80 Aster HIsTory 
WEGENKRAUT, Ger., roadside flower ; “ is not Megenkraut [old 
name, as printed, for Aster] meant for Wegenkraut ?”’ Bavaria. 
YNGUINIALIS, form of Inguinalis (q. v.) in Ortus. 
PLANT-NAMES DERIVED FROM ASTER 
ASTERCUM, see Astericum. 
ASTERIACE, dotepeax7, Celsus, 5, 14: may be the name of a 
plant, Meyer; is name of a simple medicine, Harper's Lat. Dict. : 
is perhaps the same as Aster in the sense of collyrion or compound 
medicine, editors of Celsus. The circumstances seem to indicate 
that the last interpretation is correct ; see infra, pp. 85, 88~-92. 
ASTERIAS, dorepiaz, does not appear in Greek as a plant name, 
but as an animal name, Aristotle’s History of Animals so nam- 
ing a kind of weasel, yaded-, 5, 10, 1, and two birds, a xoxoz, 9, 36, 
I, and an ¢pwdzoc, 9, 14, 23. 
In modern Greek it stands as name of the starfish, as in 
Linnean zodlogy. 
In Renaissance botany it appeared as a plant-name as the ~ 
“ Asterias sive Stellaria Dalechampii,”’ perhaps meant for a Rubia; 
at leat J. Bauhin so used it, 16 50. a 
ASTERICUM, dozepexdv, or astercum, “the star-like plant”; 
name applied to the pellitory, Parietaria officinalis L., which was 
in pure Latin called urceolaris, FHlarper’'s Lat. Dict. as in Pliny, 22, 
¢ 17, beginning “ Perdicium sive Parthenium * (nam sideritis alia est) 
a nostris herba urceolaris vocat, ab aliis astericum, folio similis: 
ocimo, nigrior tantum, nascens in tegulis parietinisque.” Pliny — 
then details its medicinal use and its potency for suppurated ab- 
cesses (like Aster?) and adds the story of the slave held in high 
esteem by Pericles, falling from the roof of the temple on the Ac- 
ropolis where he was at work, who was made whole again “ by 
this plant, the virtues of which had been disclosed to Pericles by 
Minerva in a dream ; the slave of whom the famous bronze statue — 
called Splanchnoptes exists.” Plutarch makes two separate stories 
of this, bringing Minerva to Sylla to point out where the Parthe- 
oe or Virgin’s-plant grew. It still grows on the Acropolis and 
in chinks close to the Parthenon: as on walls everywhere else in 
* 
theniu 
oe ag Parthenium usually so termed as of D. and of Celsus, Matricaria P are 
mL, fi 
