288 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



being like that of a lupine, and the lupine flower in turn being com- 

 pared to that of a pea. And his appears to have been the botanical 

 eye that was first to perceive in the flowers of the whole long line 

 of beans, peas, and lupines, and of broom andcytisus, and laburnum 

 tree, only more or less marked deviations from — mere modifications 

 of — that pea-blossom type which Gesner had compared to the 

 insect called a butterfly ; and by and by the adjective term papilion- 

 aceous was coined by him. Such readers as may not have access 

 to Cordus' works may be interested in following the gradual genesis 

 of that useful adjective in the young master's mind; and this can 

 be shown by citing his expressions in precisely the order in which 

 they occur in the succession of his pages. I therefore give these 

 in the footnote.^ 



Of equal service to all botany was his invention of a term that 

 should at once indicate and describe the corolla of the Labiatas. His 

 term is "flos hians, " the gaping flower, or corolla as we now say. 

 Nor does it require but a moment's reflection to become convinced 

 that the expression gaping, or yawning corolla is more perfectly 

 and exactly descriptive of the most common and typical corollas of 

 labiates than is the term bilabiate ; for certainly that which one sees 

 clearly in the form of such is, not a pair of lips, but a wide-open 

 yawning mouth, exposing even the throat itself. Terminology 

 certainly lost something of the accurately definitive when later 

 authority displaced Valerius Cordus' "yawning" flower and substi- 

 tuted the less fitly chosen bilabiate. 



It was yet far from the time when any taxonomic use would be 

 made of the different ways in which members of floral circles are 

 enfolded in the bud. Cordus was first to observe some such dif- 

 ferences, and to name them in his plant descriptions. In describing 

 Iris he notes that the parts of the flower are convolute in the bud.^ 



' " Flo res parvi, * * * papilionum figura." {Hist. Plant., 99'). 



"Floras * * figura papilionibus similes." (Ibid., p. 100). 



"Floras * * * papilionum figura." {Ibid., p. loi). 



" Flores papilionibus similes." {Ibid., p. 127*). 



"Floras * * ♦ * figura papilionum." {Ibid., p. 1.37). 



"Pediculus * * parvis oblongis papilionaceis floiibus circumdatus. {Ibid., 

 p. 164'). 



" Flores forma papilionacei at oblongi. " {Ibid., p. i66»). 



" Flores * * producit * * papilionaceos, qualas in omnibus leguminibus 

 est videre(!)." {Ibid., p. 187'). 



The reader must not fail to note that, when once the term papilionacea 

 has presented itself to Cordus* mind he thenceforward employs it constantly. 



*Hist. PL, p. 133. 



