THe ANCIENT TYPE 21 
seems, excluding A. Trifolium L., to have been the only repre- 
sentative of its race known definitely to Greece and Rome. Sib- 
thorp found it still growing near Athens. Why it was called 
Aster is plainly stated by Dioscorides, who remarks upon its 
_ “floral leaflets similar to a star,” * and by Pliny, who describes it 
as bearing ‘‘ capitula stellae modo radiata.” 
IDENTIFICATION OF DioscorIDEs’ ASTER WITH ASTER AMELLUS 
L.—With the revival of learning the earlier world of the 16th 
century was busy endeavoring to translate the plants of the an- 
cients into terms of the plants then growing by the Rhine or scat- 
tered through Italy, or elsewhere through Germany. There were 
many widely different attempts made to identify Aster Atticus of 
Dioscorides. Some thought the comparison to a star was due to 
the shape of each leaf, with star-like lobes, and Hermolaus,+ there- 
fore, identified the Greek aster with Alchemilla, the lady’s mantle, 
which plant had been called in the middle ages Ste//a and Stel- 
/aria from the radiate lobes of its roundish leaves. / 
Others imagined that the divergence of leaves from a stem was 
the star-like radiation sought, and, therefore, identified the Greek 
aster with an Asperu/a with narrow whorled leaves, the Asperula or 
Aspergula odorata of Dodonaeus and others, resembling the Ameri- 
can species of Galium in leaf form, and called Ste/laria by many 
(Brunfels and Fuchs, 1531) or Heréa stellaris (Dodonaeus) or 
Hepatica stellata (Tabernaemontanus), all names derived from the 
many star-like whorls of leaves. 
Several other plants were called S¢e//aria also in the middle 
ages, and were, therefore, seized upon by different persons as the 
living prototypes of the aster of the Greeks ; including Plantago 
Coronopus ; Catlcitrapa, the star thistle, with star-like thorns 
about its involucre; Awéza and relatives of the madder, with nar- 
row stem-leaves; as well as the A/chemilla, figured by Matthioli 
under the name S7e//aria and rejected as not the true Aster Atticus. 
Others were content with a four-leaved star as their prototype. 
So Bock, followed by Theophilus Gotius, identified Aster Atticus 
of Dioscorides with Paris guadrifolia, “ herb paris,” its single whorl 
of leaves forming a four-parted star. 
* Diosc. book IV., c. 118, gvAAdpia aorépt bo1a,—** petals just like a star,’’ as I 
have bec a florist, a aati rm Greek from Athens, render it. 
+ Hermolaus Barbarus, lib. 17; and lib. 4, corollary 734. 
