240 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



Tragus' taxonomy, like that of all his forebears, is established 

 upon characters of the vegetative organs, with no strong appeal to 

 flower or fruit; and the primary grouping of things as trees, shrubs, 

 and herbs is in his estimation natural and valid. Nevertheless a few 

 exceptions are taken by him against this rule. An underlying 

 principle of such a rule, or at least a logical deduction from it, 

 is that no one genus embraces both trees and herbaceous plants. 

 And really there was but a solitary genus known in early botany 

 that was troublesome to those who regarded the distinction between 

 woody plants and the herbaceous as being taxonomically fundamen- 

 tal. There was the tree Sambucus and the herb Ebulus. These are 

 their classic Latin names, and the import of this nomenclature 

 is, that they are of two genera. Ebulus is not even in the least 

 degree woody or shrubby in any part. In texture and duration 

 it is as perfectly a perennial herb as the common asparagus or 

 rhubarb. Dioscorides, the great Greek physician and medical 

 botanist, having regard to pharmaceutical principles as well as taxo- 

 nomic, received Ebulus as a kind of Sambucus. They are alike, 

 he says, in foliage, flower, fruit, and medical properties.^ Tragus, 

 consistently adhering to the fundamentals of classification there 

 accepted, describes and figures Ebulus among the genera of herbs; 

 for even his readers, every one, would look for it among the herbs 

 and not among the trees ; and Sambucus is treated of far away, in 

 the third book, under the general topic of trees. ^ In both places, 

 however, he ventures the opinion that the two are naturally of one 

 genus. Under Ebulus he says, " If you consider its foliage, flower, 

 and the heavy somewhat sickening odor of the herbage, you must 

 regard it as nothing else but a smaller and herbaceous kind of 

 Sambucus. " Under the latter he says again, " As to its leaf, flower, 

 fruit, and odor this is so exactly like Ebulus that the ancients were 

 wont to receive them as of one and the same genus." 



From a period too remote for precise limitation, only Sambucus 

 and Ebulus seem to have militated against the taxonomic validity 

 of that old distinction between herb and tree; and we shall be 

 interested in following the subsequent history of this taxonomic 

 puzzle to its final solution. 



That old philosophy of the three grand divisions of Tree, Shrub, 

 and Herb unquestionably carried with it the opinion, certainly 

 not altogether unreasonable, that trees are of highest rank, and 

 herbaceous plants of the lowest. Under this system it will be seen 



» Diosc, Book iv, ch. 168. 



' Stirp. Comm., pp. 796 and 996. 



