Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/115

 The 'caudex' answers pretty nearly to our primary root and rhizomes, the 'radicula' to what we now call secondary roots.

The herb springs from the root, and is terminated by the fructification; it consists of the stem, leaves, leaf-supports ('fulcrum'), and the organs of hibernation ('hibernaculum'). Then follow the further distinctions of stem and leaves; the terminology, still partly in use and resting essentially on the definitions of Jung, is here set forth in great detail. Linnaeus however does not mention the remarkable distinction between stem and leaf which Jung founded on relations of symmetry, and in general he shows less depth of conception than Jung, confining himself more to the direct impression on the senses, and so distinguishing sometimes where there is no real difference. Examples of this are furnished by the paragraph devoted to 'fulcra.' By this term he designates the subsidiary organs of plants, among which he reckons stipules, bracts, spines, thorns, tendrils, glands, and hairs. It appears from this, that Linnaeus did not extend the idea of the leaf ('folium') to stipules and bracts, and the examples he gives of tendrils show at the same time that he was ignorant of the different morphological character of the organ in Vitis and Pisum. The putting the seven organs above-named together under the idea of 'fulcrum' shows plainly enough that Linnaeus, in framing his terminology, aimed only at distinguishing what was different to the sense by fixed words, in order to obtain means for short diagnoses of species and genera. He had no thought of arriving at more general propositions from a comparison of forms in plants, in order to attain to a deeper insight into their nature. The same thing appears from his notion of 'hibernaculum,' by which he understands a part of the plant which envelopes the stem in its embryonal state and protects it from harm from without; he here distinguishes bulbs from the winter buds of woody plants. In this course of mixing up morphological and biological