LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY— GREENE 79 



We have improved the descriptive phraseology, and are able to 

 say the same things in fewer words; but that is about the only 

 difference. Some general differences in the configuration of leaves 

 are also adduced. There are those of rounded periphery, or even 

 somewhat elongated, all without angles, and there are the 

 angular in outline, some of them like those of the fig deeply cleft, 

 others like those of the oak sinuated all around, still others 

 with saw-like teeth all around; and some are sharply pointed 

 at the apex.,"the slender leaves of pine and others even ending in a 

 prickle. In certain thistles he ndtes that spines take the 

 place of foliage. He is convinced that certain leaf-like organs in 

 a number of asparagus allies are not leaves, yet he gives them no 

 name; nor had they obtained a name — that of cladodes — even 

 as late as the time of Linnaeus, who, as if he had been of a pre- 

 Theophrastan age, still called them leaves. The hollow and fistu- 

 lous foliage of the onion and some of its kindred elicited remark 

 from Theophrastus as being very exceptionally curious. So did 

 that of the sedges, as being conduplicate and keeled. The essen- 

 tial characteristics of the leaf that is pinnately compound he also 

 seems first to have detected; for he is at the trouble to argue the 

 case before those who, as he seems to acknowledge that he himself 

 also once did, regard this as a leafy branch. He has observed the j ^ 

 autumnal falling of the foliage in the ash tree, elder, and sorbus, | ^ 

 and reports that the whole of that which seems a branch falls away \ 

 piece by piece, thus establishing it beyond dispute that the whole \ 

 is one leaf. He even speaks of it, afterwards, as the pinnate leaf.^ 

 And, as there are kinds of tree in which leafy branches, by being 

 somewhat lengthened and having their leaves set closely in two 

 opposite ranks, resemble the compound leaf, Theophrastus in one 

 place that I have noted cautions the student against being deceived. 

 The case is that of the elm, the pinnately leafy twigs of which 

 might be mistaken by the unwary foi compound leaves. ^ The 

 observer is warned that the elm has but a simple leaf, (pvWov 

 daxiSk.'^ The leaves of the rose bush I do not find described in 

 Theophrastus. These shrubs were so universally familiar that 

 description of their foliage was needless; but that he recognized 

 this as a pinnate foliage is evident by one comparison that he 

 makes. "Wishing to convey some notion of the leaves of an inter- 

 esting tree of the Orient {Tamarindus Indica, Linn.), he says it is 

 "many-leaved, after the manner of the rose bush,"' meaning that 



> Hist., Book iii, chs. 11, 12, 13, and 16. 



2 Ibid., ch. 14. ' Ibid., Book iv, ch. 9. 



