20 ASTER HIsTory 
HISTORY OF PRE-CLUSIAN BOTANY IN ITS RELA- 
TIONS TO ASTER 
I. THe Ancient Type 
The type-species of this wide-spread genus, Aster Amellus L.., has 
the historic right to be so considered, not only from its being identi- 
fied as the Aster of Dioscorides and as the earliest mentioned 
(excluding A. Tripolium* L., which many authors would separate 
from Aster) but also because of continuous citation as the aster 
for more than 1500 years following, before other species received 
descriptions. In later times, Tournefort,+ evidently regarding it as 
type-species, and following the practice of describing the type- 
species of a genus first, placed it at the head of his numerous 
enumerations of asters. Linnaeus half a century later gave it 
a central position, following a practice of surrounding the de- 
scription of his type-species with allied species grouped before it 
as well as after, so that we find his type description imbedded 
among its congeners, 
Linnaeus by his citations { indicated the identity of his Aster 
Amellus of 1753 with the ‘Aster Atticus, caeruleus, vulgaris” 0 
his Hortus Cliffort, 1737, and of Tournefort, 1700, and of Cas- 
par Bauhin’s Pinax, 1623. 
Bauhin (Pinax, 257) identifies this “ Aster atticus coeruleus vul- 
garis’’ with the figured “ Aster atticus, purpureus” of Fuchs, 1549, 
and with the Aster Afrticus of Dioscorides and the Amellus of 
Vergil, as understood by Matthioli, 
This historic type Aster Amellus, is a handsome, violet-rayed 
species, with heads resembling somewhat in size and habit the 
familiar A. spectabilis of our Atlantic seaboard. 
tributed through southern and central Europe an 
basa 
It is widely dis- 
d into Asia, and 
* The Greeks did not consider this plant to be an aster ; they gave it the name of 
tripolion, tpré2uov ; it has a long history, running back to Theophrastus ; though not 
to Hesiod which some have claimed, confusing it with the uncertain Greek mréAwv, OF 
** herb poly.’’ 
} Institutiones, 1 : 481, 1700-3. 
{Species plantarum, 175 3: 
