Holosteon, which is all bone: on the contrary, because there is not an herb in nature more fragile and more tender than it is.
Original French: Holosteon. c’eſt tout de os: au contraire. car herbe n’eſt en nature plus fragile & plus tendre, qu’il eſt.
Modern French: Holosteon. c’est tout de os: au contraire. car herbe n’est en nature plus fragile & plus tendre, qu’il est.
Among the plants that have their name by antiphrasis and contrariety.
Notes
Coronopus
Coronopus Kraenfuss
Taxon: Plantago coronopous L.
English: buck’s-horn plantain
Plantago
Holosteon
Pliny xxvii. 10, §65.
Holosteon
C’est en effet ce que signifie en grec ὀλόστ[??].
holosteon
Holosteon sine duritia est herba ex adverso appellata a Graecis, sicut fel dulce, radice tenui usque in capillamenti speciem, longitudine quattuor digitorum, ceu gramen foliis angustis, adstringens gustu. nascitur in collibus terrenis. usus eius ad vulsa, rupta in vino potae. et volnera quoque conglutinat, nam et carnes, dum coquuntur, addita.
Holosteon (all-bone) is a plant with nothing hard about it, the name being an antiphrasis coined by the Greeks, just as they call gall sweet. Its root is so slender as to look like hair. Four fingers long, the plant has narrow leaves like grass and an astringent taste, growing on hills with deep soil. Taken in wine for sprains and ruptures it also closes wounds, for it even fastens together pieces of meat when boiled with them.
holosteon
De ὂλοζ, tout, ὀστέον os, en tout dur comme l’os, nom donné par antiphrase à une plante très molle. « Holosteon sive duritia est herba ex adverso appellata a Græcis, sicut fel dulce ». L’όλὁστιον de Dioscoride (III, 11), Holosteon de Pline, XXVII, 65, holostium de Galien (De. simpl. med. fac., l. VIII) est, pour quelques auteurs, Plantago coronopus L.; pour Fée, plus probablement Plantago holostea, Lmk. de l’Europe méridionale. Mais la plante que les botanistes du XVIe siècle, Boutonet, Pena, Lobel, appelaient Holosteum monspelliense, est Plantago albicans L., de la France et de l’Europe méridionales. Sainéan (H.N.R., p; 117) croit reconnaître dans l’Holosteon de Rabelais une Caryophyllée, Holosteum umbellatum, L. (Paul Delaunay)
holosteion
Thus again, [gk] or holosteion, meaning bone thoughout, is used paradoxically to identify a very soft plant.
holosteon
D’après De latinis nominibus.