242 I,EAFI.BTS. 



quet's phrase the plant is not so certainly of American deriva- 

 tion. Indicum might indicate either the West or the East 

 Indies ; but, within ten years from the time of the publication 

 of Joncquet's book, it appears to have been ascertained that 

 the plant, whatever it was, had come from America ; and 

 what is more important, it had been seen in the Paris garden, 

 and studied and very well written up by an Italian botanist of 

 high distinction, by name Paulo Boccone, to whom, by the 

 way, seems to belong the credit of having first figured plants 

 from dried specimens affixed to herbarium sheets. Boccone, 

 in his book, Icones et Descriptiones Rariorum Plantarum 

 (1674), published nine years later than Joncquet's folio, re- 

 ports having seen the plant growing copiously in the Paris 

 Royal Garden, and gives a rather full and enlightening account 

 of it, besides the figure of a twig of it, which twig it is likely 

 he took for that purpose while in Paris. The name which he 

 assigns it is quite altered from that by Joncquet. It is now 

 Apocynum Canadense foliis Androsaemi majoris. It appears 

 to have been ascertained that Joncquet's term Indicum was 

 false, and Cawaaiiswi'if takes its place in the name. The descrip- 

 tion by which Boccone follows up his amended and corrected 

 name for the type is too long to be given here both in the 

 Latin original and in translation, and I shall present his little 

 chapter only in what would be the equivalent English wording 

 of it: "This plant, as remarkable for rarity as elegance, 

 stands up like a little tree. The stem to the height of a foot 

 or more is without joint or leaf, and reddish, above this being 

 divided into a multitude of branches. Leaves in pairs, rounded 

 and closely resembling those of the greater androsaemum, 

 attached by petioles, adorn the whole head. From the very 

 extremities of these stems there proceed in a branched arrange- 

 ment little flowers, pinkish tinged with purple, cup-shaped 

 like those of the lily of the valley, or the strawberry-tree ; to 

 which there succeed pods narrower than those of asclepias, 

 having within a white wool, and flat seeds of a reddish-brown 

 color. The roots, spreading far and wide under the ground, 

 are extremely tenacious of life and often send up their shoots 



