200 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



growth proceeds; they are the axils of modern terminology. It 

 is also here that I meet with scape as a botanic term; and the 

 application is just that now in use, designating an elongated 

 peduncle arising from under the ground; though neither Fuchsius 

 nor his contemporaries so understood it. They regarded it as a 

 true stem without nodes. But Fuchsius' " scapus " was not at once 

 adopted ; until long after his time it was usually denominated a 

 stylus. 



Two of the several modes of leaf arrangement are named and 

 defined in this vocabulary, the decussate and the verticillate ; but 

 there is yet no one word in use by which to distinguish leaves as 

 opposite. A phrase is required to express that. Any leaf margin 

 that is evenly indented is described as crenate, or as serrate, quite 

 indiscriminately, the terms being treated as synonymous; but if 

 serratures be quite deep and close, as in the nettles, the leaf is 

 fimbriate. Pediculus and petiolus, i.e., peduncle and petiole, are 

 employed as indiscriminately, either one applying to leaf-stalk or to 

 flower-stalk. The word stipula also makes its appearance in 

 Fuchsius' vocabulary, but with nothing like its meaning in more 

 recent botany. His definition proves it to have been in his mind 

 merely a special name for the peculiar leaf -of grass-like plants, not 

 a part of such leaf, but the whole of it.' It is a definite proposal 

 that, since the stems of grains and grasses have the special name of 

 culm, the leaves of the same class of plants ought not to be called 

 leaves, but should have their own special designation — ^should be 

 called stipules ; and this is perfectly logical and consistent ; for the 

 leaves that grow on culms are quite as unlike all other leaves as 

 culms are unlike other sorts of stems. It will be recalled that 

 Theophrastus had named this entire group the Calamophylli in 

 allusion to the remarkable characteristics of the foliage. But Fuch- 

 sius does not seem to have met with success in this endeavor to 

 have grain leaves and grass leaves become known by the name 

 of stipules; and, more than two centuries later, Linnaeus picked up 

 the old term stipula and applied it anew, and with perfect success. 



Fuchsius tried also to invest the compound leaf with a name of 

 its own, as a thing too different from the simple leaf. The dis- 

 tinction itself, as we know, was perfectly and for all time made by 

 Theophrastus, who discovered things and left them nameless. The 

 German father would have the compound leaf called a frons, i.e., 

 frond, thus restricting the other Latin word folium to the simple leaf 

 and the individual leaflet of the compound. But this also fell short 



' " Stipulse sunt folia culmum ambientia. " Fuchs. 



