Text-fig. 70. “Plantago major” = Plantain [Fuchs, De historia stirpium, 1542]. Reduced.
Text-fig. 71. “Althæa Thuringica” = Lavatera thuringica L. [Camerarius, Hortus medicus, 1588].
There is no doubt that, on the whole, Bauhin was markedly successful in recognising affinities within small cycles, but he broke down on the broader question of the relationships between the groups of genera so constituted. This is, however, hardly surprising when we remember how much difference of opinion exists among systematic botanists, even to-day, upon the subject of the relations of the orders to one another.
Like de l’Obel, Bauhin seems to have believed in the general principle of a progression from the simpler to the more highly developed forms. His application of this principle led him to begin with the Grasses and to conclude with the Trees. The question as to which groups among the Flowering Plants [Angiosperms] are to be considered as relatively primitive, is still, at the present day, an open one, but it would be generally conceded that Bauhin’s arrangement cannot be accepted. There is little doubt, from the standpoint of modern botany, that the Grasses are a highly specialised group, while the “tree habit” has been adopted independently by many plants belonging to entirely different cycles of affinity, and thus, except in rare cases, it cannot be used as a criterion of relationship.
On the subject of the relations of the Cryptogams (flowerless plants) to the Phanerogams (flowering plants), Bauhin had evidently no clear ideas, but such could hardly be hoped for in the state of knowledge of that time. We find, for instance, the Ferns, Mosses, Corals(!), Fungi, Algæ, the Sundew, etc., sandwiched between some Leguminosæ, and a section consisting chiefly of Thistles.
The classification put forward by the Bohemian botanist, Zaluziansky, in 1592, although in its general features no better than that of Dodoens, or of d’Aléchamps, and certainly less satisfactory than that of de l’Obel or the later scheme of Bauhin, is an improvement on all of these in one particular, namely, that he begins with the Fungi and deals next with Mosses. After the Mosses he describes the Grasses, and his classification concludes with the Trees. He was thus evidently attempting to pass from the simpler to the more complex, and his arrangement indicates that, unlike certain other botanists of his time, he looked upon the Lower Cryptogams as comparatively simple and primitive plants. He was not so clear-sighted, however, on the subject of the Ferns, for he placed them with the Umbelliferæ and some Compositæ, no doubt because he was influenced by the form of the leaf.