Conti's inclusion of "adianthus" ("Adiantum" in modern nomenclature) is less straightforward. The name, meaning "unmoistened" (Greek "adianton"), was taken in antiquity to refer to the fern's ability to repel water. The plant, which grew in wet places, was also called "capillus veneris", "hair of Venus," divinely dry when she emerged from the sea. Historian of medicine John M. Riddle has suggested that the "adianthus" was one of the ferns Dioscorides called "asplenon" and prescribed as a contraceptive "(atokios)". The associations of Proserpine (Persephone) and the maidenhair are alluded to by Samuel Beckett in a 1946 poem, in which the self is a Platonic cave with "capillaires", in French both "maidenhair fern" and "blood vessels".