323 



alters this to "habitat in Brasilia, perhaps misled by the 

 synonym Chrysanthemum latifolium Brasilianum of C. Bauhin, 

 Prod. p. 70 (1620). Banhin's description is in itself unrecog- 

 nisable, and no wonder, for he says "Haec in ramo exsiccato, 

 quern Chrysanthemi Rrasiliani nomine, ex horto aobiliss. 

 Contarini habenms, notare potui " ; but when he wrote his Pinax 

 in 1623 (p. 277) he had discovered that his Chrysanthemum 

 latifolium Brasilianum was identical with Colonna's Flos Soils 

 Famesianus, sive Aster peruvianas tuberosus, and that it was 

 known to some (quibusdnm) as Chrysanthemum e Canada, to 

 others as Canada Artischoki sub terra. lie places it with the 

 other sunflowers, which he associates with Selenium vulgare 

 (Elecampane), and calls it, by an obvious slip of the pen or 

 misprint, Helianihemum Indicum tuberosum, which looks as if 

 " Indicnm " were a compromise between Brasilianum and 

 Peruvianum.* 



Unquestionably the earliest account of //. tuberosus by a 

 botanical author is that of Fabio Colonna (Columna). He does 

 not allude to it in his Phytobasanos of 1592, or in the first edition 

 (1606) of his Ecphrasis, which only contains the first portion of 

 that work; but in the second edition of 1616, where the second 



part dedicated to Cardinal Edoardo Farnese appeared for the first 

 time, we find at p. 11 a description of Flos soils Farnesianus, sive 

 Aster Peruana* tuberosus, which is figured on p. 13. We must 

 be careful to observe that this name does not prove that the 

 author supposed the plant to come from Peru. The sunflower, 



IleJlanthus annuus,, was already known as Chrysanthemum 



Peruiiianum, Dod., Flor. Hist. p. 294 (1568) or Soils Flos 

 Perunuinus Lobel, Stirp. Obs., p. 322 (1576), so that Aster 

 Pen/anus tuberosus might, after the fashion of speech of these 

 old authors, mean simply " the tuberous sunflower," without any 

 connotation of a Peruvian origin. In the text itself Colonna 

 makes no statement of any kind as to the habitat of the plant, 

 which he had seen at "Rome in the splendid garden of Cardinal 

 Farnese, of whom he says, " hiimaiiissimus ille Princeps con- 

 quisitas undique, & ab ipsis etiani Indijs advectas. clariores 



[horto | 



To say 



that the Cardinal collected the finest plants from all parts, even 

 the Indies, does not mean that the species the author is about to 



describe came from the West Indies. Nevertheless that he did 

 believe it to come from the " Indies "t appears from his much 

 later remark in his note at p. 8T8 of the Roman edition (1648) 



of Hernandez, Rerum mediearum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus: 

 " nam et Peruanum Solis florem ex Indiis tuberosxim habuimus, 



de quo . . . verba fecimus et iconem proposuimus/' His 

 figure is remarkable, for it shows a much more iloriferous plant 

 than we a?© accustomed to see. This may be owing: to its having 



* That Helianth emum is a mere slip for Hehnium is confirmed by rhe 

 Tndex where no Helianthemum is quoted for p. 277 or any page near that. 

 His other Helianthemn are not Compositae, but Cistaceae; in fact, Helw.i- 

 thema in the modern sense. 



T In the lansniaffe of t 

 northern United States. 



A 2 



