⁶ The terms 'primeval' or 'primordial' sometimes suggested for rendering the prefix 'ur' are unsuitable in a case like this. 'Primeval plant', for instance, used by some translators of Goethe, raises the misunderstanding - to which Goethe's concept has anyhow been subject from the side of scientific botany - that by his ur-plant he had in mind some primitive, prehistoric plant, the hypothetical ancestor in the Darwinian sense of the present-day plant kingdom.