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CLusIAN ASTER 17 
American species were among these; as those of Hermann, his 
Aster Novi Belgii and A. puniceus in 1687, his A. dumosus and 
A. undulatus in 1698 ; besides that first of American species, A. 
cordifolius, published in 1635 by Cornut as Asteriscus latifolius 
autumnatlis (Canadensium plantarum . .. historia, 65). 
With 1700, supposed discoveries of asters had also begun in 
other continents, though the true range of the genus had not yet 
been effectually extended : Plukenet’s “ Aster Jndicus” of 1696 being 
later separated as Asteromoeca; and Ammann’s Mexican “ Aster 
aurantius’’ of 1664-8 as Clomenocoma ; while the first African 
plant to be described as an Aster, the “ Aster fruticosus”’ of Com- 
melyn, 1701, was at length referred to DeCandolle’s Diplopappus. 
This Clusian period had been an agglutinative one, with 
keener perception of resemblances than of differences. But it was 
already observed that many incongruous plants had been included ; 
the genus had become a great repository of species afterward 
referred to Conyza, Inula, Pulicaria, etc. Jean Bauhin and fol- 
lowers had already in 1650 cut off 27 or more species which had 
been by some referred to Aster ; but they had been severed as by 
an uncertain stroke, and the authors concluded presently that 
some ten species described as Conyza might equally well have 
been in As¢éer. 
Linnean Aster—A new era, that of the modern genus Aster, 
begins with Sebastian Vaillant, in 1720, in his communications to 
the French Institute.* Vaillant, cutting off the yellow-rayed 
species included in Aster by Tournefort and by the Bauhins, 
retained some 47 species, and remarked that “ Asver is distin- 
guished from Solidago by not having yellow rays,” so disposing 
at a word of a troublesome boundary-line which has perplexed not 
a few botanists before + and since. 
Vaillant thus restricted the genus Aster to substantially the 
limits it has since borne. The genus was now for the first time 
established on such lines that the botanist working backward from 
* « Suite des Corymbiferes, ou de la Seconde Classe des Plantes 4 Fleurs com- 
posées, par M. Vaillant’’; in ‘‘ Histoire de l’Academie Royale des Sciences (Paris) 
avec les Mémoires ... de Phyigiie ’? for year 1720, 277-340. Paris 1722. 
¢ So John Ray, Historia plantarum, 1 : 265. 1686, writes, ‘‘ Dificit admodum 
est notam aliquam assignare qua differat ab Astere Virga Aurea dicta 
