A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins (Vol. 1&2). Johann Beckmann

See Stapel, über die Pflanzen des Theophrast. p. 618. Salmasius ad Solinum, p. 159. Casauboni Animadv. in Athen. Lugd. 1621, fol. p. 146. Bauhini Hist. Plant. iii. p. 48.

597 Colum. lib. x. ver. 235.

598 Lud. Nonnii Diæteticon. Antv. 1646, 4to, p. 56.

599 It was said, that if the corners of the seeds were bruised, no prickles would be produced. See Geopon. lib. xii. cap. 39. [It is a well-known physiological fact in botany, that many plants which are naturally spinous, when cultivated in gardens or rich soil, become unarmed. The production of spines seems to arise from an imperfect development of the growing point of a plant; when this development is increased by the greater supply of nutriment, the spines disappear, their places being supplied by a branch having leaves. We have instances of this in the apple, pear, &c., which are naturally spinous.]

600 Geopon. l. c. Columella, xi. cap. 3.

601 Geopon. 925, where repeated watering is directed; it is said you will then have tenderer fruit, and in more abundance.

602 Virgil. Geor. i. 150. Plin. xviii. cap. 17.

603 Palladius, iv. 9, p. 934, and lib. xi. Octob. p. 987. In the first-mentioned place he gives the same direction for preventing prickles, as that quoted respecting the cinara.

604 Pliny, lib. xx. says, “The wind easily carries away the withered flowers on account of their woolly nature.”

605 Κύναρος ἄκανθα πάντα πληθύει γύην.—Sophocles, in Phœnice.

      … Segnisque horreret in arvis

       Carduus … —Virgil. Georg. i. 50.

606 Athen. Deipnos. at the end of the second book, p. 70. Salmasius, in his Remarks on Solinus, p. 159, is of opinion that Athenæus wrote κάρδον, not κάρδυον; and the Latins not carduus, but cardus.

607 Lib. iii. cap. 19.

608 Lib. xix. cap. 8.

609 Arctium Lappa, an indigenous weed, difficult to be rooted out. Elsholz, in his Gartenbau, speaking of the Spanish cardoons, says, “The strong stem of the large burr, Arctium Lappa, may be dressed in the same manner, and is not much different in taste.” See also Thomas Moufet’s Health’s Improvement. Lond. 1746, 8vo, p. 217.

610 Plin. lib. xxi. cap. 16.

611 Theophrastus: “Conceptus non spinosus, sed oblongus.” But Dioscorides says, “Capitulum spinosum.” This contradiction, and other small variations, have induced some to consider the scolymus of Theophrastus and that of Dioscorides as two different plants.

612 Dioscor. iii. 16.

613 Dioscor. lib. iii. cap. 10, where he says of a plant that its leaves were like those of the Scolymus, and its stem like that of the Cinara.

614 Rariorum Plantarum Historiæ, lib. iv. p. 153.

615 “In Crete there is a kind of prickly plant, which in the common Greek idiom is generally called ascolimbros. The ancient Latins called it also by a Greek name, glycyrrhizon, though different from glycyrrhiza (liquorice). It grows everywhere spontaneously, has a yellow flower, and abounds with a milky juice. The roots and leaves are usually eaten before it shoots up into a stem. We saw it exposed for sale with other herbs in the market-place of Ravenna, and at Ancona, where the women who were digging it up, gave it the name of riuci. We saw it gathered also in the Campagna di Roma, where the inhabitants called it spinaborda. This is the plant which by the modern Greeks is named ascolimbros.”—Bellonii Observationes, lib. i. cap. 18. “In Crete it is called ascolymbros, and in Lemnos scombrouolo, that is scombri carduus. This thistle abounds with a milky juice, like succory, has a yellow flower, and is excellent eating; so that I know no root cultivated in gardens which can be compared to it in taste, the parsnip not even excepted.”

616 Theophrast. Hist. Plant. p. 620. The figure which Stapel gives, p. 621, is not of the Scolymus hispanicus, but of Scolymus maculatus. It is taken from Clusius, who has also a figure of the former.

617 “I considered the heads of these poor Greeks as so many living inscriptions, which preserve to us the names mentioned by Dioscorides and Theophrastus. Though liable to different variations, they will, doubtless, be more lasting than the hardest marble, because they are every day renewed, whereas marble is effaced or destroyed. Inscriptions of this kind will preserve, therefore, to future ages the names of several plants known to those skilful Greeks who lived in happier and more learned times.”—Voyage du Levant, i. p. 34. Compare with the above what Haller says in his Biblioth. Botan. i. p. 28.

618 Plin. lib. xxi. cap. 16. See Theophrast. lib. vi. cap. 4. Theoocritus, Idyll. x. 4, mentions a lamb wounded in the foot by a cactus. Tertullian names this plant among prickly weeds, together with the rubus, in the end of the second chapter of that unintelligible book De Pallio. De la Cerda, in his excellent edition of Opera Tertulliani, Lutetiæ Paris. 1624, 2 vols. fol. i. p. 13, reads carecto instead of cacto; but Salmasius, in his edition of that work, p. 172, has sufficiently vindicated the latter.

619 Dioscorid. Alexipharm. cap. 33.

620 Theoph. p. 613.

621 The creeping branches were in particular called cacti, the upright stem pternix.

622 Theophrastus calls the bottom of the calyx περικάρπιον, a word which is still retained in botany. But he also says that the same part of the cactus was called also σκαλία; from which is derived the ascalia of Pliny. Galen calls it σπόνδυλον.

623 Theoph. This term is explained