LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 283 



of Echinops sphaerocephalus, he observes and records it that the 

 first flowers to open are those at the summit of the cluster and 

 that the succession is from that point downward to where the 

 globose head is joined to its peduncle.^ 



It will be taken for granted that Cordus had received from 

 Theophrastus the suggestion of the centripetal and centrifugal in 

 inflorescence; but there is one excellent definition of a particu- 

 lar kind of inflorescence which modern botany receives from this 

 German youth of the sixteenth century; that of the word umbel. 

 The word itself as a botanical term is as old as botany, and was in 

 the first place suggested by the mechanism of an umbrella or sun- 

 shade, which in more than one way certain inflorescences recall. 

 There are two things essential to an umbrella, and these not equally 

 conspicuous. The more obvious part is the rounded and expanded 

 externally more or less convex surface ; and there is also the frame 

 work beneath supporting it in expansion. Now while the modem 

 botanist is taught to look not at the expanded surface, but at the 

 structure of the framework beneath for the evidence that a flattish 

 topped inflorescence is an umbel, it was quite otherwise with the 

 botanists of antiquity, and with all of them before Valerius Cordus. 

 Brunfels, Fuchsius, Tragus, and this young botanist's wisest con- 

 temporaries held the broad flat clusters of the elder and the vibur- 

 num to be umbels equally with those of carrot and caraway, parsnip 

 and fennel ; no heed being given to the complexity of the supporting 

 framework in the elder, or to the simplicity of it in caraway and 

 fennel. Even the small heads of those composites the yarrow and 

 the tansy were said to be arranged in umbels. It is in the midst of 

 his own new and improved description of the common yarrow that 

 Cordus suggests the need of distinguishing between umbel and 

 corymb; and that nothing should be called an umbel the stalklets 

 of which do not all arise from one and the same point. ^ This is 

 done with the utmost modesty, the revolutionizing proposition 

 being enclosed in a parenthesis. He sees the important distinction 

 between umbel and corymb, names briefly the characteristic of the 

 original and true umbel, and quietly passes on, leaving it to be 

 inferred that other flattish-topped inflorescences not answering 

 to this clear definition of the umbel may be called the corymb ; and 

 his practice proves this to have been his purpose. We shall be 

 interested in observing later how long after Cordus botanists in 

 general saw the need of distinguishing between umbel and corymb. 



» Hist. PL, p. 87. 

 ' Ibid., p. 139. 



