146 Aster History; D1oscoRiIDES 
name in Crete for the épeftvboc of D, Cicer arietinum ; avery dis- 
similar plant. Ifa first syllable had been lost from such a pada, 
it might be compared, 3d, with the present name in Zante for the 
composite plant Zacintha verrucosa, zapa,3td0-yoprtoy, “ tigerbeetle’s 
grass,” or ‘‘ blisterbeetle weed.” 
But these suggestions do not explain the name as it stands. _ In 
the existing form /abs%da has the aspect of a compound name 
formed of fd, or, what may be the same, a root jar—meaning a 
plant, a weed ; with addition of an adjective ending. In fact, it 
has the form to suggest an origin, 4th, as pa O7fatdoc, “ Rha of 
the Thebaid,” Zheban plant, formed like 6a zovtexdv, Rhaponticum, 
D, 3, 2, the Rha of Pontus; or like pa fdpapov,* Rhabarbarum, 
the same plant, from which form its present name Rhubarb comes. 
Perhaps pai3:da preserves in its first syllable that otherwise un- 
known but cognate root +} raf—which forms the Old High Ger- 
man rato and the Old Low German rado, a weed, source of the 
present German raden, cockleweed. 
Finally, and most probably, the root of @7/06¢, admirable, re- 
markable, the supposed source of the name of Boeotian Thebes, 
may give a suitable meaning joined with fa or bar—and equivalent 
to ‘‘remarkable plant.”’ 
parison with Other Dacian Plant-names.—The Dioscoridean 
synonyms include as many as 31 Dacian names. A few are very 
much like the corresponding Greek names ; as Dacian 7c, Greek 
Bayrov, Lat. Blitum, Eng. d/ite. For Salvia Horminum L., Diosco- 
rides’ Greek name is dopzvov, the Dacian dopa. For bugloss, Dios- 
corides has Greek fo'yAwaaov, and has fovddiia asthe Dacian, as if 
the Dacian for or was identical with the Greek ; as indeed would be 
theoretically probable. For the elder, Sambucus nigra L., held in 
such reverence among the Greeks even to-day (and formerly by 
many other European races) the Greek ¢ sapfovyorc of to-day is a 
* If the Greek ja, which appears only in this plant name, had any connection with 
the root of L. Radix, a root, Gr. pase a branch, the ancients did not themselves feel 
it so ; at least the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, about 400 A. D., expressly deca 
that it is from the River Rha, the Volga. Rha, as the name of that river, seems a Finnie 
name, the Finnish tribes, Mordvins, etc., now on its banks, still calling it AAaw. 
+ Kluge’s Etymological Dict. of Ger., Davis’ tr; I. 
The more usual and colloquial Greek for this elder is Cexopovia, Attica; Theo- 
phrastus and Dioscorides call it axr}, Pliny actaea. 
