When one compares this short description with what Dioscorides says of a plant which he calls _ereuthodanon_, it will be readily seen that he meant our madder. He even compares its long square stem, armed with a great many hooks, to that of the _asperugo_; and he tells us that the leaves stand in the form of a star around the joints. The fruit was at first green, then red, and lastly black. The thin long roots, adds he, which are red, serve for dyeing; and on that account the cultivated kind (he must therefore have been acquainted with the wild sort) is reared with much benefit in Galilee, around Ravenna in Italy and in Caria, where it is planted either among the olive-trees, or in fields destined for that purpose. It is remarked in some manuscripts, that this plant had a name given it by the Romans, which, as Marcellus Virgil observes, meant the same thing as _Rubia sativa_, and that it was called in Etruria _Lappa minor_, doubtless because, like the bur, it adhered to other bodies. On account of the colour which it communicated, it was called also sometimes _cinnabaris_[274]. In opposition to this asserted identity I find only one doubt; namely, that among those plants which, on account of the position of their leaves, were called _stellatæ_, and which were all so like that we must reduce them to one natural order, there are more sorts, the roots of which dye red, and which on that account are very improperly called wild madder. Why, therefore, should the plant of Dioscorides be our madder, and not some other plant of the like nature? For this reason, in my opinion: because the ancients, who were acquainted with all these plants, which grew wild in their lands, were equally prudent as the moderns, and cultivated that kind only which was the most productive or beneficial, viz. our _Rubia tinctorum_. This opinion will be strengthened by comparing the accounts given of that plant by other ancient writers. Theophrastus agrees almost perfectly with Dioscorides; and adds, that it did not grow upright, but was fond of reclining. The comparison, therefore, with the leaves of ivy cannot be just; but that I shall leave to the critics. Pliny says expressly, that the _erythrodanum_ or _ereuthodanum_ was in his mother-tongue called _rubia_; and that its red roots were used to dye wool and leather red[275].