CHAPTER IIl (Part 9)

can see growing in large numbers close by the root, and from that point they spread along the stalk, at almost every leaf. ‘They are rough and tubercled and v] Gaspard Bauhin separate into three reflexed points. In their cavity, one grain of the shape of an Adonzs seed is contained; it is slightly rounded and ends in a point, and is covered with 2 Plantagoquinguencruis rofea. Rofe Ribwoorte. @ey™ Bega cee OTL LTR OP) rh Usted AY) = FREI —— KR Lt N See eS BAS See = tn aR Sui a Text-fig. 61. “Rose Ribwoorte”=an abnormal Plantain [Gerard, The Herball, 1597]. a double layer of reddish membrane, the inner one enclosing a white, farinaceous core.” 1e2 Plant Description [cH. Any great advance on Bauhin’s descriptions could hardly be expected during the period which we are discussing, since it closed before the nature of the essential parts of the flower was really understood. It was not until 1682 that the fact that the stamens are male organs was pointed out in print by Nehemiah Grew, though he himself attributed Bera Cretica femine aculeato. Text-fig. 62. “Beta Cretica semine aculeato” [Bauhin, Prodromos, 1620]. this discovery to Sir Thomas Millington, a botanist other- wise unknown. Gerard’s account of the stamens and stigma of the Potato as a “ pointell, yellow as golde, with a small v] 7 erminology 133 sharpe greene pricke or point in the middest thereof,” vague as it seems to the twentieth-century botanist, is by no means to be despised, when we remember that the writer was handicapped by complete ignorance of the function of the structures which he saw before him. A further hindrance to improvement in plant description was the lack of a methodical terminology. As we have al- ready shown, both Fuchs and Dodoens attempted glossaries of botanical terms, but these do not seem to have become an integral part of the science. It is a common complaint among non-botanists at the present day, that the subject has become incomprehensible to the layman, owing to the excessive use of technical words. There is, no doubt, some truth in this statement, but, on the other hand, a study of the writings of the earlier botanists makes it clear that a description of a plant couched in ordinary language—in which the botanical meaning of the terms employed has been subjected to no rigid definition—often breaks down completely on all critical points. It is to Joachim Jung and to Linnzus that we owe the foundations of the accurate terminology, now at the disposal of the botanist when he sets out to describe a new plant. The published work of these two writers belongs, however, to the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is thus outside the scope of the present volume. Cla beV eM lng Wil ere scbay Gis ell IN ee Pig NET CLASSIFICATION Seix—q N the earliest European works on Yq natural history—those of the Aristo- “—, telian school—we meet with an attempt ~ Ny, to classify the different varieties of Sat plants. It was inevitable that the O@ writers of this school should make such fs an attempt, since no mind trained in “ Greek philosophy could be content to leave a science in the condition of a mere chaos of isolated descriptions. At first the most obvious distinction, that of size, was used as the chief criterion whereby to separate the different groups of the vegetable kingdom. In the ‘History of Plants’ of Theophrastus, we find Trees, Shrubs, Bushes and Herbs treated as definite classes, within which, cultivated and wild plants are distinguished. Other dis- tinctions of lower value are made between evergreen and deciduous, fruiting and fruitless, and flowering and flowerless plants. Albertus Magnus, who kept alive in the Middle Ages the spirit of Aristotelian botany, was more advanced than Theophrastus in his method of classification. It is true that he divides the vegetable world into Trees, Shrubs, Undershrubs, Bushes, Herbs and Fungi, but at the same time he points out that this is an arbitrary scheme, since these groups cannot always be distinguished from one another, and also because the same plant may belong to different classes at different periods of its life. A study of the writings of Albertus reveals the fact that he had CH. VI] Albertus M agnus 135 in mind, though he did not clearly state it, a much more highly evolved system, which may be diagrammatically represented as follows. The modern equivalents of his different groups are shown in square brackets :— Text-fig. 63. ‘“Carui” [Ortus Sanitatis, Mainz, 1491]. I. Leafless plants [Cryptogams in part |}. II. Leafy plants [Phanerogams and certain Crypto- gams |. 1. Corticate plants [Monocotyledons |. 2. Tunicate plants | Dicotyledons ]. (a) Herbaceous. (0) Woody. The word ¢unzcate in the above table is used for the 136 Plant Classification [CH. plants which Albertus describes as growing ‘ex ligneis tunicis.” It seems clear from this expression that he realised that there was an anatomical distinction between Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons. Considering how much Albertus had achieved, it is somewhat curious that Cesalpino, who represented Aristo- telian botany in the sixteenth, as Albertus did in the thirteenth century, should have produced so inadequate a system as his own contribution to the subject. We owe to him one marked advance, the recognition, namely, of the importance of the seed. On the whole, however, his classi- fication savours too much of having been thought out in the study, and it suffers by comparison with other systems of about the same period, such as those of de l’Obel and Bauhin, which were arrived at rather by instinct, acting upon observation, than by a definite and_ self-conscious intellectual effort. Cesalpino makes his main distinction, on the old Aristotelian plan, between Trees and Shrubs on the one hand, and Undershrubs and Herbs on the other. He divides the first of these groups into two, and the second into thirteen classes, depending chiefly on seed and fruit characters. Very few of these classes really represent natural groups, and the chief of all distinctions among Flowering Plants, that between Dicotyledons and Mono- cotyledons, which was foreshadowed by Albertus, is almost lost to sight. When we turn from the botanical philosophers to the herbalists proper, we find an altogether different state of affairs. The Aristotelian botanists were conscious, from the beginning, of the philosophic necessity for some form of classification. The medical botanists, on the other hand, were only interested in plants as individuals, and were driven to classify them merely because some sort of arrangement was necessary for convenience in dealing with a large number of kinds. The first Materia Medica, that of Dioscorides, shows some attempt at order, but the arrangement is seldom at all natural. Occasionally the author groups together plants which are nearly related, as when he treats of a number of Labiates, or of Umbellifers successively—but this is rare. vi] Theophrastus and Pliny 137 Pliny was not, strictly speaking, a medical botanist, but at the same time he may be mentioned in this connection, since his interest in plants was essentially utilitarian. Like Theophrastus, he begins his account of plants with the trees, but his reason for so doing is profoundly different from that of the Greek writer, and illustrates the divergence between what we may call the anthropocentric and the Text-fig. 64. “‘Buglossa” [Ortus Sanitatis, Mainz, 1491 scientific outlook upon the plant world. Theophrastus placed trees at the head of the vegetable kingdom, because he considered their organisation the highest, and most completely expressive of plant nature; Pliny, on the other hand, began with trees because of their great value and 138 Plant Classification [CH. importance to man. As an example of his ideas of arrange- ment, we may mention that he places the Myrtle and Laurel side by side, because the Laurel takes a corresponding place in triumphs to that accorded to the Myrtle in ovations ! Turning to the herbals themselves, we find that the earliest show no trace of a natural grouping, the plants being, as a rule, arranged alphabetically. This is the case, for instance, in the Latin and German Herbarius, the Ortus Sanitatis and their derivatives, and even in the herbals of Brunfels and of Fuchs in the sixteenth century. In Bock’s herbal, on the other hand, the plants are grouped as herbs, shrubs and trees, according to the classical scheme. The author evidently made some effort, within these classes, to arrange them according to their relationships. In the preface to the third edition he writes—‘‘I have placed together, yet kept distinct, all plants which are related and connected, or otherwise resemble one another and are compared, and have given up the former old rule or arrangement according to the A.B.C. which is seen in the old herbals. For the arrangement of plants by the A.B.C. occasions much disparity and error.” Although the larger classificatory divisions, as now understood, were not recognised by these early workers, they had at least a dim understanding of the distinction between genera and species. This dates back to Theo- phrastus, who showed, by grouping together different species of oaks, figs, etc., that he had some conception of a genus. We owe to Konrad Gesner the first formula- tion of the idea that genera should be denoted by substan- tive names. He was probably the earliest botanist who clearly expounded the distinction between a genus and a species. In one of his letters he writes—“And we may hold this for certain, that there are scarcely any plants that constitute a genus which may not be divided into two or more species. The ancients describe one species of Gentian ; I know of ten or more.’ Very little of Gesner’s botanical work was ever published, and it was left to Fabio Colonna to put before the botanical world the true nature of genera. He held most enlightened views on the subject, and, in 1616, clearly stated in his ‘Ekphrasis’ that genera should not be based on similarities vi] Colonna ana Bauhin 139 of leaf form, since the affinities of plants are indicated not by the leaf, but by the characters of the flower, the receptacle, and, especially, the seed. He brought forward instances to show that previous authors had sometimes placed a plant in the wrong genus, because they only attended to the leaves and ignored the structure of the flower. In the writings of Gaspard Bauhin, at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, Ye \7aNws 4%, NENVFAR Text-fig. 65. “ Nenufar”=Waterlily [Arnaldus de Villa Nova, Tractatus de virtutibus herbarum, 1499]. the binary system of nomenclature is used with a high degree of consistency, each species bearing a generic and specific name, though sometimes a third, or even a fourth, descriptive word is added. These extra words are not, 1 ‘Minus cognitarum stirpium...EKPPAZIC.’ 1616. Pars altera, Cap. XXVIL. p- 62 “tam in hac, quam in aliis plantis, non enim ex foliis, sed ex flore, semi- nisque, conceptaculo, et ipso potius semine, plantarum affinitatem dijudicamus.” 140 Plant Classification [CH. however, really essential. In the preface to the ‘Phyto- pinax’ (1596) Bauhin states that, for the sake of clearness, he has applied one name to each plant and added also some easily recognisable character’. The binomial method was foreshadowed at a very early date, for in a fifteenth-century manuscript of the old herbal ‘Circa instans, to which we have referred on p. 24, this system prevails to a remarkable extent. When we turn to those general schemes of classification which were evolved by the herbalists of the sixteenth century, we are at once struck by the great difference existing between the principles on which these schemes are based, and those at which we have arrived at the present day. To classify plants according to their uses and medicinal properties is obviously the first suggestion that arises, when the universe is regarded from a simple, anthropocentric standpoint. In the Grete Herball of 1526 we get a ludicrously clear example of this method, applied to the special case of the Fungi. ‘‘ Fungi ben mussherons. ... here be two maners of them, one maner is deedly and sleeth [slayeth] them that eateth of them and be called tode stoles, and the other dooth not.” This account of the Fungi occurs also in the earlier manuscript herbal, ‘Circa instans,’ mentioned in the last paragraph. This theory of classification has been shown in more recent times to contain the germ of something more nearly approaching a natural system than one would imagine at first sight. Both Linnzus and de Jussieu have pointed out that related plants have similar properties, and, in 1804, A. P. de Candolle, in his ‘Essai sur les propriétés médicales des Plantes, comparées avec leurs formes extérieures et leur classification naturelle,’ carried the argument much further. He showed that in no less than twenty-one families of flowering plants, the same medicinal properties were found throughout all the members of the order. This is very remarkable, when we remember that the state of knowledge at that time was such that de Candolle was obliged to dismiss a large number of orders with the words ‘properties unknown.” Quite recently the subject of the differentiation 1 “plerisque nomen imposuimus, perspicuitatis gratia, cuius nomine com- muniter nota aliqua quze 4 quolibet in planta observari potest, nomini addita.” v1] Medicinal Properties 4 SZ 6. rae 340 Cae : Text-fig. 66. “Nenuphar”=Nymphea alba L., White Wate ‘a [ Brunfels, Herbarum vive eicones, Vol. I. 1530} Reduce 142 Plant Classification [CH. of groups of plants according to their chemistry has again come to the fore, and, in the future, chemical characters will probably be numbered among the recognised criteria for use in elaborating schemes of classification. Wee, U7 eure" 4a* RS Mt is Uf /} eae Uf Y/ ye oS a TIAN TEE & * Gaal | " Text-fig. 67. “Gele Plompen”=Nuphar luteum om., Yellow Waterlily [de ?Obel, Kruydtbeeck, 1 581]. In the history of botanical classification, the first advance from the purely utilitarian standpoint was marked vi] System of ad’ Aléchamps 143 by the recognition of the fact that the structure and mode of life of the plants themselves are of importance. In the work of writers such as Dodoens and d’Aléchamps, to take two typical examples, we find the issues curiously confused by the working of three different principles side by side; that is to say, by the simultaneous insistence (i) on the habitat, (ii) on the “virtues,” and (iii) on the structure, as affording clues to the systematic position of the plant in question. The herbalist thus erects his scheme on a basis consisting of a confused medley of ecological, medical, and morpho- logical principles. An enumeration of the eighteen headings, under which d’Aléchamps, in 1586, described the vegetable kingdom, so far as it was then known, will show the perplexities which surrounded the first gropings after a natural system. His headings may be translated as follows :— iB Of trees which grow wild in woods. Il. Of fruits growing wild in thickets and shrub- beries. LEH. Of trees which are cultivated in pleasure gardens and orchards. IV. Of cereals and pulse, and the plants which grow in the field with them. uM. Of garden herbs and pot herbs. Vi. Of umbelliferous plants. VII. Of plants with beautiful flowers. VILE. . OF fragrant plants. IX. Of plants growing in marshes. X. Of plants growing in rough, rocky, sandy and sunny places. XI. Of plants growing in shady, wet, marshy and fertile places. XII. Of plants growing by the sea, and in the sea itself. XIII. Of climbing plants. XIV. Of thistles and all spiny and prickly plants. XV. Of plants with bulbs, and succulent and knotty roots. XVI. Of cathartic plants. XVII. Of poisonous plants. XVIII. Of foreign plants. 144 Plant Classification [CH. Among these eighteen groups, the only ones which have any pretension to being natural are VI (Umbellifers) and XIV (Thistles), and these merely approximate roughly to related groups of genera. Among the Umbellifers we meet with AchzWea and other genera which do not really belong to the order, whilst, with the Thistles, there are grouped other spiny plants, such as Astragalus tragacantha, which, in a natural system, would occupy a place remote from the Composites. In spite of the fact that improved systems of classi- fication, to which we shall shortly refer, were put forward in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, we find a — oe —- a | es age to pts = Fae es iaed. 4) Naanvgnigs tis DEBIINUD slg pga eaiitay; YT Tei: eee REO ee ST ——/ | | ! Wi ANS | Bait ie 9) ae < be j) ‘ aes 2 ee: A Beret TY ——— ane ——— ) NH..§ - on | ‘oe sei bifl) As aii=\ Text-fig. 68. ‘“ Ninfea”=Waterlily [Durante, Herbario Nuovo, 1585]. that, as late as 1640, John Parkinson in his well known herbal, divided all the plants then known into seventeen classes or tribes—the sequence in which these classes were placed having, in most cases, no meaning at all. A few of his tribes are natural, but many are valueless as an expression of affinities. As an example we may mention his third class, “Venemous, Sleepy, and Hurtfull Plants, and their Counterpoysons,” and his seventeenth, ‘Strange and QOutlandish Plants.” In Parkinson’s classification, we see Botany reverting once more to the position of a mere handmaid to Medicine. vi] Dodoens and de l’Obel 145 In the first book of Dodoens’ ‘ Pemptades’ (1583) the principles of botany are discussed. The old Aristotelian classification into Trees, Shrubs, Undershrubs and Herbs is accepted, but with some reservations. The author points out that an individual plant may, owing to cultivation, or from some other cause, pass from one class into another. He instances Azcznus, which is an herbaceous annual with us, but a tree in other countries’. The general scheme of classification, which Dodoens propounded, has much in