Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/42

 the last edition of the 'Pemptades ' of 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, ῥιςα') 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 φὓτα. '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