LANDMARKS OP BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 299 



A genus Ranunculus of such composition as that perfectly 

 illustrates taxonomy in its stage of transition from where, as at 

 the first, it was almost wholly dependent on vegetative characters, 

 to where it relies almost as entirely upon those of flower alone ; and 

 this at a time when as yet the calyx has received but little attention 

 and has not been admitted to the category of floral organs; and the 

 wholly petaloid sepals of Anemone, Sylvia, and Pulsatilla form as 

 good a "flower," -i.e., corolla, as do the flower leaves of a rose or 

 pffionia. It is also a stage at which the fruit is not yet( accorded 

 the taxonomic weight that was alloyved it fifty or sixty years after 

 Cordus by Cesalpino. In the eyes of a twentieth-century botanist 

 the above is a curious medley to be called a genus Ranunculus ; 

 and what is more, no one anterior to Cordus had done as badly as 

 that. The remotest Greeks seem to have admitted to Ranunculus 

 no species not thereto referred by most botanists of the nineteenth 

 century. Here there are added to the genus, and admirably indeed, 

 a considerable list of true buttercups unknown to antiquity; but 

 over and above these a trio of representatives of anemoneous genera 

 that differ much among themselves. This kind of a genus Ranuncu- 

 lus, for that period, explains itself readily. It is plain that Cordus 

 has yielded for once to enthusiasm for the newly rising anthology; 

 that he has attempted the abandonment of the old reliance on 

 vegetative characters, and is putting things together more with 

 reference to the structure of the flower. Throughout this series there 

 is always a five-leaved or six-leaved "flower, " a circle of indefinitely 

 numerous stamens within that, and in the middle a compact head of 

 many "seeds." ' If the time had then arrived for the formal state- 

 ment of the generic characters of such a group, we know that it 

 would have been on this wise that Cordus' Ranunculus would have 

 been characterized by him; to which morphologic diagnosis it 

 would have been appended that certain acrid properties prevade the 

 entire line of species. When I say that we know he would have 

 done this, I have before me this proof, that the clear mention of 

 just such common characteristics forms a part of the description 

 of each leading species. One may take Cordus' separate diagnoses 

 of any one line of related species and cull from them to a certainty 

 that which to his view is the generic character. Not that this is 

 peculiarly true of Cordus ; for with equal certainty does one gather 

 out of Brunfels' and Tragus' groups of square-stemmed opposite- 

 leaved axillary-flowered aromatic herbs — or those otherwise vege- 

 tatively marked — the characters of their more crudely conceived 

 genera. What distinguishes Cordus is — we must once more insist — 



