LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 215 



too superficial in his knowledge of the wild plants of Mediterranean 

 fields to well interpret Dioscorides, But his identification of the 

 third anthemis appears to have suited the fancy of Fuchsius and 

 he approved it. His former rival, Brunfelsius, a dozen years 

 earlier had maintained that the Consolida regalis was sui generis, and 

 did not think it had been known to any of the botanists of antiquity.^ 



There seems to be evidence within the book of Fuchsius itself 

 that the work was long in preparation, and the middle and later 

 chapters printed so much later than the earlier as to bear intimations 

 of his mind's having changed somewhat in the direction of an ap- 

 preciation of floral structure as having some value in the de- 

 termining of plant relationships. While his contemporaries 

 Brunfelsius and Tragus hesitated to distinguish generically be- 

 tween the real nettles and the labiate-flowered dead nettles, Fuch- 

 sius separates them widely, and under the names of Urtica and 

 Lamium'^ ; this, however, not as an original proposition, but as 

 adopted from Dioscorides and Pliny. 



In his description of the genus Pisum, the garden pea, he says 

 that its flower is shaped like a butterfly; but I do not find him 

 using the expression in describing other plants of that family; 

 and while this is the earliest mention of the papilionaceous corolla 

 form that I have met with, I still think it improbable that it was 

 original with Fuchsius. 



Among several new genera proposed by this author there is one, 

 namely Digitalis, which he establishes almost upon the form of the 

 corolla alone.'^ This genus of two species, which he names re- 

 spectively D. purpurea and D. lutea, practically concludes this 

 volume of more than 900 pages ; and so a course that began in almost 

 total disregard of anthological considerations, ends in the admission 

 that floral structure may upon occasion be of such high taxonomic 

 import as to furnish the most essential character of a genus. Con- 

 trasted with the beginnings of the volume, this conclusion of it is 

 taxonomically very significant; even prophetic. It forecasts the 

 time a hundred and fifty years later when Tournefort, running to 

 another extreme, would essay the systematization of all petaliferous 

 plants, almost by the corolla alone. 



Nomenclature. All the unconventionality, simplicity, and brev- 

 ity of a primitive and even a classic nomenclature marks the 



> Brunfelsius, vol. i, p. 84. 



» Urtica, Hist. Stirp. pp. 105-109, three species; Lamiunt, Ibid., pp. 468, 469, 

 also three species. 



* Hist. Stirp., pp. 892-894 



