Minor Typo in Liddell & Scott Definition of ἰξός

[bedwere]

ἰξός , ὁ

ἰξός , ὁ,
A.oak-mistletoe, Hozanthus europaeus, Arist.GA715b30, Dsc. 3.89.

Hozanthus does not exist. It is Loranthus.

I reported it to the webmaster and it reads wrong also in the print version.

[jeidsath]

Hozanthus europaeus seems to have been introduced in the ninth edition, as it's not present in the eighth. I wonder if the supplement has a correction.

[Timothée]

I wonder if the supplement has a correction.

There’s nothing on ἰξός there. It’d be great to have a tenth edition of this superb dictionary, but it’ll hardly ever happen. A lot of improvements have been proposed during the last 20 years and more, but a lot would have to be rewritten in addition. The task would be tremendous, and how many editors in the end would be up to it?

It’d be even greater to have a Greek counterpart of the Thesaurus linguae Latinae, but that was deemed as a matter of practice impossible already in the early 20th century, as can be read in the preface of the LS. In these days it’s at least twice as impossible—and who nowadays would have the patience to wait for 150 years?

[jeidsath]

An LSJ revision could be done like wikipedia, but with some sort of editorial review process. I wonder who owns copyrights on the supplement? You wouldn't want to lose that, after all.

[mwh]

I don’t think it can be a typo. It looks as if the name is οζ-ανθος, smell-flower. There’s the similarly named osm-anthos. Googling hozanthus immediately turns up http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/125/143825 on the preparation of ιξός, birdlime. I haven’t investigated.

Matching up Greek plant names with Linnaean classifications is of course a very dodgy business. D'Arcy Thompson was the authority on birds and fish (or rather fishes) and all things zoological—perhaps botanical too?
Edit. I see the 1925 LSJ preface, p. vii, credited William Thiselton-Dyer on the plant-names; “his identifications are not likely to be disputed.” Was Hozanthus a recognized genus back then? I know that fungi are constantly being reclassified, and I expect the same is true of plants. In the 1940 postscript D’Arcy Thompson is credited “on natural history.” Geoffrey Arnott revised many of the bird identifications for the Supplement and subsequently. For plants, modern work on Dioscurides would be the first place to look, but I don't know if they've been seriously revisited.

[jeidsath]

I don't think that Hozanthus europaeus exists anywhere but the Ninth edition LSJ and some quotations from the LSJ, such the linked manuscript description. Loranthus europaeus is ubiquitous and dates from Nicolaus Joseph von Jacquin (February 16, 1727 – October 26, 1817).

Here is Frazer's discussion of Virgil's mistletoe, published around the time of the Ninth edition LSJ, and he claims Loranthus europaeus: https://books.google.com/books?id=z3sIAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA315

One of Frazer's footnotes points to Wimmer's 1866 edition of Theophrastus, which identifies ἰξία with Loranthus europaeus in the index: https://books.google.com/books?id=cA06AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA537

I think that Hozanthus was probably a printer's mistake for Loranthus written in cursive.

[mwh]

OK. So it was the typesetter’s error, whether misreading manuscript or not. Sorry to have suggested otherwise, but Ozanthus seemed so attractive!

Kudos to bedwere for having spotted the error. (I dare say others have too, but it escaped LSJ Suppl.)

Vergil seems to have conflated the two mistletoes, the viscum and the loranthus.

[RandyGibbons]

Yes, I have to concur, a typo, perhaps a printer's error, though, Joel, I don't know what the "cursive" source would be (I'm inferring from "cursive" that you're envisioning a handwritten source?). And yes, kudos to bedwere. Whatever, bedwere, led you to this in the first place?!

To supplement Joel and others' research:

+ There's no evidence of there ever having been a genus Hozanthus. Though the "minor" typo, because of the authority of LSJ, has had major consequences. Michael's search points to an illustration of the mistletoe in the illuminated Dioscorides (De materia medica) manuscript at the Morgan library. The editors there clearly simply take the scientific name from LSJ. Lily Beck's excellent third edition of De materia medica (2017) also identifies the mistletoe (III.89, ὁ ἰξός) as Hozanthus europaeus, explicitly citing LSJ.

+ The genus name Loranthus, on the other hand, goes back to Linnaeus. (Linnaeus credits the French botanist Sebastian Vaillant with this name. I don't have that source, but I'm guessing Loranthus comes from lōrum + anthus, because one German name for this plant is Riemenblume, 'belt flower'.) In the original edition of the Species Plantarum (1753), it was a monotypic genus, the only species being Linnaeus's Loranthus americanus, in the class Hexandria Monogynia (six stamens, one pistil) of Linnaeus's Systema Sexuale. In 1762, a certain Nicholaus von Jacquin, cited by Joel, used Linnaeus's system to describe and classify wild plants from the Venetian countryside, including a species of mistletoe he named Loranthus europaeus. (Linnaeus's Viscum genus contains other mistletoe species, such as its type species, the Viscum album (Tetandria within his Dioecia, or hermaphroditic, class). In the ever-evolving post-Linnaean taxonomies, various species of mistletoe have been classified both in the Santalaceae (now inclusive of the Viscaceae) and Lorinthaceae families.

+ Accordingly, in the plant index of Sir Arthur Hort's 1916 Loeb edition of Theophrastus's Enquiry into Plants, one of the identities of ἰξία (= ἰξός) is the Loranthus europaeus. In the plant index (Vol. VII) to the Loeb's Natural History, Pliny's viscum is identifed as the Loranthus europaeus as well as the Viscum album.

Matching up Greek plant names with Linnaean classifications is of course a very dodgy business.

I'll cast aside modesty and claim some expertise in Michael's oh-so-true assertion, as I've spent over a year mucking around in Theophrastus, Pliny, and Dioscorides. Just as fyi, and for anyone interested, this playlist introduction to Theophrastus is a sample.