LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 



277 



arisen from incautiously concluding the identity of a given plant 

 from the figure which Gesner by mistake associated with the descrip- 

 tion, rather than from the description itself. 



This is not the place for indicating severally the errors made, 

 as editor, by Gesner; but it may be well just here to call attention 

 to the serious mistake made by Tournefort when, justly lauding 

 Cordus' merit as a phytographer, he said also that he ' ' did not disdain 

 to make use of plates, "i He had not read Gesner' s letter prefatory 

 to the History, with its apology for the introdution of the plates; 

 and many another since— even Linnaeus among them— has been 

 ■chargeable with the same oversight, to his own humiliation. 



I suppose Valerius Cordus is the first in all history to have formu- ' 

 lated for himself a definite plan or model of botanical description. 

 There is a plan which he follows with such uniformity as to leave not 

 the least room for questioning that he had studied it out for him- 

 self ; and he presents it by example only, without formal announce- 

 ment, without explanation, defense or apology, and on its obvious 

 merits. In this plan of his we have the first foundation, and the 

 actual beginning of modem phytography; therefore we must 

 analyze it carefully. 



1 . There must be a plant before him, a living one ; for, while in his 

 ■day herbarium specimens, especially of uncommon plants, were in the 

 possession of some botanists and pharmacists for purposes of identi- 

 fication, Cordus would not have had the temerity to offer the diag- 

 nosis of a dead fragment, or even of a more complete dead specimen, 

 for a plant description. That innovation on phytography was not 

 attempted until two centuries later. 



2. The subject must be mature, or at least in flower; the fruit 

 to be waited for if it must be, and described later; for Cordus 

 •describes flowers, fruits, and seeds invariably if at all available. 



3. He begins with those parts of the plant that are most obvious 

 as it stands living before him. If the foliage is most conspicuous, 

 and the stem insignificant, as in a dandelion or a sundew, he begins 

 with the foliage, proceeding thence to the stem; otherwise the stem 

 is first described, then the foliage. 



4. The flower is takgn up next in order, the actual diagnosis of i 

 it being proceded by a mention of the time of year when the flower- 

 ing occurs. As to the floral organs, while neither calyx nor corolla 

 has its name as a separate part, he manages to describe both, and 

 always very accurately. 



' Tournef., Inst. Ret Herb., vol. i, p. 26. 



