Nice! I hadn't realized there were two unrelated plant groupings called Silphium. The original was a valuable, multi-functional plant grown in ancient Libya an

Nice! I hadn't realized there were two unrelated plant groupings called Silphium. The original was a valuable, multi-functional plant grown in ancient Libya and traded all across the Mediterranean; its exact species is lost to history. It may have gone extinct around the second century BCE, or it may be a surviving plant that we can't identify. Leopold seems to be referring to a sunflower-like genus of North American plants which were named after the ancient crop, and are also known as rosinweeds. These, fortunately, appear to have survived to this day--or at least many individual species have. Interesting stuff.