A New Distribution of Umbelliferous Plants

...we [intend to continue], by publishing one or two [volumes] each year, provided that ingenious men who desire the public good favor our undertakings. For without help (I speak candidly, plainly, and sincerely), it is impossible to provide illustrations drawn from life (as they say), engraved from the original plants, and not—as has been the case until now—taken from faulty and erroneous images, poorly drawn and engraved in the books of botanical writers. Provided our request is met, we shall in no way spare our labors so that we may benefit the public, and so that we may reduce plants, both native and exotic, to a good order original Greek: eutaxian and an easy, optimal method. By this method, this part of natural history, Botany original: Botanice, can be most easily learned and firmly retained, using identifying marks based on reason and experience and sought from the universal method of nature—which I claim for myself first, both here in this section on the Umbel-bearing plants original: Umbellarum; plants like carrots or parsley that have flower clusters spreading from a common center and in others that I intend to produce.

We observe not a few in these latter centuries writing on herbal matters who have wasted paper uselessly rather than benefiting mortals. Indeed, if their labors are weighed more carefully, they bring forth nothing new or remarkable, but merely sell the writings of others as their own, compiled into huge volumes. These men are driven by a desire for empty little-glory, or for making a base profit with printers, thinking to themselves that it is sweet to make a gain from anything. Thus, as long as they produce plants presented with tedious descriptions—reciting parts common to the whole genus and applying them again and again to individual species, while assigning a generic or specific (or peculiar) mark in very few instances—they think they have performed the duty of botanists excellently.

However, they are little concerned with the order of plants, since they have so far proposed no true or genuine method for themselves by which students of Botany might learn scientifically (that is, by genera and species). All methods proposed thus far by writers of botanical matters suit the plants only secondarily, as anyone can clearly see in the authors publishing General Histories. For some have taken a general method from the place where plants grow; others from their powers and properties; and others, finally, from the four seasons of the year. But none of these is to be admitted. The first might serve those practicing medicine, and is therefore in a way very necessary for physicians and healers; the second is worthy of observation by botanical gardeners, to whose care the cultivation of plants is entrusted. Yet, by these aforementioned methods, we see plants that are generically different "by a whole heaven" a Latin idiom meaning "entirely different" joined together, and conversely, we observe those that are generically similar separated by a long interval.

Since, I say, they separate what should be joined and join what should be separated, all methods brought forward until now are to be observed only secondarily. Therefore, we reject them and propose a true and genuine method, serving primarily and of itself, communicated to vegetables by nature herself, perceptible by an infallible token or mark in all things contained under the same genus. And since method, or order, is the soul of all learning, we shall present the plants—both in this arrangement of the umbels and in the universal digestion of all plants which we promise—by arranging generic and essential marks sought from the seeds and their similarity through tables of kinship and affinity.

We shall add specific differences taken from the less noble parts—namely the root, leaves, and stalks, as well as smell, taste, and color—assigning individual species to individual genera. Thus, species recognizable by a different appearance will march under intermediate genera, and intermediate genera under the highest ones, distinguished by their essential marks which always remain the same. This is the order given to plants by nature herself from the beginning, now observed by me first. For while I was constructing a storehouse of seeds original: promptuarium seminarium of all plants, both those growing spontaneously in fields and countrysides and those raised for many years in the gardens of the Most Serene Royal Duke of Orléans Gaston, Duke of Orléans, a major patron of botany, I noticed from frequent inspection and comparison of the seeds of each and every plant that authors had hallucinated seriously, both in naming plants and in arranging or disposing them. This will be apparent to anyone considering and looking more closely with me below in this treatise on the umbels. My storehouse of seeds is adorned with two thousand seeds of different species and more, with each species enclosed in its own individual small box. They are arranged in compartments in the same order...