In Gerard’s ‘Herball’ of 1597 the descriptions are seldom sufficiently original to be of much interest. We may quote, however, his account of the Potato flower (Text-fig. [60]), then so great a novelty that in his portrait (Plate [XII]) he is represented holding a spray of it in his hand. It has, he says, “very faire and pleasant flowers, made of one entire whole leafe, which is folded or plaited in such strange sort, that it seemeth to be a flower made of sixe sundrie small leaves, which cannot be easily perceived, except the same be pulled open. The colour whereof it is hard to expresse. The whole flower is of a light purple color, stripped down the middle of every folde or welt, with a light shew of yellownes, as though purple and yellow were mixed togither: in the middle of the flower thrusteth foorth a thicke fat pointell, yellow as golde, with a small sharpe greene pricke or point in the middest thereof.”
The plant descriptions by Valerius Cordus, which were published after his death, are among the best produced in the sixteenth century, but they are too lengthy for quotation here.
So far as the period with which we deal in this book is concerned, the zenith of plant description may be said to be reached in the ‘Prodromos’ of Gaspard Bauhin (1620), in which a high level of terseness and accuracy is attained. As an example we may translate his description of “Beta Cretica semine aculeato,” of which his drawing is reproduced in Text-fig. [62]: “From a short tapering root, by no means fibrous, spring several stalks about 18 inches long: they straggle over the ground, and are cylindrical in shape and furrowed, becoming gradually white near the root with a slight coating of down, and spreading out into little sprays. The plant has but few leaves, similar to those of Beta nigra, except that they are smaller, and supplied with long petioles. The flowers are small, and of a greenish yellow. The fruits one 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 separate into three reflexed points. In their cavity, one grain of the shape of an Adonis seed is contained; it is slightly rounded and ends in a point, and is covered with a double layer of reddish membrane, the inner one enclosing a white, farinaceous core.”
Text-fig. 61. “Rose Ribwoorte” = an abnormal Plantain [Gerard, The Herball, 1597].
Text-fig. 62. “Beta Cretica semine aculeato” [Bauhin, Prodromos, 1620].