant naming that is not valid scientifically. The 

 botanists of antiquity had not, and hardly could have had this 

 thought. Is the expression of it new with Brunfels ? He who is to 

 answer this question must first learn pre-Brunfelsian and mediaeval 

 botany. The prevalence of that opinion is long since become 

 universal, despite its having been ably disputed two centuries after 

 Brunfels. It will be important to the history of nomenclature that 

 one trace its progress from Brunfels forward. 



9. In respect to the nomenclature of species it should be observed 

 that what is often spoken of now as the phrase name, or more 

 unadvisedly the "polynomial," and commonly attributed to all 

 botanists preceding Linnaeus, is a thing unknown to Brunfels. In 

 genera of several species I have not found him using in a single in- 

 stance any name that is more than binary. Where there are three 

 words to a name the first two are the generic name. 



» Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. i, p. 217. 



