Abstract
Miss A. D. BETTS, Thorn Cottage, Byways, Berk-hamsted, Herts, writes to suggest that the fluted columns of Greek architecture were copied from plant stems, such as those of an umbelliferous plant. From inquiries we have made upon this subject, it appears that there is a lack of decisive evidence as to these columns having been modelled from plant life, though the subject has been considered on a number of occasions and by various writers. In discussing these columns Whibley (“A Companion to Greek Studies”) states, “The origin both of this practice and of the essential form of the column is very obscure”. According to the same writer, the earliest of the Doric columns were merely substitutes for wooden tree trunks that had served the same purpose. It is probable that the fluted column may have arisen quite independently of any model or pattern afforded by plant life. No example occurs to us of a woody species indigenous to Greece with a constantly fluted stem or bole. Fluted stems are found not uncommonly among herbaceous plants. This is particularly noticeable in the family Umbelliferae, where the fluting exhibits greater regularity perhaps than in other families. Regular fluting is also conspicuous on the leaf-sheaths of some of the coarser-growing grasses, particularly when dried, also in certain of the sedges. A large number of umbelliferous plants occur in Greece as in other Mediterranean countries. Many of these have economic uses, and were known and commonly employed by the ancient Greeks on account of their esculent or medicinal properties; for example, fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), dill (Pence-danwn graveolens), cumin (Cuminum cyminum), coriander (Coriandrum sativum), caraway (Carum Carvt,). Another species apparently well known to them and occurring in Greece at the present day is the so-called giant fennel (Ferula communis), of which it is stated, “the tough stems were used by school-masters as ferules” (Whibley). From an examination of the dried material of this plant the stems do not appear to be conspicuously fluted.
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Origin of Fluted Doric Columns. Nature 137, 180 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137180b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137180b0