LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 211 



Despite what we of later times perceive to be the naturalness of 

 the cruciferous group, its recognition had to await the development 

 of am hology ; and I have met with no evidence that up to the time 

 when the career of Fuchsius was ended there had yet lived a botanist 

 who had known the floral structure of a crucifer. Even the 

 Theophrastan elements of anthology seem to have been sunken in 

 oblivion ages before the birth of Sprengel's and Meyer's and Sachs' 

 " German Fathers of Botany," one or two of whom were to renew the 

 investigation of floral structures; though Fuchsius was hardly one 

 of these. 



The contemplation of these quaint" herbalistic genera based on 

 vegetative characters and ignoring flowers and fruits is both en- 

 tertaining and instructive. It is as if one had discovered in these 

 antiquated tomes a fossilized and now extinct system of plant 

 classifying ; and the reader will not fail to be interested in glancing 

 at the outlines of other such genera. Fuchsius has one little genus 

 for which he brings forward into print, from out an unpublished 

 manuscript, the name Pilosella. Here is the composition of the 

 genus : ' 



Fuchsian Recent 



Pilosella major Hieracium Pilosella. 



Pilosella minor Antennaria dioica. 



He has tried to make one of the plants answer to the Myosotis of 

 Dioscorides. It does not well agree, and he is confident that neither 

 of the two was known to the ancients. Both are well known in 

 Germany, and of repute as vulneraries, on which account he must 

 not omit them. The German herbalists of his time know one of 

 them by the name Pilosella. That will suffice for a formally 

 generic name, and with it he has already headed his Chap, ccxxx. 

 "Two kinds of it are found, differing in nothing but the flowers. 

 One of them has leaves that are larger, and do not lie flat upon the 

 ground. Its flowers are yellow, and it is named Pilosella major. 

 The other has smaller leaves that lie flat upon the ground, and 

 purple flowers which disappear with a pappus. The Germans have 

 for this the names Little Mousear and Rabbitsfoot. In a manuscript 

 herbal I find these plants disposed of as Pilosella major and minor." 

 I thus present a literal version of what our author had to' relate 

 respecting the components of this his genus Pilosella, even to the 

 interesting admission that the whole chapter had been borrowed 



> Hist. Stirp., pp. 604-607. 



