LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 225 



foliage had definitely indicated wherein it differs from that of ivy^ ; 

 SO that if the cyclamens of Greece and Italy as he had known them 

 had shown asarum leaf outlines he would have been likely to have 

 said so. Tragus w^as deceived by his own gratuitous supposition 

 that the cyclamen of Germany was the one only cyclamen existing. 



The common mullein had been used in medicine from the time 

 of Hippocrates; but in the books not much more than one line of 

 description, and that of the leaves only, had been accorded it. 

 Nothing even remotely approaching the following by Tragus had 

 been written about it: 



" A very notable thing in this plant is the long straight thick 

 root, of a woody hardness. Its leaves, especially the earlier, lie 

 close to the ground, are rather broad and long, of a whitish aspect 

 and woolly, more so than those of helenium (that is, elecampane, 

 Inula Helenium). Not until the second year does it send up its 

 stem, full of a white pith within, like the elder, and sometimes 

 attaining a man's height, clothed with leaves which gradually 

 become smaller and narrower as they approach the summit. The 

 flowers, yellow, woolly, and most sweet smelling are of five distinct 

 leaves, and completely cover the stem from where they begin up 

 to the very apex of it ; which falling away are succeeded each by a 

 woolly globe crowded full of seeds not unlike those of a poppy. 

 When the plant is in flower it well resembles a beautiful torch, 

 whence the name King's Torch has been given it. "■^ 



It is the earliest botanical account given of the mullein. The 

 writer of it is manifestly a botanist ; for he has busied himself with 

 the investigation of this plant as a plant, not as a thing either 

 useful or useless. The subject of this piece of research is but a 

 weed, but he has followed it through its life history, examining 

 its root, dissecting its stem, noting the norm of its foliage, and also 

 the deviations from it, has counted the segments of the corolla, 

 discovered that from within there is exhaled a pleasant odor, has 

 inspected with care the seed vessel and its contents, likening the 

 seeds within it to other seeds that every one is familiar with. 

 There is even added an item of the folklore of the plant. The like 

 of this comes very near to being something new in the history of 

 botany ; and the book abounds in plant descriptions of this new and 

 original type. 



For an example of his diagnosis of a plant never before described 

 by any one, take that of the Lily of the Valley: 



» Diosc. Book i, ch. 9. 



' Stirp. Comtn., pp. 216, 217. 



