22 Botanists of Germany and the Netherlands [Book i. 



the last edition of the ' Pemptades ' of Dodoens * of the year 

 1616, a folio volume of 872 pages, only one page and a third 

 are devoted to the explanation of the parts of plants ; but the 

 selection of the words explained and the substance of the 

 explanations hit the essential points better than in Fuchs. 

 We find for instance: Root ('radix, pi(a') is the name 

 given in the tree and in every other plant to the lower part, 

 by which it penetrates into the earth and cleaves to it, and 

 by which it draws its nourishment. This part, unlike the 

 leaves which are usually deciduous, is common to all plants, 

 a few only excepted which live and grow without roots, such 

 as Cassytha, Viscum, and the plant called l Hyphear,' Fungi, 

 Mosses, and Fuci, all which are however usually reckoned 

 among <pvra. ' Caudex ' is in trees and shrubs that which springs 

 from the root and rises above the ground, and by which the 

 nourishment is carded upwards : the same part is called in 

 herbs caulis or cauliculus. Leaf (' folium ') is in every plant 

 that which clothes and adorns it, and without which trees and 

 other plants appear naked. The definition of a flower would 

 lose in a translation : ' flos, avdos, arborem et herbarum gaudium 

 dicitur, futurique fructus spes est ; unaquaeque etenim stirps pro 

 natura sua post florem partus ac fructus gignit.' The parts of the 

 flower are with him the calyx ('calyx'), in which the blossom is 

 at first enclosed and with which the ' foetus ' is soon surrounded, 

 stamens (' stamina ') which arise like threads from the depth of 

 the blossom and from the calyx, and ' apices ' (anthers), certain 

 thickish appendages on the summit of the stamens. ' Julus ' 

 (catkin) is that which hangs down round and long in place of 

 the flower, as in the walnut, hazel, mulberry, beech, and other 



1 Rembert Dodoens (Dodonaeus), born at Malines in 151 7, was a physi- 

 cian, and a man of varied culture ; he published a number of botanical works, 

 some of them in Flemish, after 1552, and finally in 1583 his ' Stirpium His- 

 toriae Pemptades vi ' (Antwerp). From 1574 to 1579 he was physician to 

 the Emperor Maximilian II. In 1582 he became Professor in Leyden and 

 died in 1585. See Ernst Meyer, • Geschichte der Botanik,' iv. p. 340. 



