[144] The genus Potentilla, L., in general, is perhaps intended by cinque-foil; and although our author probably confounded the common and variable Potentilla Canadensis, L., with the nearly akin P. reptans and P. verna, L., of Europe, yet the larger part of our New-England species are, with little doubt, common to both continents. What Josselyn referred to Tormentilla, L.,—a genus not now separated from Potentilla,—was probably a state of P. Canadensis, which resembles P. reptans, L., as remarked above (and was, indeed, mistaken for it by Cutler,—l. c., p. 453), as this does Tormentilla reptans, L.
[145] Geum strictum, Ait.,—not found in England, but European (Gray, Man., p. 116),—is indicated by the author’s phrase; and see the Voyages, p. 78, for his opinion of its medicinal virtue.
[146] Fragaria vesca, L. (the common wood-strawberry of Europe), is native here, according to Oakes (Catal. Verm., p. 12), “especially on mountains;” and I have even gathered it, but possibly naturalized, on the woody banks of Fresh Pond in Cambridge. Our more common strawberry was not separated from the European by Linnæus, but is now reckoned a distinct species. “There is likewise strawberries in abundance,” says Wood (New-England’s Prospect, l. c.),—“very large ones; some being two inches about. One may gather half a bushel in a forenoon.”—“This berry,” says Roger Williams (Key, in Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 221), “is the wonder of all the fruits growing naturally in those parts. It is of itself excellent; so that one of the chiefest doctors of England was wont to say, that God could have made, but God never did make, a better berry. In some parts, where the natives have planted, I have many times seen as many as would fill a good ship, within few miles’ compass. The Indians bruise them in a mortar, and mix them with meal, and make strawberry-bread.” Gookin also speaks of Indian-bread.—Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 150.
[147] The two plants here intended, and supposed by the author to correspond with the “wild angelica” and “great wilde angelica” of Gerard (pp. 999-1000), may perhaps be taken for the same which Cornuti (Canad. Pl. Hist., pp. 196-200), thirty years before, had designated as new,—Josselyn’s Angelica sylvestris minor being Angelica lucida Canadensis of Cornuti, which is A. lucida, L. (and probably, as the French botanist describes the fruit as “minus foliacea vulgaribus,” also Archangelica peregrina, Nutt.); and his Angelica sylvestris major being A. atropurpurea Canadensis of Cornuti, or A. atropurpurea, L.
[148] Smyrnium aureum, L. (golden Alexanders), now separated from that genus, was mistaken, it is quite likely, for S. olusatrum, L. (true Alexanders), to which it bears a considerable resemblance.—Gerard, p. 1019.
[149] Achillea millefolium, L. Oakes has marked this as introduced (Catal. Vermont, p. 17): but it appeared to our author, in 1672, to be indigenous; and Dr. Gray reckons it among plants common to both hemispheres.—Statistics of Amer. Flora, in Am. Jour. Sci., vol. xxiii. p. 70. The author’s reference is to common yarrow.—Gerard, p. 1072.
[150] Aquilegia Canadensis, L. As elsewhere, the author probably means here only that the genus is common to both continents.
[151] At p. 56, both of these are set down among the “plants proper to the country.” The first, to follow Gerard (p. 1108), is Chenopodium botrys, L.,—a native of the south of Europe, and considered as an introduced species here. It has reputation in diseases of the chest.—Wood & Bache, Dispens., p. 213. Josselyn’s oak of Cappadocia (Gerard, p. 1108) is an American species,—Ambrosia elatior, L. Cutler says of it (l. c., p. 489), “It has somewhat the smell of camphire. It is used in antiseptick fomentations.”
[152] Galium aparine, L. (Gerard, edit. cit., p. 1122), common to America and Europe.—Compare Gray, Man., p. 170.
[153] The “Filix mas, or male ferne,” of Gerard, edit. cit., p. 1128 (for, says he, of the “divers sorts of ferne ... there be two sorts, according to the old writers,—the male and the female; and these be properly called ferne: the others have their proper names”), is the collective designation of four species of Aspidium; of which all, according to Pursh, and certainly three, are natives of both continents,—AA. cristatum, Filix mas, Filix fæmina, and aculeatum, Willd. “Filix fæmina (female ferne, or brakes,)” of Gerard, l. c. is Pteris aquilina, L.; also common to us and Europe. The other Filices mentioned by our author are Ophioglossum vulgatum, L. (p. 42); and Adiantum pedatum, L. (p. 55).