The first attempt to establish a botanical terminology is to be found as early as 1542 in the ‘Historia Stirpium’ of Leonhard Fuchs[9]. Four pages at the beginning of the work are thus occupied. A considerable number of words are explained in alphabetical order—the mode of arrangement which he followed also in describing his plants. It is difficult to give a clear idea of this the first botanic terminology by selected examples; yet the attempt must be made, because it is in this way only that we learn to see from what feeble beginnings the later scientific terminology and morphology has been developed. Thus we read: ‘Acinus’ denotes not merely, as many believe, the grains inside the grape, but the whole fruit, which consists of juice, of a fleshy portion with the stones (‘vinaceis’), and of the outer skin. Galen is quoted as authority for the following explanation: ‘Alae’ are said to be the hollows (angles) between the stem and its branches (the leaves), from which new sprouts (‘proles’) proceed. ‘Asparragi,’ the germs of herbs which appear before the leaves and the first edible shoots are developed. ‘Baccae’ are smaller ‘foetus’ of herbs, shrubs, and trees, which appear separate and isolated on the plant, as for example laurel-berries (‘partus lauri’), and differ from acini, inasmuch as these are more crowded together. ‘Internodium’ is that which lies between the articulations or knees. ‘Racemus’ is used for the bunch of grapes, but does not belong to the vine only, but also to the ivy and other herbs and shrubs which bear clusters of any kind. The majority of such explanations of names concern the forms of the stem and the branches, but the most remarkable thing about the whole list is, that it does not include the words flower and root; yet under the word ‘julus’ occurs the statement, that it is that which in the hazel ‘compactili callo racematim cohaeret,’ and may be described as a long worm borne on a special pendent stalk and coming before the fruit. Though the word flower is not explained, yet some parts of the flower are mentioned; thus it is said, ‘stamina sunt, qui in medio calycis erumpunt apices, sic dicta quod veluti filamenta intimo floris sinu prosiliant.’ The explanation of the word fruit may be added: ‘Fructus, quod carne et semine compactum est; frequenter tamen pro co, quod involucro perinde quasi carne et semine coactum est, accipi solet.’
Progress in this direction was slow but still recognisable. In the last edition of the ‘Pemptades’ of Dodoens[10] of the year 1616, a folio volume of 872 pages, only one page and a third are devoted to the explanation of the parts of plants; but the selection of the words explained and the substance of the explanations hit the essential points better than in Fuchs. We find for instance: Root (‘radix, ῥίζα’) is the name given in the tree and in every other plant to the lower part, by which it penetrates into the earth and cleaves to it, and by which it draws its nourishment. This part, unlike the leaves which are usually deciduous, is common to all plants, a few only excepted which live and grow without roots, such as Cassytha, Viscum, and the plant called ‘Hyphear,’ Fungi, Mosses, and Fuci, all which are however usually reckoned among φῦτα. ‘Caudex’ is in trees and shrubs that which springs from the root and rises above the ground, and by which the nourishment is carried upwards; the same part is called in herbs caulis or cauliculus. Leaf (‘folium’) is in every plant that which clothes and adorns it, and without which trees and other plants appear naked. The definition of a flower would lose in a translation: ‘flos, ἄνθος, arborem et herbarum gaudium dicitur, futurique fructus spes est; unaquaeque etenim stirps pro natura sua post florem partus ac fructus gignit.’ The parts of the flower are with him the calyx (‘calyx’), in which the blossom is at first enclosed and with which the ‘foetus’ is soon surrounded, stamens (‘stamina’) which arise like threads from the depth of the blossom and from the calyx, and ‘apices’ (anthers), certain thickish appendages on the summit of the stamens. ‘Julus’ (catkin) is that which hangs down round and long in place of the flower, as in the walnut, hazel, mulberry, beech, and other trees. ‘Fructus’ is that in which the seed is formed, but frequently it is itself the seed, as where the latter is not enclosed in anything else and is formed naked. We must not be led by these words to think of our Gymnosperms, but must understand that here, as with all botanists till the time of A. L. de Jussieu and Joseph Gärtner (1788), naked seeds mean dry indehiscent fruits.
De l’Obel, from whom especially we might have looked for similar explanations, has given none.
The absence of more profound comparative examination of the parts of plants, as shown in the examples of terminology here adduced, may serve as an additional support of the assertion, that natural affinity was not inferred from exact comparison of the form of organs, but was the result of a feeling arising from the likeness of habit directly apprehended by the senses, that is by the collective impression produced by the whole plant.
Passing to the consideration of the attempts in systematic botany made by the Germans in this period, the chief thing to notice is, that the division into the main groups of trees, shrubs, undershrubs, and herbs was the one generally adopted; these groups were borrowed from antiquity and were maintained even by the special systematists, from Cesalpino to the beginning of the 18th century; nor was any change made in principle when these four groups were reduced to three or two (trees and herbs). It was moreover considered to be self-evident that trees were the most perfect plants. Hence when relationship is spoken of in subsequent remarks, it must be understood that this holds good only within the groups just mentioned. The classifications of the German and Dutch botanists not only sprang from the describing of individual plants, but they were originally in a certain sense identical with it. In undertaking to describe individual forms, the first task was to separate those which closely resembled one another, for the resemblance of systematically-allied plants is often so great, that to distinguish them specifically requires consideration and careful comparison. The resemblance is more obvious than the difference. There are moreover many plants which are entirely distinct from one another in their inner nature, but which appear strikingly alike if we regard the impression produced immediately on the senses, and the converse of this statement is equally true. Hence the attempt to circumscribe and fix individual forms in the act of describing was at once found to involve difficulties, the solution of which leads directly to the conception of some kind of arrangement. A comparison of the herbals of Fuchs and Bock up to Kaspar Bauhin shows very plainly how these difficulties were gradually overcome, how the describing of single species led necessarily, and without the intention of the describer, to considerations of a distinctly systematic character. Where the species in a group of forms, which we now designate as a genus or family, closely resemble each other in habit, there arose of itself the instinctive feeling that such forms belong to one another. This feeling asserted itself in words when, as was done from the first, a number of such forms were without conscious reflection designated by the same name; thus, to mention one of many examples, we find Bock applying the name Wolfsmilk, Euphorbia, not to one species of the genus, but to several, which he then distinguishes by epithets (common, least, cypress, sweet). The customary mode of expression in the herbals is very instructive on this point; there are, they say, two or more of this or that plant which have not been hitherto distinguished. But this feeling of connection and similarity of kind was produced not only by forms that were closely allied, but also by such as belong to extensive groups of the system; thus the words moss, lichen, fungus, alga, fern, had long served to include a great number of distinct forms, though the separation of these groups had nowhere in truth been carried out with logical precision.
These remarks are important as serving to show in the most decisive manner the incorrectness of the assertion, that the study of organisms sprang from the recognition of individual species; that it is this which is directly given, and that without it no advance in the science is possible. The historical fact rather is, that descriptive botany began often, perhaps most often, not with species but with genera and families, that very often at first whole groups of forms were conceived of as unities, which had to be divided later and of set purpose into separate forms; and up to the present day one part of the task of the systematist is to undertake the splitting up of forms previously regarded as identical. The notion that the species is the object originally presented to the observer, and that certain species were afterwards united into genera, is one that was invented in post-Linnaean times under the dominion of the dogma of the constancy of species; it happened so sometimes, but just as often the genus was the object first presented, and the task of the describer was to resolve it into a number of species. In the 16th century the conception neither of genus or species had yet been defined; for the botanists of that period genera and species had the same objective reality. But, in the process of continually making the descriptions of individual plants more exact, forms once separated were united, and those before assumed to be identical were separated, till it gradually became apparent that both operations must be pursued with system and method. It cannot therefore be exactly said that somebody first established the species, another the genus, and a third person again the larger groups. It is more correct to say that the botanists of the 16th century carried out this process of separation up to a certain point without intending it, and in the effort to give the greatest possible preciseness to their descriptions of individual forms. It lay therefore in the nature of the case, that those groups which we call genera and species should first be cleared up, and we find in fact at the end of this period in Kaspar Bauhin the genera already distinguished by names, if not by characters; the species by names and characters. Together with these smaller groups, many more comprehensive ones, which we now designate families, were also marked off and supplied with names, which are still in use. The 16th century established the groups and names of Coniferae, Umbelliferae, Verticillatae (Labiatae), Capillares (Ferns), and others. It is true that the determination of the limits of these groups by distinct marks was not yet attempted, but the plants belonging to these groups were again and again treated of in special chapters or ranged in due succession one after another. But as long as this was done to some extent without design, and the real meaning of this relationship was not yet recognised, other considerations of very various kinds influenced the composition of the books and disturbed the natural arrangement. The feeling for natural affinity supplants all other considerations in de l’Obel first, and after him much more completely in Kaspar Bauhin.
Enough perhaps has now been said to render the main result of the botanical efforts of the period, which we are considering, intelligible to the reader; but a clear view of the method of describing plants at that time, and of the way in which systematic botany came into being, can only be shown by examples; and if we proceed to give some here, it is with the purpose with which figures copied as exactly as possible from nature are added to treatises on natural history, because a real understanding is only to be gained in this way. The botanical literature of the 16th century is so different from that of the 19th, that a very indistinct idea of it could be obtained from a statement of results expressed in modern terms.
Fuchs, Historia Stirpium, 1542.
The common plant now known as Convolvulus arvensis is there called Helxine cissampelos, and is described in the following manner:
‘Nomina.—Ἑλξινὴ κισσάμπελος Graecis, Helxine cissampelus et Convolvulus Latinis nominatur. Vulgus herbariorum et officinae Volubilem mediam et vitealem appellant, Germani Mittelwinden oder Weingartenwinden. Recte autem Cissampelos dicitur, in vineis enim potissimum nascitur et folio hederaceo. Convolvulus vero quod crebra revolutione vicinos frutices et herbas implicet.