Cuneiform law
Cuneiform law refers to any of the legal codes written in cuneiform script, that were developed and used throughout the ancient Middle East among the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Elamites, Hurrians, Kassites, and Hittites. The Code of Hammurabi is the most well-known of the cuneiform laws, but there were a number of precursor laws.
Leucospermum cuneiforme
Henrik Bernard Oldenland, the Cape's master gardener of the Dutch East India Company could have been the first to collect the wart-stemmed pincushion, when he crossed the Outeniqua Mountains near Attaqua's Kloof on an expedition in 1689. The first to describe Oldenland's pincushion was Nicolaas Laurens Burman in his book "Florae Capensis Prodromus", and he named it "Leucadendron cuneiforme" in 1768. Carl Peter Thunberg published a revision of the Proteaceae in 1781, in which he followed Carl Linnaeus in assigning all species to "Protea", and he distinguished "Protea elliptica". Joseph Knight published a book in 1809 titled "On the cultivation of the plants belonging to the natural order of Proteeae", that contained an extensive revision of the Proteaceae attributed to Richard Anthony Salisbury. Salisbury moved Thunberg's species to his new genus "Leucadendrum", calling it "Leucadendrum ellipticum". In addition he recognised two slightly different forms, calling them "Leucadendrum phyllanthifolium" and "Leucadendrum cervinum". It is assumed that Salisbury had based his review on a draft he had been studying of a paper called "On the natural order of plants called Proteaceae" that Robert Brown was to publish in 1810. Brown however, called the genus "Leucospermum" and made the new combination "Leucospermum ellipticum", and further recognised a form he called "Leucospermum attenuatum". The French botanist Jean Poiret assigned that last specimen to the genus "Protea" in 1816, making the new combination "P. attenuata". Carl Meissner describe a form in 1856, which he named "Leucospermum zeyheri". Otto Kuntze revised the genus in 1891 and called it "Leucadendron", a homonym of a name that had already been used by Linnaeus in 1753 for another group of Proteaceae, which have separate sexes and very large bracts, making the combination "Leucadendron ellipticum". Michel Gandoger finally added "Leucospermum septemdentatum" in 1913. In 1932, Henry Georges Fourcade realised a new combination, "Leucospermum phyllanthifolium", needed to be made for Salisbury's second species. Although the variation in leaf length, leaf toothing and size of the flower heads in "Leucospermum cuneiforme" is large, and distant populations may appear to be quite distinct, the characters all change gradually, so it is not possible to determine where subtaxa might start and end. Hence, John Patrick Rourke in 1970 only recognises one variable species.