Could someone help me with a notation I see in some old botany books? What does the H. plus the symbol for Jupiter mean? Image below. [Screen Shot 2020-11-09 at 9.59.15 AM]

Maybe H. is short for habit or habitus? I agree it is probably at the end of their book or wherever symbols are explained (sometimes at the beginning).

Regarding the “H” portion, these resources on botanical nomenclature may be useful. It appears the H could mean a variety of things, but it looks like “H.” is indicative of a hybrid. https://web.archive.org/web/20171113193437/https://www.bgbm.org/iapt/nomenclature/code/SaintLouis/0117SubjIndx.ht…

The book is Aiton 1789 Hortus Kewensis, or, A catalogue of the plants cultivated in the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew. I was in Volume III. I went to Volume I and behold: [image]

DOI for Vol 1 https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.4504

Unless I’m missing it, I don’t see such a key in Linnaeus.

Wonder what a ‘dry stove’ could be as opposed to a ‘green hous(f)e’? I’d love to get my hands on an old plants catalog like this, very interesting to see how things change over time. Seems like ‘green’ refers to tender here, since it’s set opposite to ‘dry’; maybe herbaceous vs. woody? If my suppo…

Or as opposed to just ‘stove’.

[image] yerbasanta: I’d love to get my hands on an old plants catalog like this You can find many of these old books and journals at https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/ . Some of them are in Latin. This one is.

Keys as we know them did not exist at the time of Linnaeus. The first true key in the modern sense was published in 1803. (I wrote my PhD on this and on the development of field guides).

What was the first field guide?

Symbol in old botany books

Nature Talk

bsnodgrass-il November 11, 2020, 3:18pm 16

Great resource! Thanks for that link: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/

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Symbol in old botany books

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