LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY —GREENE 5 1 



rhizotomi to make their peculiar impress upon the character of 

 descriptive botany, an impress that should last for well nigh 

 two thousand years i 



The occupation of the root gatherers is by no means peculiar 

 to Greek antiquity. In every part of the world it may be as old 

 as, or older than, the beginnings of civilization. Nor is it probable 

 that in Europe there was any interruption or cessation of the occupa- 

 tion during the two thousand years intervening between the time 

 of Homer and Hesiod and that of the Renaissance. The botanical 

 writers of the sixteenth century, particularly those of middle 

 Europe, refer to the practices, and even to the opinions, of such 

 as ransack the woods to gather roots and herbs, sell them to the 

 druggists and to the peasantry whom they serve in the capacity of 

 physicians, and from whom the educated and philosophic students 

 of plants themselves sometimes gain valuable information. Nor 

 would it be safe to say that the rhizotomi are even now everywhere 

 obsolete. Their traces are very plainly legible in the popular 

 nomenclature of North American plants. Every common name 

 into which root enters as a component is one that had its origin 

 with the "herb doctor," or "root doctor," as he was called; per- 

 haps not a few of the names were borrowed, along with some infor- 

 mation about the plant's virtues, from the aborigines. ^ 



1 It was Valerius Cordus, the greatest if not the only botanical genius of 

 the first half of the sixteenth century, who first gave expression to the opinion 

 that, from the morphologic and phytographic point of view, the importance 

 of the root had always been overestimated. He set the example for a reform 

 of descriptive botany in this particular; but, as usual with men of genius, he 

 was a century in advance of the ideas of the multitude. 



2 The following are illustrative examples: Alum-root, Blood-root, 

 Bowman's-root, Culver's-root, Cancer-root, Canker-root, Black Snakeroot, 

 Button Snakeroot, Seneca Snakeroot, Indian-root, Musquash-root, Colic- 

 root, Pappoose-root, Pepper-root, Pink-root, Red-root, Yellow-root, Sheep- 

 root. It were easy to double the number of such names of American plants, 

 not one of which was assigned either by a learned physician or a professional 

 botanist. 



