Natural History — Book XVI

Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin

1| The fruit-bearing trees, and those which with their milder juices first brought pleasure to our food and taught us to mix delicacies with necessary nourishment (whether they reached those agreeable flavours of their own accord or learned them from man through grafting and union, a gift that we have bestowed even on wild beasts and birds), are all comprised in what has been said above. The next thing would have been to describe the acorn-bearing trees, which first fed the sustenance of mortals, the nurses of their needy and savage lot, were I not compelled to turn aside first by the wonder, learned from experience, at what sort of life it is, and of what kind, for those who live without any tree or any shrub.

2| We have said that in the East, beside the Ocean, a number of peoples live under this necessity. But in the north too we have seen the Chauci, who are called the Greater and the Lesser. There, in a vast movement, twice in each period of a day and a night, the Ocean pours out and is driven over an immense expanse, covering up nature's eternal dispute and leaving it doubtful whether the place [is] part of the land or of the sea.

3| There this wretched people occupy high mounds, or platforms built by hand to the height of the highest tide known by experience. With their huts set on these, they are like sailors when the waters cover the land around them, and like shipwrecked men when the waters have withdrawn, and around their hovels they hunt the fish that are escaping with the sea. It is not their lot to keep cattle or to live on milk, as their neighbours do, nor even to fight with wild beasts, since every shrub is banished far away.

4| They weave ropes of sedge and marsh rush to make nets for the fish, and they gather mud with their hands and dry it more by the wind than by the sun, and with this earth they heat their food and their own bodies, stiffened by the north wind. Their only drink is rainwater kept in pits in the forecourt of the house. And these are the peoples who, if they are conquered today by the Roman people, say that they are being enslaved! That is indeed how it is: fortune spares many as a punishment.

5| Another marvel comes from the forests. They overspread the whole remainder of Germany and add shade to its cold, and the tallest of them are not far from the Chauci mentioned above, especially around two lakes. The very shores are occupied by oaks with an extraordinary eagerness to grow; and when they are undermined by the waves or pushed over by the winds, they carry away with them vast islands held in the embrace of their roots, and so, balanced, they sail along standing upright. With the rigging of their huge branches they have often terrified our fleets, when they were driven by the waves, as if on purpose, against the prows of ships riding at anchor at night, and the ships, with no remedy at hand, had to fight a naval battle against trees.

6| In the same northern region, the vast robur trees of the Hercynian forest, untouched by the ages and born together with the world, surpass all marvels by their almost immortal lot. To leave aside other things that would lack credit, it is established that hills are raised by the thrust of the roots as they meet one another, or, where the earth has not followed them, that arches rise as high as the branches, and the branches themselves, struggling with one another, are bent into the shape of open gates, so that they let whole troops of cavalry pass through. Almost all of them are of the acorn-bearing kind, which has always been held in honour among the Romans.

7| From this come the civic crowns, the most glorious mark of a soldier's valour, but for a long time now also of the clemency of emperors, ever since, in the impiety of the civil wars, not killing a citizen came to be regarded as a merit. To these give way the mural crowns, the rampart crowns and the gold crowns, although they are ahead of them in value; to these give way also the beaked crowns, although these have been most famous down to our time in the case of two men: Marcus Varro, to whom Pompey the Great gave it for the wars against the pirates, and likewise Marcus Agrippa, to whom Caesar awarded it for the Sicilian wars, which were themselves also wars against pirates.

8| Formerly the beaks of ships fixed to the tribunal were the glory of the Forum, as though a crown had been set upon the Roman people itself. But after they began to be trampled and defiled by tribunes' seditions, after power began to be diverted from the public into private hands and to be sought by individual citizens, and the sacrosanct tribunes to make everything profane, then the beaks passed from under their feet onto the heads of citizens. Augustus gave this crown to Agrippa, but he himself received the civic crown from the human race.

9| In ancient times, indeed, a crown was given to no one but a god (which is why Homer grants one only to heaven and to a whole battle, but to no individual man, not even in a contest), and they say that it was Father Liber who first of all put one on his own head, made of ivy. Later, those sacrificing in honour of the gods took them up, the victims being crowned at the same time.

10| Most recently they have been adopted in the sacred contests too, in which even today they are not given to the victor, but it is proclaimed that his country is crowned by him. From this arose the custom of conferring them on those about to celebrate a triumph, to be dedicated in the temples, and soon of giving them at the games as well. It would be a long business, and no part of the work I have undertaken, to discuss which of the Romans first received each kind; for they knew no others than those of war. What is certain is that this nation alone has more kinds of crowns than all the others put together.

11| Romulus crowned Hostus Hostilius with a crown of leaves, because he had been the first to break into Fidenae. This man was the grandfather of King Tullus Hostilius. Publius Decius, the father, a military tribune, received a crown of leaves from the army saved by him, when Cornelius Cossus was its general as consul, in the war against the Samnites. The civic crown was at first of ilex; later one of aesculus, which is sacred to Jupiter, was preferred, and it was also varied with oak, and the tree that was available in each place was used, only the honour of the acorn being preserved.

12| Strict conditions were added, and therefore proud ones, which one may well compare with that highest crown of the Greeks, the one given under Jupiter himself, for which the victor's native city, rejoicing, breaks open its walls: the recipient must have saved a citizen and killed an enemy; the enemy must hold the place where this was done on that day; the man saved must acknowledge it (otherwise witnesses are of no use); and he must have been a citizen.

13| Saving auxiliaries confers no such distinction, even if a king is the one saved, nor does the same honor grow when a commander is preserved, since the founders wished the highest honor to be in any citizen whatever. It is permitted to use it perpetually. At the games, to rise for him as he enters, even by the senate, is the custom; the right of sitting is in the place nearest the senate, with exemption from all public duties for himself and his father and paternal grandfather.

14| Siccius Dentatus received 13 of these, as we have related in its place, Capitolinus 6, and that indeed also for the commander Servilius. Africanus was unwilling to receive one for his father at the Trebia. O manners eternal, which honored such great deeds with honor alone and, while they recommended the other crowns in gold, would not have the safety of a citizen held at a price, openly declaring that it is not right for a man to be saved even for the sake of gain!

15| On the acorn the wealth of many nations even now depends, rejoicing in peace as well. And in lack of grain, they dry them, mill them into meal and thicken it for use as bread; indeed, even today, through the Spains, acorn is served at the second course. The same is sweeter roasted in ashes. It was provided besides by a law of the Twelve Tables that it should be lawful to gather an acorn falling onto another's land.

16| The kinds of them are many. They differ in fruit, situation, sex, flavor. For the acorn of the fagus has one shape, the quercus's a different one, and the ilex's, and among the single kinds there are also differences between them. Besides, some are wild, others gentler, which hold the cultivated places. They also differ as to mountain or plain, as in sex, male and female, likewise in flavor: sweetest of all is that of the fagus, so that Cornelius Alexander reports that men besieged in the town of Chios even held out on it.

17| It is not possible to distinguish the kinds by their names, which are different in different places, since indeed we see robur and quercus commonly growing, the aesculus not everywhere, but the fourth of the same kind, which is called cerrus, is not known even over the greater part of Italy. We shall therefore distinguish by property and nature and, where the matter compels, even by Greek names.

18| The acorn of the fagus is like kernels and is enclosed in a three-cornered skin. The leaf is thin and among the smoothest, like the poplar's, turning yellow very quickly, and generally producing in the middle part, above, a tiny green berry, prickly at the tip. The fagus is most welcome to mice, and so that animal's numbers rise together with its crop; it also fattens dormice, and is sought by thrushes. The fertility of almost all trees alternates, but most of all that of the fagus.

19| The acorn, in the proper sense, is borne by the robur, quercus, aesculus, cerrus, ilex, suber. They are held in a bristly calyx that embraces them more or less according to the kinds. The leaves, except in the ilex, are heavy, fleshy, tall, with sinuous sides, and do not turn yellow when they fall, as the fagus's do, shorter or longer according to the difference of the kinds. Of the ilex there are two kinds. Of these, in Italy those not much different in leaf from olives are called milaces by some Greeks; in the provinces the ilices are aquifoliae. The acorn of either is shorter and more slender, which Homer calls aculon, and with that name sets it apart from the acorn. They say the male ilices do not bear.

20| The best and largest acorn is on the quercus, next the aesculus. For the robur has a small one, the cerrus a bitter, bristly one with a prickly calyx like the chestnut's. But on the quercus also, one is sweeter, softer in the female, denser in the male. The broad-leaved are most approved, named from this evidence. They differ among themselves in size and the thinness of the skin, and also in that under some there is a coat rough with rust, under others at once a white body.

21| That is approved too in whose acorn on both sides the extreme end along its length turns stony hard, better if this is in the bark than in the body, either only in the male. Besides, in some the shape is egg-like, in others round, in others sharper, as also the color is blacker or whiter, the latter being preferred. The bitterness is in the extremities, the middle parts sweet. The shortness or length of the stalk also makes a difference.

22| Among the trees themselves, the tree bearing the largest is called hemeris, shorter, leafy in a circle and often hollowed in the armpits of its branches. The quercus has stronger wood and more incorruptible, branching itself, yet taller and thicker in the trunk; but the tallest is the aegilops, fond of uncultivated ground.

23| Next to this is the broad-leaved in height, but less useful for building and charcoal: when hewn it is liable to faults, for which reason it is used whole; the charcoal is useful only in the workshops of the bronzesmiths, for economy, since, dying at once when the blast ceases, it is more often rekindled, and for the rest it is very full of sparks. The same is better from young trees. Heaps are covered with clay, the fresh billets set together; when the pile is kindled, the hardening calyx is pricked with poles and so lets out its sweat.

24| The worst for both charcoal and timber is that called haliphloeos, which has a very thick bark and trunk, usually hollow and spongy. No other of this kind rots, even while alive. Moreover it is very often struck by lightning, though it does not excel in height. For that reason it is held unlawful to use its wood even for sacrifices. The same has a rare acorn and, when it has borne, a bitter one, which no animal would touch except swine, and not even these if they have other fodder. This too is among the remaining matters of neglected religion, that sacrifice is made with dead charcoal.

25| The acorn of the fagus makes a pig cheerful, its flesh easily cooked and light and useful to the stomach; that of the ilex makes a pig narrow, glossy, lean; that of the quercus makes it heavy, spread out, it being itself the heaviest and the sweetest of the acorns. Next to this Nigidius reports the cerrea, and says that no other makes firmer flesh, but it is hard. Pigs are upset by the ilex acorn unless it is given by degrees. This one falls last. The flesh becomes spongy from the aesculus, the robur, the suber.

26| All that bear acorns bear also the gall, and the acorn in alternate years, but the hemeris gives the best gall and the most suitable for finishing hides; the broad-leaved one is like this, but lighter and much less approved. It also bears a black one (for there are two kinds); this is more useful for dyeing wools.

27| The gall is born, moreover, as the sun is leaving the Twins, always bursting out entire by night. The whiter kind grows in a single day, and if the heat catches it, it dries up at once and does not reach its proper growth, that is, to have a kernel of the size of a bean. The black remains green longer and grows so that it sometimes fills the size of an apple. The best is the Commagene, the worst from the robur. The sign of the latter is that the cavities show through.

28| The robur besides fruit produces many other things. For it bears both kinds of gall and certain things like mulberries, were they not different in dry hardness, often imitating the head of a bull, which contain a fruit like the kernels of an olive. There grow on it also little balls not unlike nuts, having inside soft tufts, suitable for the wicks of lamps. For they burn even without oil, as does the black gall. It bears also another useless little ball with hair, yet in spring time of a honeyed juice.

29| The armpits of its branches also produce little balls adhering by the body, not by a stalk, whitening at the navels, for the rest scattered with black variegation; the middle ones have the color of kermes, and when opened there is a black emptiness. Sometimes it produces pumice-like growths also, and little balls rolled up from the leaves, and in the veins of the leaves watery kernels, whitening and translucent as long as they are soft, in which gnats also are born. They ripen in the manner of [….]

30| The robora bear also the cachrys; so the little ball is called in medicine, having a burning power. It is produced also on the abies, larix, picea, linden, nut, plane, after the leaves have fallen, lasting through winter. It contains a kernel like the pine nuts'. This grows in winter and opens in spring. The whole little ball falls when the leaves begin to grow.

31| So multifarious are they, so many things besides the acorn do the robora bring forth; but also boleti and suilli (the latest provocations of the gullet), which grow about the roots, those of the quercus most approved, those of the robur and the cypress and the pine harmful. The robora bear also mistletoe and honey, as Hesiod states, and it is agreed that honeyed dews falling from the sky, as we have said, settle on no other foliage more. And it is certain that the ash of burnt robur is nitrous.

32| Yet the ilex challenges all these gifts of it with the coccus alone. This is a grain, and at first like a scab of the shrub, of the small holly ilex. They call it cusculium. It gives the poor of Spain a second payment of tribute. We have given its use and method where we mentioned the conchylium. It is also produced in Galatia, Africa, Pisidia, Cilicia, and the worst in Sardinia.

33| The acorn-bearing trees of the Gauls bear agaricum especially. It is a fungus, white, fragrant, effective in antidotes, growing on the tops of trees, shining at night. This is its sign, by which it is plucked in the dark. Of the acorn-bearing trees only the one called aegilops bears dry rags, gray with a mossy fleece, not only on the bark but hanging from the branches in a cubit's size, fragrant, as we said among the unguents.

34| The suber is a very small tree, with a very poor and sparse acorn, the bark alone being its fruit, very thick and growing again, and even spread out up to ten feet on every side. Its use is chiefly for the anchor-ropes of ships and the drag-nets of fishermen and for the stoppers of casks, besides for women's winter footwear. For which reason the Greeks not inelegantly call it the tree of bark. There are some who call it the female ilex and, where the ilex does not grow, use the suber instead of it, especially in wagon-makers' workshops, as around Elis and Lacedaemon. It does not grow in all Italy, nor at all in Gaul.

35| The bark also of the fagus, linden, abies, picea is of great use among country people. They make from it vessels and baskets and certain wider things for carrying harvests and vintages, and the roofs of huts. A scout writes to the generals on fresh bark, cutting the letters on its sappy side. And in a certain use of sacred rites the bark of the fagus is held sacred. But the tree itself does not last.

36| Shingle is most suitable from the robur, next from other acorn-bearing trees and the fagus, easiest of all from those that bear resin, but it lasts least except that from pine. Cornelius Nepos states that Rome was roofed with shingle up to the war of Pyrrhus, for 470 years.

37| Certainly it was distinguished by the marks of the woods: the Jupiter of the Fagutal, even now where there was a grove of fagus, the Querquetulan gate, the hill from which osiers were sought, and so many groves, some of them twin. Quintus Hortensius the dictator, when the plebs had seceded to the Janiculum, carried a law in an aesculetum, that what they had ordered should bind all the Quirites.

38| Foreign then seemed, since they were not suburban, the pinus and abies and all that produce pitch. Of these we shall now speak, at the same time that the whole origin of seasoning wines may be known, those that bear in Asia or the east having been spoken of before. Pitch in Europe is borne by six kinds of related trees. Of these the pinus and the pinaster have a leaf in the manner of a hair, very fine and long, pointed with a sharp tip. The pinus bears the least resin, and sometimes the very nuts of which we have spoken, and scarcely deserves to be ascribed to the kind.

39| The pinaster is nothing other than a wild pinus, lower in height and branching from the middle, whereas the pinus does so at the top. It gives more abundant resin, in the way we shall tell. It grows also on plains. Most think that along the coast of Italy these same trees are those which they call tibuli by another name, but slender and more compact and without knots, for the use of Liburnian ships, with almost no resin.

40| The picea loves mountains and cold, a funereal tree, set at doors as a sign of mourning and green on pyres, yet now also taken into houses for the ease of its clipping. It pours out the most resin, with white beads forming among it, so like frankincense that when mixed they cannot be told apart by sight; hence the fraud of the Seplasia. In all these kinds the leaves are short,

41| but thicker and hard, as in cypresses. The branches of the picea, moderate, cling to the sides almost from the root like arms. Similarly the abies, sought for ships, has its place on the heights of the mountains, as though it had fled the seas, and no other shape.

42| Its timber, however, is chief for beams and very many works of life. Resin in it is a fault, though it is what the picea yields, and it sweats a little at times by the sun's touch. On the other hand the timber, which is most beautiful in the abies, in the picea serves for split shingles and casks and a few other sawn works.

43| The fifth kind has the same situation, the same appearance. It is called larix. Its timber is far superior, incorrupt through ages, stubborn against moisture, reddish besides, and sharper in odor. A somewhat larger quantity of liquor bursts from it, of honey color and stickiness, never hardening.

44| The sixth kind is the taeda, properly so called, more abundant in sap than the rest, sparser and more liquid than the picea, welcome for the flames and light of sacred rites also. These, the male ones at least, bear also that which the Greeks call syce, of a very heavy odor. It is a disease of the larix that it becomes taeda.

45| All these kinds, however, when kindled, with immoderate soot suddenly spit out charcoal with a crackling of eruption and fling it far, except the larix, which neither burns nor makes charcoal nor is consumed by the force of fire in any other way than stones are. All these are always green and are not easily distinguished in the foliage even by experts; so great is the mixture of their births. But the picea is less tall than the larix;

46| the latter is thicker and lighter in bark, more hairy in leaf, richer and denser, more softly bent; but the leaves of the picea are sparser and drier and thinner and chillier, and the whole is rougher and drenched with resin, the wood more like the abies. The larix does not sprout again when its roots are burned, the picea does, as happened on Lesbos when the Pyrrhaean wood was burned. There are still other differences in sex within the kinds themselves:

47| the male is shorter and harder, the female taller, with richer leaves, simple and not stiff. The wood in males is hard and twisted in the carpenter's work, in females softer, a public distinction in axes. These in whatever kind detect the male, since they are rejected and settle more roughly, and are pulled out with more difficulty. The timber itself is shriveled and blacker in males.

48| Of the larix around Ida in the Troad there is another difference too, mountain and maritime. For in Macedonia and Arcadia and around Elis they exchange the names, and the authors do not agree what they ascribe to each kind. We distinguish these things by the Roman judgment. The abies is the largest of all, and the female even more extended, softer and more useful in timber, rounder as a tree, dense with a feathery leaf, so that it lets no showers through, and more cheerful on the whole.

49| From the branches of these kinds, nuts like little panicles hang, compacted in scales, except in the larix. These in the male abies have kernels at the foremost part, but not in the female. In the picea, however, the whole panicles, smaller and more slender, have kernels, very small and black, for which reason the Greeks call it phthiropoeon. In the same, the nuts in males are more compressed and less dewy with resin.

50| Like these still in appearance, lest anything be omitted, is the taxus, least green and slender, gloomy and dire, without sap, alone of all of them bearing berries. The male has a harmful fruit; indeed a deadly poison lies in the berries, especially in Spain, and it has been found that traveling vessels for wine made of it in Gaul were deadly.

51| Sextius says that this is called milax by the Greeks and that in Arcadia it is so instantly poisonous that those who fall asleep under it or take food there die. There are some who say that the poisons from it were called taxica, which we now call toxica, with which arrows are dipped. It has been found to become harmless if a bronze nail is driven into the tree itself.

52| Liquid pitch in Europe is boiled from taeda, for fortifying ships and for many other uses. Its wood, cut up, is heated in furnaces with fire placed around outside on every side. The first sweat flows like water in a channel. This in Syria is called cedrium, which has such force that in Egypt the bodies of dead men, drenched with it, are preserved.

53| The next liquor, already thicker, pours out pitch. This again, thrown into bronze vats and thickened with vinegar as with rennet, received the name Bruttian, useful only for jars and other vessels, differing from other pitch in stickiness, likewise in ruddy color and in that it is richer than all the rest. That other is made from the resin of the picea, collected with boiling stones in troughs of strong robur, or, if there are no troughs, in a heap of piled wood, as in the use of charcoal.

54| This is added to wine, pounded in the manner of meal, blacker in color. The same resin, if it is boiled down more gently with water and strained, becomes sticky and reddish in color and is called stillaticia. For this purpose the faults of the resin and the bark are generally set aside. The tempering for crapula is different. For the raw flower of the resin, torn off with much splinter, thin and short, is cut small on a sieve. Then boiling water is poured over it until it is boiled down.

55| The rich pressing of this becomes the choice resin, and it is rare, and found only in a few places of subalpine Italy, suited to physicians. Of white resin they boil a congius in 2 of rainwater. Others think it more useful to boil it without water on a slow fire for a whole day, at any rate in a vessel of white bronze; likewise the terebinthina in a pan on hot ash, preferring this to the rest. Next is that from the lentisk.

56| It must not be omitted that among the same people the pitch scraped from sea-going ships with its wax is called zopissa, life leaving nothing untried, and it is much more effective for all things for which pitches and resins are of benefit, evidently with the callus of salt added.

57| The picea is opened on the sunny side, not by a gash but by the wound of removed bark, at most with a gap of two feet, so that it stands at least a cubit from the ground. Nor is the body itself spared, as in the rest, since the splinter is in the yield. But this nearest part is praised; higher up, it brings bitterness. Afterward all the moisture from the whole tree flows together into the sore.

58| So also in the taeda. When this has ceased to flow, it is opened in a similar way on another side, and then on another. Afterward the whole tree is cut down and its pith burned. So also in Syria they strip the bark from the terebinth, there indeed from branches and roots also, since the resin from those parts is condemned. In Macedonia they burn the male larix, but of the female only the roots.

59| Theopompus wrote that in the land of the Apolloniatae a fossil pitch is found, not worse than the Macedonian. The best pitch everywhere comes from sunny places with a northern aspect; from shaded places it is rougher and carries a rank smell; in a cold winter it is worse and less abundant and discolored.

60| Some think that in mountainous places it becomes better in abundance and color and sweeter, more pleasant also in odor, while it is resin, but when boiled down yields less pitch, since it goes off into whey, and that the trees themselves are slighter than on the plains, but both these and those are less fruitful in fair weather. Some give their yield in the year next after the cutting, others in the second, some in the third. The wound, moreover, is filled with resin, not with bark or a scar, which in this tree does not close.

61| Among these kinds some have made the sappinus a separate one, since it is grown from the kinship of these, such as was spoken of in the kernels, and they call the lowest parts of the same tree taedae, though that tree is nothing other than the picea, its wildness a little softened by planting, while the sappinus becomes timber by a kind of felling, as we shall teach.

62| For the sake of timber nature produced the remaining trees, and most abundantly the fraxinus. It is tall and round, and itself feathery in leaf, and greatly ennobled by the proclamation of Homer and the spear of Achilles. Its wood is useful for very many things; that indeed which is made on Ida in the Troad is so like the cedar that it deceives buyers when the bark is removed.

63| The Greeks made two kinds of it: a long one without knots, and another short, harder and darker, with laurel leaves. They call the bumelia in Macedonia the largest and toughest. Others have divided them by situation, for the one of the plain is curly, they say, the mountain one dense.

64| The Greeks reported that their leaves are deadly to beasts of burden, harmless to the rest of the ruminants; in Italy they do not harm even beasts of burden. Against serpents, however, the juice pressed out for drinking, and laid on the sore, is found to be a help as nothing else is, and so great is the force that a serpent will not touch even the morning or evening shadows of that tree, when they are longest, so does it flee from it afar. We report from experience that if fire and a serpent are enclosed by its foliage, the serpent flees into the fire rather than to the fraxinus. A marvelous kindness of nature: the fraxinus flowers before the serpents come out, and does not drop its leaves until they have gone into hiding.

65| In the tilia the male and female differ in every way. For the timber of the male is hard and reddish and knotty and more fragrant, its bark too thicker and, when stripped, inflexible. It bears neither seed nor flower as the female does, which is thicker in the tree and surpasses it in white timber. It is a marvel in this tree that the fruit is touched by no animal, and that the sap of the leaves and bark is sweet. Between bark and wood are thin coats of manifold membrane, from which are called the bonds of the tilia, and the thinnest of them philyra, famous for the ribbons of crowns, in honor among the ancients. The timber feels no shipworm, of quite moderate height, but useful.

66| The acer is of almost the same size, second to citrus in the elegance and fineness of its works. There are several kinds of it: the white, of special whiteness, is called Gallic, growing in Italy beyond the Po and beyond the Alps. Another kind has a curly spread of spots, which when it was outstanding took its name from the likeness to the tails of peacocks, chiefly in Histria and Raetia. From the cheaper kind it is called crassivenium.

67| The Greeks distinguish by situation, for the one of the plain, they say, is white and not curly (which they call glinon), but the mountain one is curlier and harder, and yet from the male is curlier for more elegant works; a third kind, the zygia, is reddish, with splitting wood and a livid, rough bark. Some prefer that this be of a kind of its own, and call it in Latin carpinus.

68| The most beautiful, however, is the bruscum, and the molluscum is by far more excellent still. Both are a burl of that tree, the bruscum more twisted and curly, the molluscum more simply scattered, and if it could attain the size of tables it would doubtless be preferred to citrus; as it is, it is seen within the compass of writing tablets and the frames or plates of couches, in rare use. From the bruscum are made also tables that blacken.

69| A burl is also found on the alder, so much the worse as the alder itself is distant from the acer. The males of the acer flower first. Moreover those born in dry places are preferred to those in wet, as with the fraxinus. Beyond the Alps there is a tree most like the white acer in its timber, which is called staphylodendron. It bears pods and in them kernels with the flavor of a hazelnut.

70| Of timber, indeed, the first in honor is that of the box, which rarely curls and only from the root, of the [….] and is of smooth timber, but commendable for a certain toughness and hardness and paleness, and the tree itself also for topiary work. It has three kinds: the Gallic, which is allowed to run up into cones and a taller extent. The oleastrum, condemned in every use, gives out a heavy odor. The third kind they call ours, softened, as I believe, from the wild by planting, more spreading and with the thickness of walls, always green and clippable.

71| The box is most abundant on the Pyrenean and Cytorian mountains and in the Berecyntian tract, thickest in Corsica, with a flower not to be scorned, which is the cause of bitterness in honey. The seed is hateful to all living creatures. Nor on Olympus of Macedonia is it more slender, but short. It loves cold and sunny places. In fire too it has a hardness like iron's, being useful neither for flame nor for charcoal.

72| Between these and the fruit-bearing trees, in timber and in friendship with vines, the elm is taken. The Greeks knew two kinds of it: the mountain one, which is the larger, and the plain one, which is shrubby. Italy calls the tallest Atiniae and of these prefers the dry ones, those not irrigated; the second kind is the Gallic; the third ours, with denser leaf and more numerous leaves from the same stalk; the fourth wild. The Atiniae do not bear samara (so the seed of the elm is called), and all spring up from shoots of the roots, the others from seed.

73| Now that the most celebrated trees have been spoken of, some things must be indicated about them all in general. Mountains are loved by the cedar, larix, taeda and the rest from which resin is produced, likewise aquifolia, box, ilex, juniper, terebinth, poplar, ornus, carpinus. There is on the Apennine also a shrub called cotinus, notable for linen dyeing in the color of the conchylium.

74| Mountains and valleys are cherished by the abies, robur, chestnuts, tilia, ilex, cornel. Watery mountains are enjoyed by the acer, fraxinus, sorb, tilia, cherry. Plum, pomegranates, wild olives, walnut, mulberries and elder are seldom seen on mountains. Cornel, hazel, quercus, ornus, acer, fraxinus, fagus, carpinus also come down to the plains. And into mountainous ground go the elm, apple, pear, laurel, myrtle, the blood-red shrubs, ilex, and the brooms that grow for dyeing garments. The sorb rejoices in cold, but still more the betulla.

75| This is a Gallic tree of marvelous whiteness and slenderness, terrible in the rods of magistrates, flexible too for hoops and for the ribs of baskets. The Gauls boil bitumen from it. To the same places the thorn also is a companion, most auspicious for wedding torches, since the shepherds who carried off the Sabine women made them from it, as Masurius states. Now the carpinus and hazel are most familiar for torches.

76| Waters are hated by cypresses, walnuts, chestnuts, laburnum. This too is an Alpine tree, not commonly known, with hard and white timber, whose flower, a cubit in length, bees do not touch. It also hates what is called Jupiter's beard, which in topiary work is clippable and thick into roundness, with a silver leaf.

77| Only in watery places grow willows, alders, poplars, siler, privets, most useful for dice, likewise the vaccinia sown in Italy for bird-catching, but in Gaul even for dyeing purple, for the garments of slaves. All that are common to mountains and plains are larger and more beautiful to see in the plains, but better in fruit, and curlier in timber on the mountains, except apples and pears.

78| Besides, in some trees the leaves fall, others are green with a perpetual head of foliage, a difference which the earlier subject must precede. For there are some trees wholly wild, some more civilized, since it pleases to distinguish them by these names, and those which, mild, help humanity more by fruit or some gift and the service of shade may not improperly be called urban.

79| Of this kind the leaves do not fall in the olive, laurel, palm, myrtle, cypress, pines, ivy, rhododendron, and, although it is called a herb, sabina. The rhododendron, as the name shows, comes from the Greeks. Others called it nerium, others rhododaphne, evergreen in its foliage, like the rose in likeness, shrubby in its stalks. It is poison to beasts of burden and goats and sheep, the same being a remedy to man against the venoms of serpents.

80| Of the wild kind the leaves do not fall in the abies, larix, pinaster, juniper, cedar, terebinth, box, ilex, aquifolium, suber, taxus, tamarisk. Between the two kinds are the andrachle in Greece and everywhere the unedo; for their other leaves fall except on the tops. They do not fall also, in the kind of shrubs, in a certain cedar, in the bramble, the reed. In the territory of Thurii,

81| where Sybaris was, there was seen from the city itself a single quercus that never dropped its leaves nor budded before midsummer; and this is marvelous, handed down by Greek authors, afterward passed over in silence among us. For so great is the power of places that around Memphis in Egypt and at Elephantine in the Thebaid the leaves of no trees fall, not even of vines.

82| All the others, besides those mentioned (for to enumerate them is long), shed their leaves, and it has been noticed that only the thin and broad and soft ones wither, while those that do not fall are thick with callus and narrow. The definition is false that the leaves do not fall from those whose sap is richer. For who can understand that in the ilex? Timaeus the mathematician thinks they fall when the sun passes through Scorpio, by the force of the star and a certain poison of the air. Why then the same cause does not prevail against all, we may rightly wonder.

83| In most the leaves fall in autumn, some lose them later and prolong the delay into the winters, and it makes no difference whether they budded earlier, inasmuch as some bud first and are stripped among the last, like almonds, fraxini, elders, whereas the mulberry buds last and drops its leaves with the first.

84| Great also in this is the power of the soil. They fall earlier in dry, lean ground, and earlier in an old tree, in many even before the fruit ripens, as in the late fig and in the winter pear and apple, and the pomegranate is a fruit seen on the mother tree only in that state. Nor in those that always keep their foliage do the same leaves last, new ones growing up in the armpits; then the old ones wither, which happens most about the solstices.

85| The uniformity of leaves remains in each kind, except in the poplar, the ivy, the croton, which we said is also called cici. Of the poplar there are three kinds: white and black, and the one called Libyan, smallest in leaf and blackest, and most praised for the fungi that spring up on it.

86| The white one is two-colored in leaf, whitening above, green on the lower side. In youth this and the black and the croton are of rounded circumference, the older ones run out into angles. On the contrary, the angled leaves of the ivy are rounded. From the leaves of poplars a very great down flies off, white and radiating; they whiten with the more numerous leaves like fleece. The leaves of pomegranates and almonds are reddish.

87| Marvelous above all is what happens to the elm and linden and olive and white poplar and willow. For their leaves are turned around after the solstice, nor is the completed course of the star understood by any surer proof.

88| There is also a general difference in all leaves themselves. For the lower part from the earth is green with a grassy color, and on that side they are smoother; they have their veins and callus and joints on the upper side, with incisions below, like a human hand. Those of the olive are whiter above and less smooth, likewise those of ivy. But the leaves of all gape daily toward the sun, wishing the lower parts to be warmed. The upper part of all has some down, however small, which in other countries is wool.

89| In the east it has been said that strong ropes are made from palm leaves, and that they are more useful in moisture. And among us too leaves are plucked from palms at harvest. Of these the better are those that have not divided themselves. They are dried under cover for four days each, then spread in the sun and left out at night until they dry to whiteness, afterward split for work.

90| Broadest in the fig, vine, plane; narrow in the myrtle, pomegranate, olive; hairlike in pine, cedar; prickly in the aquifolium and the kind of ilices (for in junipers a thorn takes the place of a leaf); fleshy in the cypress, tamarisk; thickest in the alder; long in the reed, willow, palm, and double ones too; circular in the pear, pointed in the apple, angled in the ivy, divided in the plane, notched in the manner of combs in picea and abies, sinuous around the whole circumference in the robur, spiny in skin in the bramble.

91| Biting in some, as in nettles, pricking in pine, picea, abies, larix, cedar, aquifolia; with a short stalk in the olive, ilex, long in vines, trembling in poplars, and these alone among them rattling. Even in the fruit itself, in a certain kind of apple, small leaves spring out from the middle, sometimes even in pairs; besides, in some around the branches, in others also at the tip of the branches, in the robur even on the trunk itself.

92| Then they are dense or sparse, and the broad always sparser. Arranged in the myrtle, hollow in the box, disordered in fruit trees, several coming out of the same stalk in apples and pears, branchy in the elm and cytisus. To which Cato adds the fallen leaves of poplar and quercus, ordering them to be given to animals not too dry, to oxen indeed also those of fig and ilex and ivy. They are given also from reed and laurel. In the sorb all fall together, in the rest gradually. And so far on leaves.

93| The yearly order of nature, however, stands thus: the first is conception, when the west wind begins to blow, from about the sixth day ahead of the Ides of February. Through this the things that live are wedded from the earth, since even the mares in Spain, as we have said. This is the generative breath of the world, so called from fostering, as some have thought.

94| It blows from the equinoctial west, beginning the spring. The countrymen call it catlitio, nature being eager to receive seeds and the breath bearing life to all crops. They conceive on various days and, each according to its own nature, some at once, like animals, others more slowly and bear their offspring heavy for longer, which is therefore called germination. They give birth, however, when they flower, and that flower consists of ruptured little sacs; the rearing is in the fruit.

95| This is also the germination, the toil of trees; the flower is the sign of full spring and of the reborn year; the flower is the joy of trees. Then they show themselves new and other than they are, then in varied paintings of colors they run riot even to rivalry. But this is denied to most; for not all flower, and some are sad and have no feeling of the joys of the years. For neither ilex, picea, larix nor pinus is gladdened by any flower or promises the yearly birthdays of fruits by a many-colored messenger, nor do figs and wild figs; for they produce fruit at once instead of flower. In figs there are also marvelous abortions that never ripen.

96| Nor do junipers flower. Some report two kinds of them: one that flowers and does not bear, while the one that does not flower bears at once, with berries just born, which cling for two years. But that is false, and in all of these the look is always hard. So too for many men fortune is without a flower.

97| All, however, put out buds, even those that do not flower, and there is great difference of places, since of the same kind those in marshy ground bud earlier, then those of the plain, last of all those in the woods, while of themselves the wild pears are slower than the rest. At the first west wind the cornel, next the laurel, and a little before the equinox the tilia and acer; among the first, however, the poplar, elm, willow, alder, nuts.

98| The plane also hurries. The rest, when spring is about to begin: aquifolium, terebinth, paliurus, chestnut, acorn-bearers; the apple with a late bud, the suber the slowest. In some the budding is doubled, from too great richness of soil or the allurement of an inviting sky, which happens more in the herbs of the cornfields. In trees, however, excessive budding loses its milk.

99| There are other natural seasons for some besides the spring one, which depend on their own stars (the account of which will be given more fittingly in the third volume from this): the winter one when the Eagle rises, the summer one at the rising of the Dog Star, the third at that of Arcturus. Some think these two are common to every tree, but that they are felt most in the fig, vine, pomegranates, giving as the cause that in Thessaly and Macedonia the greatest number of figs comes out then. This reasoning, however, is most apparent in Egypt.

100| And the remaining trees, as soon as they have begun, continue their budding; the robur and abies and larix interrupt it in three parts and put out three buds. For this reason they also scatter the scales of their bark three times, which happens to all trees in budding, since the bark of the pregnant is burst. The first of these is at the beginning of spring, for about 15 days. They bud again as the sun is passing through the Twins. So it comes about that the first tips appear pushed forward by those that follow, in a jointed growth.

101| The third of the same is from the solstice, very short, not longer than seven days each, and then too the jointing of the growing tips is clearly seen. The vine alone brings forth twice, first when it puts out the grape, again when it sets it in order. In those that do not flower, there is only the bearing and the ripening.

102| Some flower immediately in the budding and hasten in it, but ripen slowly, like the vine. Some in a late budding flower and ripen quickly, like the mulberry, which buds last of the cultivated trees and not until the cold is over, and on that account is called the wisest of trees. But when it has begun, the whole budding bursts out so much that it is completed in a single night, even with a noise.

103| Of those that conceive in winter when the Eagle rises, as we have said, the almond is first of all to flower, in the month of January, and in March ripens its fruit. Next to it flower the Armenian, then the tubures and the early ones, the former foreign, the latter forced; in the order of nature, among the wild ones the first is the elder, which has much pith, and the male cornel, which has none; of the cultivated, the apple, and a little afterward, so that it can be seen at the same time, the pear and cherry and plum.

104| The laurel follows, after it the cypress, then the pomegranate, the figs. Both vines and olives bud when these are already flowering, and conceive at the rising of the Pleiades. This star is theirs. The vine flowers at the solstice, and the olive, which begins a little later. All lose their flower in seven days, not sooner, some later, but none in more than twice seven, and all within the eighth day before the Ides of July, before the coming of the etesian winds.

105| Nor does the fruit follow at once in some. For the cornel about the solstices gives first a white fruit, afterward a blood-red. Of that kind the female bears after autumn berries that are sour and untastable to all living creatures, and is spongy in its wood and useless, whereas the male is among the strongest and hardest. So great a difference arises from sex in the same kind.

106| And the terebinth gives its seed at harvests, and so do the acer and fraxinus; nuts and apples and pears do so in autumn, except the winter or early ones; the acorn-bearers still later, at the setting of the Pleiades; the aesculus only in autumn; and at the beginning of winter some kinds of apple and pear, and the suber. The abies flowers with the color of saffron about the solstice and gives its seed after the setting of the Pleiades. The pinus and picea anticipate it in budding by about 15 days, but give their seed likewise after the Pleiades.

107| The citreae and juniper and ilex are held to bear all the year round, and new fruit hangs on them with last year's. In greatest admiration, however, is the pinus: it has fruit ripening, it has fruit that will come to ripeness in the next year, and then a third. Nor does any tree promise itself more eagerly; in whatever month a nut is plucked from it, in that same one another ripens; so it is dispensed that there is no month in which they do not ripen. Those that have separated themselves on the tree itself are called azaniae and harm the rest unless they are pulled off.

108| Alone of trees these bear no fruit, that is, not even seed: the tamarisk (which grows only for brooms), and also the poplar, the alder, the Atinian elm, the alaternus, whose leaves are between those of the ilex and the olive. Those are considered unlucky and condemned by religion which are never sown and bear no fruit. Cremutius states that a tree from which Phyllis hanged herself never grows green. Those that produce gum open after budding; gum thickens only when the fruit is taken off.

109| Young trees lack fruit while they grow. The trees that most easily lose their fruit before it ripens are the palm, fig, almond, apple, pear, and also the pomegranate, which loses its flower even from excessive dews and frosts. For this reason they bend its branches, lest, standing upright, they receive and hold the harmful moisture. The pear and almond, even if it does not rain but the sky becomes southerly or cloudy, lose their flower and first fruits if such days occur after they have flowered. The willow, however, loses its seed most quickly,

110| before it feels ripeness at all, and for this reason was called by Homer fruit-destroying. A later age with its own wickedness interpreted this saying, since it is agreed that the seed of the willow is a drug of sterility for a woman. But in this also nature, providing for it, gave a seed rather carelessly to a tree that grows easily and from a planted cutting. One kind, however, is reported to bring its seed to ripeness, in the island of Crete, at the very descent of the cave of Jupiter, hard and woody, of the size of a chickpea.

111| Some are made unfruitful by a fault of place, as in Paros the wood Cende, which bears nothing. Persian trees on Rhodes only flower. This difference arises also from sex, as in those where the males do not bear; some reverse this and report that those which bear are the males. Density also causes sterility.

112| Of those that bear, some bear both on the sides of the branches and on the tops, as the pear, pomegranate, fig, myrtle. For the rest the nature is the same as in cereals. For in these the ear is born at the top, pulses on the sides. The palm alone, as has been said, has its fruit in spathes, hanging in clusters.

113| In the rest the fruit lies under the leaf, to be protected, except in the fig, whose leaf is the largest and shadiest and therefore lies above the fruit. In it alone the leaf is born later than the fruit. A notable thing is reported in a certain kind of Cilicia, Cyprus, Hellas: that figs are born under the leaf, the unripe ones after the leaf. The fig has early ones too, which at Athens they call prodromoi, especially in the Laconian kind.

114| There are also two-bearing ones among the same; in the island of Ceos the wild figs are three-bearing; the following crop is called out by the first fruit, the third by the next. In this way figs are caprificated. And wild figs are born from opposite leaves. Some apples and pears are two-bearing, as are the early ones. The wild apple is two-bearing. Its second fruit comes after Arcturus, most in sunny places.

115| There are even vines that are three-bearing, which on this account they call mad, since on them some fruit ripens, some swells, some flowers. Marcus Varro states that there was a three-bearing vine at Smyrna by the Matroon and an apple tree in the territory of Consentia. This happens continually in the territory of Venesum in Africa, of which more elsewhere. Such is the richness of the soil. The cypress too is three-bearing. Its berries are picked in January, May and September, and it bears three sizes of them.

116| There is, moreover, a peculiar difference in the very trees, even when loaded. The arbutus, quercus are more fertile in their top part; walnuts, the mariscan figs in the lower. All, the more they age, the earlier they bear, and in sunny places and in earth not rich. All wild ones are slower. Some of these do not ripen at all. Likewise those that are ploughed around or trenched round ripen faster than the neglected. These are also more fertile.

117| There is still a difference of age. For the almond and pear are most fertile in old age, as are the acorn-bearers and a certain kind of figs, while the rest in youth, ripening more slowly, which is most remarked in vines. For in the older ones the wine is better, in the young more abundant. The apple, however, ages most quickly and in old age bears worse fruit. For both smaller fruits come, and are liable to worms; indeed they are born on the tree itself.

118| The fig alone of all trees is treated medically for the sake of ripening in its fruit, and now indeed even by portents, since out-of-season fruit fetches higher prices. All, however, age sooner when over-fertile. Some also die at once, when the weather has coaxed out all their fertility, which happens most to vines.

119| On the contrary the mulberry ages most slowly, laboring least in its fruit, and slowly also those whose timber is curly, such as the palm, acer, poplar. And those that are ploughed around age sooner, the wild ones most slowly. And in general every care adds fertility, fertility adds old age. For that reason such trees also flower early and bud early, and in general become precocious, since all weakness obeys the sky more.

120| Many produce more things, as we said of the acorn-bearers, among which the laurel its grapes, and most of all the sterile one, which bears nothing else; for that reason it is thought by some to be male. The hazels also bear catkins with a compact callus, useful for nothing; but the ilices bear most, for both their own seed and a grain, which they call crataegum, and from the north mistletoe, from the south hyphear (of which more shortly), and sometimes they have four things together. Some trees are simple, having one trunk from the root and frequent branches, as olives, fig, vine. Some are of the shrubby kind, as paliurus, myrtle, likewise the hazelnut, which indeed is better and more copious in fruit when dispersed into several branches. In some there are no branches at all, as in the cultivated kind of box, and the lotus from overseas. Some are forked and even spread into five parts, some divided but not branching, as elders, some undivided but branching, as piceae. In some the order of branches is regular, as in the picea, abies, in others unarranged, as in the robur, apple, pear. And in the abies the division is upright and the branches tend toward the sky, not bent to the sides. It is marvelous that when their tops are cut off it dies, but when wholly lopped it endures. And if it is cut below where the branches were, what remains lives, but if only the top is removed, the whole dies. Others have arms from the root, as the elm, others are branching at the top, as the pinus, the Greek bean, which at Rome, from the sweetness of its fruit, they call the lotus, wild indeed, but almost of the nature of cherries. It is especially sought for houses for the wantonness of its branches, which with a short trunk spread out the widest shade and often leap across into neighboring houses. No shade is shorter, nor do its branches take the sun away in winter when the leaves fall. In none is the bark more pleasant or more softly attractive to the eyes, in none are the branches longer and stronger or more numerous, so that one may say that they are as many trees. With the bark they dye hides, with the root wools. Apples have a peculiar kind. For they present the muzzles of wild beasts, with the smaller ones clinging to one very large. Some branches are blind, which do not bud, which happens by nature if they have not grown strong, or by punishment, when a scar has dulled the pruned ones. What is the nature of the divided ones on a branch is that of the vine in the eye, of the reed in the joint. The thicker parts of all are nearest the ground.

125| In length grow the abies, larix, palm, cypress, elm and any single-stemmed tree. Of the branching ones the cherry is found even in beams of 40 cubits, of equal thickness of two cubits throughout. Some at once scatter into branches, as apples. The bark in some is thin, as in the laurel, tilia, in others thick, as in the robur, in others smooth, as in the apple, fig; the same is rough in the robur, palm; in all in old age more wrinkled. In some it bursts of itself, as in the vine, in some it even falls, as in the apple, the arbutus; it is fleshy in the suber, poplar; membranous in the vine, the reed; like bast in the cherry; manifold in coats in vines, the tilia, abies; in some simple, as in the fig, the reed. There is also great difference of roots: copious in the fig, robur, plane; short and narrow in the apple; single in the abies, larix; for they rest on single ones, though small ones are scattered to the sides; thicker in the laurel and unequal, likewise in the olive, which also has branching ones. In the robur they are fleshy. Robora drive theirs into the depth; if indeed we believe Virgil, the aesculus descends in root as much as it rises in body. In the olive and apples and cypresses they run along the surface of the turf; in some by a straight course, as in the laurel, olive, in others winding, as in the fig. These are bristling with small hairlike fibers, and so is the abies and many of the wild trees, from which mountain people, plucking the very fine threads, weave handsome flasks and other vessels. Some have said that roots descend no deeper than the heat of the sun warms, and that this depends on the nature of the place, thinner or thicker, which I think false. Among authors, at least, it is found that the sapling of an abies, when it was transplanted, was of eight cubits in depth and was not dug up whole, but broken off. The greatest in extent and fullness is the root of the citrus, next to it of the plane, of the robur and the acorn-bearers. In some the root is longer-lived than the part above ground, as in the laurel. Therefore when it has withered with the trunk, cut down it even sprouts more luxuriantly. Some think that trees age faster from shortness of roots, which the fig refutes, whose roots are the longest and its old age the swiftest.

130| I judge it false, too, what some have reported, that the roots of trees shrink with age. For an aged oak was seen overturned by the force of a storm, covering an area of one iugerum. It is common knowledge that trees thrown down are very often set upright again and come back to life after a kind of scarring of the ground. This is most familiar in plane trees, which catch a great deal of wind because of the density of their branches; when these are lopped off and the load lightened, the trees are put back in their own pit. This has now been done with walnuts and olives and many others as well. There are examples, too, of many trees that have fallen without a storm or any other cause than a portent, and have risen again of their own accord. This was done as a portent for the Roman people, the Quirites, in the Cimbrian wars, at Nuceria, in the grove of Juno: an elm, after even its crown had been cut off, since it was falling forward onto the very altar, was restored of its own accord, so that it flowered at once; from that time the majesty of the Roman people, which had before been laid waste by disasters, rose again. The same is recorded at Philippi of a willow that had fallen forward and been cut down, and at Stagira, in the Muses' shrine, of a white poplar, all of them omens of good fortune. But most marvellous of all, at Antandrus a plane tree, even though its sides had been hewn round about, was set up again of its own accord and restored to life, with a height of 15 cubits and a thickness of four ulnae. The trees that we owe to nature are born in three ways: of their own accord, from seed, or from a root. Cultivation has proved more varied, and of it we shall speak in its own volume. For now our whole discourse concerns nature, which is memorable in many and marvellous ways. For we have shown that not everything is born in every place, nor lives when carried across. This happens sometimes from fastidiousness, sometimes from stubbornness, more often from the weakness of what is transferred, sometimes because the climate begrudges it, sometimes because the soil resists. Balsam is fastidious about being born elsewhere; the Assyrian apple, when born elsewhere, will not bear; nor does the palm come up everywhere, or, when it has come up, bear fruit, or even, when it has promised and shown fruit, bring it to maturity, as though it had borne unwillingly.

135| The shrub of cinnamon has no strength to pass into neighbouring Syria. The delights of amomum and nard do not bear it, not even in Arabia, when brought from India on a foreign ship [….]; for King Seleucus tried it. This is the most marvellous thing, that the trees themselves are very often prevailed upon by entreaty to live and to migrate, that sometimes the soil too is prevailed upon to feed what is foreign to it and nourish incomers, while the climate can in no way be bent. The pepper tree lives in Italy, and the cassia even in the northern region; the frankincense tree lived in Lydia; but where would the suns be, to drink up all their sap from them, or to cook the tear? The next most marvellous thing is that the nature of the very same trees is changed and holds good without being divided. It had given the cedar to the hot regions, yet it is born on the mountains of Lycia and Phrygia. It had made cold the enemy of the laurel, yet no place has more of it than Olympus. Around the Cimmerian Bosporus, in the city of Panticapaeum, King Mithridates and the other inhabitants strove in every way to have laurel and myrtle, at least for the sake of sacred rites; it did not succeed, although mild-climate trees abound there, pomegranates and figs, and apples and pears, most highly praised. In the same region it has not produced the cold-loving trees, the pine, the fir, the picea. And what point is there in going off to Pontus? Near Rome itself chestnuts and cherries come on with difficulty, peaches in the Tusculan country, and Greek nuts are grafted with reluctance at Tarracina, which teems with woods of them. The cypress was a newcomer and one of the most difficult to raise, so that Cato has written of it at greater length and more often than of all the others: sullen in sowing, useless in fruit, grim in its berries, bitter in leaf, violent in smell, not even pleasing in its shade, rare in timber, so that it is almost of the shrub kind, sacred to Dis and therefore set at houses as a sign of mourning. The female [….] sterile.

140| For a long time it was not rejected, but only for the sight of its cone-shape, to mark off the rows of pines; but now it has been made fit for clipping, trained into the density of walls, and, its slenderness kept in check, it is drawn out in a continuous round, even into the pictures of topiary work, clothing hunts and fleets and images of things in fine, short, ever-green leaf. There are two kinds of them: the cone, wound up to a peak, which is also called the female; the male spreads its branches outward, and is cut back and takes the vine. Both are sent up into poles or rafters by the lopping of branches, which in the 13th year are sold at one denarius each; it is the most profitable woodland in the system of sowing, and the ancients commonly called those plantations a daughter's dowry. Its native island is Crete, although Cato calls it the Tarentine, I believe because it first came there. At Aenaria too it sprouts again when cut down; but in Crete, in whatever place anyone has turned the earth, this tree is produced by natural effort and shoots up at once, and the other kind even on ground not worked and of its own accord, and especially on the Idaean mountains and those they call the White Mountains, and on their summits, where the snows are never absent, in great numbers, which is something to marvel at, since elsewhere it comes up only in warmth and is very fussy about its nursing. Nor does the nature of the earth alone matter in these things, nor the constant character of the sky, but also a certain temporary force. Rains often bring certain seeds and flow in a fixed manner, sometimes even an unknown one, which happened to the region of Cyrene when laserpicium was first born there, as we shall tell in the nature of herbs. A wood was also born nearest to that city by a thick rain of pitch. Ivy is now said to be born in Asia.

144| About the 440th year of the city of Rome Theophrastus had denied that it grew, and not in India except on Mount Meros; indeed Harpalus strove in every way to plant it in Media, without success, and Alexander, on account of its rarity, returned a conqueror from India with his army crowned with it, following the pattern of Father Liber. Of that god it still adorns the thyrsi, and even the helmets and shields among the peoples of Thrace at their solemn rites; it is hostile to trees and to all crops, it breaks tombs and walls, and is most welcome to the chill of serpents, so that it is a wonder that any honour was paid it. There are two kinds first, as in the rest: male and female. The male is reported to be larger both in body and in leaf, the leaf also harder and richer, and the flower approaching purple; but both are like the wild rose, except that it lacks scent. The species of these kinds are three: for there is a white ivy or a black, and the third is called helix. Moreover these species are divided into others, since one is white in its fruit only, another in its leaf also. Of those that bear white fruit, some have a dense, larger berry, with clusters wound round in a circle, which are called corymbi; the same are called Silenic when the berry is smaller and the cluster more scattered, in the same manner as in the black. Some have also a black seed, another a saffron-coloured one, with whose garlands the poets are crowned, the leaves less black, which some call Nysian, others Bacchic, with the largest corymbi among the black. Some among the Greeks, moreover, make two kinds of this from the colour of the berries, the erythranos and the chrysocarpos. But the helix has very many differences, since it differs most in its leaf. The leaves are small and angular and neater, whereas those of the other kinds are simple. It differs also in the length of its internodes, but especially in sterility, since it bears no fruit. Some think this a matter of age, not of kind, and that it is first a helix and becomes ivy with age.

149| The error of these is plainly understood, since several kinds of helix are found, but three especially remarkable: one grassy and green, which is the most abundant; a second with white leaf; the third of changing colours, which is called the Thracian. Furthermore the grassy has thinner leaves arranged in order and denser; in the other kind all these are different. In the variegated, one has thinner leaves similarly arranged and denser; in the other kind all this is neglected; the leaves are also larger or smaller and differ in the pattern of their spots. And among the white ones some are whiter. The grassy grows chiefly in length. But the white kills trees, and by taking away all their sap it increases to such a thickness that it becomes a tree itself. Its signs are leaves the largest and broadest, stiff teats, which in the others are bent, and clusters that stand upright. And although every kind of ivy has rooting arms, in this one they are most branching and strong, and next after it in the black. But it is peculiar to the white that between the middle leaves it sends out arms, always embracing on both sides; it does this on walls too, though it cannot go round them. And so, even when cut through in several places, it still lives and endures, and has as many beginnings of roots as it has arms, with which, unhurt and firm, it sucks and strangles trees. There is also a difference in the fruit of white and black ivy, since in some the berry has so great a bitterness that birds do not touch it. There is also a stiff ivy, which alone of all kinds stands without a support, and for that reason is called orthocissos; on the other hand, the one that never creeps except on the ground is chamaecissos. Similar to ivy is the plant that came first from Cilicia, but is commoner in Greece, which they call smilax, jointed with close stems, bushy with thorny branches, with an ivy-like leaf, small, not angular, sending out tendrils from the leaf-stalk, with a white flower, smelling of lily.

154| It bears clusters in the manner of the wild vine, not of ivy, red in colour, enclosing in the larger berries three stones, in the smaller one, black and hard; it is ill-omened for all sacred rites and garlands, since it is mournful: a maiden of that name was changed into this shrub through love of the young man Crocus. The common people, ignorant of this, very often defile their festivals by thinking it ivy; just as among the poets, with what are Liber or Silenus crowned? Writing tablets are made of smilax, and it is peculiar to the wood that, when brought to the ears, it gives out a soft sound. The ivy is reported to have a marvellous nature for testing wines: if a vessel is made of its wood, the wine passes through and the water remains, if any has been mixed in. Among the plants that delight in cold it is fitting also to speak of the water-loving shrubs. The reeds will hold first place among these, necessary for the trials of war and peace and welcome also for luxuries. With their covering the northern peoples roof their houses, and such roofs last for ages; and in the rest of the world, too, they hang vaulted ceilings very lightly from them. Reeds also serve for paper, the Egyptian especially, by a certain kinship with papyrus. The Cnidian are more approved, and those that grow in Asia around the Anaetic lake. Those of our own country have a spongier nature beneath, with a drinking-in gristle, hollow in body within, drying on the outside into thin wood, splitting easily, always with a very sharp edge. For the rest, the slender stalk is jointed and marked off by knots, and with a gentle slope tapers into the tips, with a thicker head of panicle, which is not useless either. For it either stuffs the beds of innkeepers in place of feathers or, where it has hardened into a woodier callus, as in the Belgic country, beaten and set between the joints of ships it cements the fabric, holding faster than glue and more reliable than pitch for filling the cracks. With reeds the peoples of the east finish their wars, with reeds they hasten death by adding a feather, with reeds they add arrowheads harmful with a barb not to be drawn back, and another weapon is made from the reed itself, broken off in wounds. With these arms they shade the very sun.

159| For this reason above all they wish for clear days, and hate winds and rains, which compel peace between them. And if anyone counts up more carefully the Ethiopians, Egypt, the Arabs, the Indians, the Scythians, the Bactrians, so many peoples of the Sarmatians and of the east, and all the kingdoms of the Parthians, about an equal part of mankind in the whole world lives overcome by reeds. This use above all made their warriors famous in Crete. But in this too, as in other matters, Italy has won, since no reed is better suited to arrows than the one on the Rhenus, the river of Bononia, which has abundant pith and a light, swift weight, and a balance stubborn even against gusts. For the Belgic and the Cretan do not have the same recommendation, though the Cretan are held in higher repute. Yet the Indian are preferred to them, of which some seem to certain people to be of another nature, since they also serve in place of spears when points are added. The Indian reed indeed has the size of a tree, such as we commonly see in temples. The Indians report that in these also there are differences of male and female: the male has a denser body, the female a more capacious one. Even single internodes serve in place of boats, if we believe it. It grows chiefly around the river Acesines. Every reed is numerous from one stock, and even when cut back rises again more fruitfully. The root is by nature long-lived, and itself jointed. The leaves, short only in the Indian ones, in all of them begin from a node and by an embrace put thin sheaths round the circumference, and from the middle of the internode, at the most, they cease to clothe it and fall away. Reed and stalk have two sides each in their roundness, over the knots always with an alternate joining, so that one is formed from the right, the next, at the joint above, from the left in turn. From there branches sometimes come out, which are thin stalks. There are, moreover, several kinds. One is thicker and denser in its joints, with short internodes; another is looser, with longer ones, and itself thinner. And there is another stalk, wholly hollow, which they call syringias, most useful for pipes, since it has nothing of gristle or flesh.

164| In the Orchomenian even the joints are open with a continuous bore; this they call auleticon. This is more useful for flutes, the other for pipes. Another has thicker wood and a thin bore; a spongy pith fills the whole of it. One is shorter, another taller, slenderer or thicker. The bushiest is that called donax, born only in watery places, since this too is a difference, the reed that grows in dry places being much preferred. The arrow-reed, as we have said, has its own kind, but the Cretan one has the longest internodes and a compliance by which it can be bent as one likes when warmed. The leaves also make differences, not in number and length only, but in colour. The Laconian have variegated leaves, denser from the bottom, such as they think are in general born around pools, unlike the river ones, and are clothed with long leaves climbing more spaciously from the node in an embrace. There is also a slanting reed, not growing to a height, but spreading near the ground in the manner of a shrub, very pleasant to animals when tender. It is called by some eletia. There is also in Italy a marsh plant growing only from the bark just under the very tuft, adarea by name, very useful for the teeth, since its force is the same as that of mustard. Of the reed-beds of the Orchomenian lake ancient admiration compels us to speak more carefully. They called the thicker and firmer kind characias, the finer plocimos; this was born on floating islands, that on the banks of the lake as it spread. The third is the flute reed, of the stalk they called auleticon. It was born in the ninth year. For the lake too kept its increases to this space of time, a portent if ever it extended its breadth for two years, which was noted at Chaeronea in the unlucky battle of the Athenians [….] often [….] Lebadia [….] is called, the Cephisus flowing in. When therefore the flood remained for a year, they advance even to the size of bird-catching reeds. They were called zeugitae; on the other hand the bombyciae, earlier in the ebb; slender; the females with a broader and whiter leaf, with a modest down; but altogether none of those distinguished by the name of eunuchs.

169| From these came the equipment for celebrated songs, and the rest of the care spent on them was a marvel not to be passed over in silence, so that one may pardon the preference now for playing on silver. They used to be cut at their season, until Antigenides the flute-player, while they still used simple music, under Arcturus. Thus prepared, after some years they began to be useful, and even then they had to be tamed by much exercise, and the flutes themselves taught to sing, their tongues pressing together, which was more useful to them for the customs of the theatres. After variety came in, and luxury in song too, they began to be cut before the solstices and to become useful in the third year, their little tongues more open for bending the sounds, which are those of today. But then it was held that each fitted only with its own reed, and that the one which had preceded the root suited the left-hand flute, the one the tip the right, those being preferred beyond measure which the Cephisus itself had washed. Now the sacrificial flutes of the Etruscans are made of box, the ones for entertainment of lotus and asses' bones and silver. The bird-catching reed from Panhormus is most praised, the fishing reed from Africa, the Abaritan. The use of the reed of Italy is chiefly for vineyards. Cato bids it be planted in damp fields with the ground first broken by the two-pronged mattock, the eyes set at an interval of three feet each, and at the same time that corruda, from which asparagus comes, agree in friendship, and willow around them. No watery plant is more useful than this, although poplars please the vines and rear the Caecuban, although alders fortify with hedges and keep watch against the onrush of breaking rivers as a wall of the banks for the protection of the countryside, planted more densely in water and cut, they profit with countless heirs. There are also several kinds of willow.

174| For some send up great poles of height for the yokes of vineyards and bring forth bands of bark for ties, and others yield rods of pliant toughness for binding, others are very slender for weaving wickerwork with remarkable fineness, others again are firmer for baskets and for most of the farmers' furniture; the whiter, with the bark removed and with smooth handling, are better for larger vessels than those that are made of hide, and are even most suitable for the luxuries of reclining chairs. The willow has a cuttable fertility and a denser trimming, from a short fist rather than a branch, not, as we think, to be tended in the last of the trees. For the return of none is safer, or of smaller outlay, or more secure from storms. Cato assigns it the third place in the estimation of the land, and before olive-yards, grain or meadows, and not because other ties are lacking. For broom and poplars and elms and cornel shrubs and birches and split reed and the leaves of reeds, as in Liguria, and the vine itself and brambles with their thorns cut off, and twisted hazel, all bind—and it is marvellous that with some the wood, when bruised, has greater strength for ties—yet the willow has the chief endowment. The Greek is split, reddish; the Amerine is whiter, but a little more brittle, and therefore binds with a solid knot. In Asia they observe three kinds: the black, more useful for osier-work, the white for the uses of farmers, and the third, which is the shortest, they call helix. Among us too many give names to just as many kinds: they call one viminalis, the same also purple, the second nitelina from its colour, which is thinner, the third the Gallic, which is thinnest. Nor among shrubs nor brambles nor stalks nor herbs, nor in any other than its own kind, should the brittle marsh rushes be counted by right, from which [and] a covering and mats; with the bark stripped off, candles serve for lights and funerals. In some places their stiffness is firmer.

178| For with these not only sailors on the Po make sail, but on the sea too the African fisherman, in a reversed manner hanging the sail inside the masts, and the Moors roof their huts; and, estimating most closely, these would seem to be what papyrus is in the inner part of the world. Of their own kind but of a shrubby nature among the water plants are also brambles and elders, of a spongy kind, yet otherwise than the ferulae, since there is more wood, especially in the elder, from which the shepherd believes the horn and trumpet more tuneful, if cut where that shrub cannot hear the crowing of cocks. Brambles bear blackberries and in another kind a resemblance to the rose, which is called cynosbatos. A third kind the Greeks call Idaean, from the place, more tender than the rest and with smaller and less hooked thorns. Its flower is smeared on, with honey, against inflammation of the eyes and against erysipelas; it is also drunk in water against disorders of the stomach. Elders have black and small berries, of a sticky juice, chiefly for dyeing the hair. These too, boiled in water, are chewed. Trees also have a moisture in their body, which should be understood as their blood, not the same in all: in figs it is milky—this has the force of rennet for shaping cheeses—in cherries gummy, in elms slimy, sticky and fat, in apples, vines and pears watery. Those live longer in which it is stickier. And in sum the body of trees, as of other living things, has skin, blood, flesh, sinews, veins, bones, marrow. For skin there is the bark. It is a marvel that in the mulberry, for physicians seeking the juice, in spring at the second hour of the day it flows when cut with a stone; broken more deeply, it looks dry. Next to it in most trees are the fats. These are called alburnum from their colour, the soft and worst part of the wood, easily rotting even in oak, liable to the shipworm, so that it is always cut away. Beneath this is the flesh, beneath the flesh the bones, that is, the best of the timber.

183| Those with drier wood bear in alternate years, such as the olive, more than those with fleshy wood, such as the cherry. Nor have all fats or ample flesh, just as the keenest of animals have not. Neither is found in box, cornel, olive, nor marrow, and they have very little blood too, just as service trees have no bones and elders no flesh—but both have very much marrow—nor have reeds for the greater part. In the flesh of some trees there are pulps and veins. The distinction between them is easy; the veins are broader and whiter. Pulps are in those that split. For this reason it happens that when the ear is put to the end of a beam, however very long, blows from the other end, or even from a stylus, are heard, the sound passing in straight channels, from which one detects whether the timber is twisted and cut by knots. Those which have knobs, as there are glands in flesh, have in these neither vein nor pulp, the flesh being rolled up into itself in a kind of callus. This is most precious in the citrus and the maple. Other kinds of tables are cut round in a circle from split trees into the pulp; otherwise the vein would be brittle if cut in a ring round the tree. In beeches the combs lie crosswise in the pulp. Among the ancients vessels too had honour from this. Manius Curius swore that he had touched nothing of the booty except a beechwood cruet, with which to sacrifice. Wood floats lengthwise, and whichever part was from the root sinks more strongly. In some the pulp, without veins, consists of pure and thin warp. These split most readily. Others are quicker to break than to split, those that have no pulp, such as olives and vines. But on the contrary the whole body is flesh in the fig, wholly bone in the holm oak, the ornus, the oak, cytisus, mulberry, ebony and lotus, and those we have said are without marrow. In the rest the colour is blackish; the cornel gleams tawny in hunting spears, knotted at the incisions for beauty. Cedar and larch and juniper are red. The female larch has what the Greeks call aegis, of honey colour. This wood is next to the marrow.

187| In the fir, what the Greeks call lusson. A discovery for the panels of painters, immortal and split by no cracks. Of the cedar too the hardest part is that nearest the marrow, like the bones in a body, once only the slime has been scraped off. And the inner parts of the elder are reported to be wonderfully firm, and some prefer hunting spears of it to all others, for it consists of skin and bones. The time to cut those which are to be stripped of bark and made round for temples and other uses requiring roundness is when they are budding, otherwise the bark cannot be unravelled and decay springs up beneath it and the timber turns black; beams, and those from which the axe takes off the bark, are cut from midwinter to the west wind, or, if we are forced to anticipate it, at the setting of Arcturus, and before it the Fidicula, by the latest reckoning at the solstice. The days of these stars will be given in their own place. Commonly they think it enough to take care that no tree to be hewn is felled before it has produced its fruits. Oak cut in spring suffers from the shipworm, but in midwinter it is neither spoiled nor warped, though otherwise liable even to twist itself and split, which happens in cork even when cut in season. The reckoning of the moon also makes an endless difference, and they will have trees cut only from the 20th to the 30th. But among all it is agreed that it is most useful to fell it at the moon's conjunction, a day which some call the interlunium, others the silent moon. So at any rate Tiberius Caesar, when the naumachia bridge was burned, ordered larches to be cut in Raetia for its restoration. Some say that the moon should be at conjunction and under the earth, which cannot happen except at night. If the conjunction coincides with the last day of midwinter, that timber becomes everlasting; next best, when it falls with the stars mentioned above. Some add the rising of the Dog Star too, and timbers so cut go into the Forum of Augustus. But neither young trees are most useful for timber, nor old. Some also leave them, cut round to the marrow, not without use, so that all the moisture may drain off while they stand.

192| It is a marvel among the ancients that the fleet of the commander Duilius, in the first Punic war, sailed on the 60th day from the tree, whereas Lucius Piso reports that King Hiero had 220 ships made in 45 days. In the second Punic war also the fleet of Scipio sailed on the 40th day from the axe. So much does seasonableness avail even in rapid speed. Cato, the greatest of men in every kind of practical knowledge, adds this about timbers: Make a press of black sappinus especially. Elm, pine, nut, this and any other timber when you dig it out, take it out when the moon is waning, after midday, with no south wind. It will then be in season when its seed is ripe. And take care not to drag or hew it through the dew. And the same man soon after: Do not touch timber except at the new moon and with the moon half full. Timber which you dig up or cut off at the ground is best taken out in the 7 days next after the moon has been full. Above all take care not to hew or cut or touch any timber unless it is dry, and neither frozen nor dewy. Tiberius likewise observed the new moons in cutting his hair. Marcus Varro advises, against falling hair, that this be observed from the full moons. In larch and still more in fir, when cut down, the moisture flows long. These are the tallest and straightest of all trees. Fir is preferred for ships' masts and yards on account of its lightness. Common to these and to pine is that they have the course of their veins fourfold, or in two, or altogether simple. For the cabinet-makers' inner work the marrow, cut, is best in the fourfold, [….] the timber is also softer than the rest. The experienced understand it at once from the bark. The part of the fir that was nearest the ground is without knots. This, by the method we have described, floated down the river and stripped, is called sappinus, the upper part, knotty and harder, fusterna. And in the trees themselves the northern parts are stronger, and in general those from damp and shady places are worse, those from sunny ones denser and long-lasting. Therefore at Rome the lower fir is preferred to the upper.

197| There is also of itself a difference between nations in these. They are most praised on the Alps and Apennine, in Gaul on the Jura and Mount Vosegus, in Corsica, Bithynia, Pontus, Macedonia. The Aenianian and Arcadian is worse, the Parnassian and Euboean worst, since there they are branchy and twisted and rot easily. But the cedar is most praised in Crete, Africa, Syria. Timber anointed with oil of cedar feels neither moth nor decay. Juniper has the same virtue as cedar. It is huge in Spain, and especially among the Vaccaei. Its marrow, wherever it grows, is even more solid than in cedars. They call spirals the common fault of all, where the veins and knots twist themselves round. There are found in some, as in marble, centres, that is, a hardness like a nail, hostile to saws. And some things happen by chance, as when a stone is enclosed or taken into the body, or a branch of another tree. At Megara a wild olive stood long in the forum, on which brave men had fixed arms, which a long age had hidden with the enveloping bark, and that tree was fatal to the destruction of the city, forewarned by an oracle when the tree had produced arms, which happened when it was cut down, greaves and helmets being found inside. They say that stones so found are a remedy for keeping pregnancies. The largest of trees up to this age is thought to have been that seen at Rome, which Tiberius Caesar, on account of the marvel, had exhibited on that same naumachia bridge, brought with the rest of the timber, and it lasted down to the amphitheatre of the emperor Nero. That beam was of larch, 120 feet long, equal in thickness of two feet, from which the height of the rest, hardly credible, could be judged by those reckoning its taper up to the tip. There was in our own memory also, in the porticoes of the Saepta, one left by Marcus Agrippa, likewise for the sake of the marvel, which had survived the diribitorium, 20 feet shorter, a foot and a half in thickness.

201| A fir was seen to be of special wonder in the ship that, on the emperor Gaius' orders, conveyed from Egypt the obelisk set up in the Vatican circus, and four blocks of the same stone to support it. It is certain that nothing more wonderful was ever seen on the sea than that ship. 120,000 modii of lentils served it as ballast. Its length took up, for the most part, the space on the left side of the harbour of Ostia. For there it was sunk under the emperor Claudius, together with three moles built up on it to the height of towers, brought along with Puteolan sand. The thickness of that tree filled the arms of four men embracing it, and it is commonly heard that masts are sold for these uses at 80,000 nummi and more, and that rafts, joined together, mostly at 40,000 sesterces. But in Egypt and Syria the kings, for lack of fir, are said to have used cedar for their fleets. The largest [of them] is recorded in Cyprus, cut for the eleven-banked ship of Demetrius, 130 feet, and in thickness enough for the embrace of three men. The pirates of Germany sail in single hollowed trees, some of which carry even 30 men. The densest of all timber, and therefore judged the heaviest, are ebony and box, which are slender by nature. Neither floats in water, nor cork if the bark is taken off, nor larch. Of the rest the densest is lotus, as it is called at Rome, then oak with its alburnum removed. This too has a blackish colour, and still more the cytisus, which seems to come nearest to ebony, although there are not wanting those who assert that Syrian terebinths are blacker. Thericles also made a name by it, being accustomed to make cups of terebinth on the lathe; the timber is highly approved. Of all, this alone likes to be anointed, and becomes better with oil. The colour is wonderfully counterfeited with walnut and wild pear, stained and boiled in a dye. All that we have mentioned have a dense firmness.

206| Next after these is the cornel, although it cannot be regarded as timber because of its slenderness, but as wood useful for almost nothing but the spokes of wheels, or if anything has to be wedged in wood or fixed with pegs as if of iron. So too the holm oak and wild olive and olive and chestnut, hornbeam, poplar. These are also curled like the maple, if any timber were suitable, with branches often lopped. That is a castration, and takes away their strength. For the rest, in most of these, but at all events in oak, there is such hardness that it cannot be bored unless wetted, and even so a nail driven in cannot be pulled out. On the other hand cedar does not hold a nail. The softest is the lime. The same seems also the warmest. They bring as proof that it blunts adzes most quickly. Warm also are the mulberry, laurel, ivies and all the woods from which fire-sticks are made. The use of scouts in camps and of shepherds discovered this, since for striking out fire there is not always a chance of a stone. So wood is rubbed against wood and conceives fire by friction, the timber taking up dry tinder, fungus or leaves, which catch very easily. But nothing is better than ivy to be rubbed, laurel to rub. Of the wild ones the vine is also approved—another than the labrusca—and itself, like ivy, climbing a tree. The coldest is whatever is aquatic, but the toughest, and for that reason most suitable for making shields, are those whose wound at once contracts and closes itself and for that reason lets iron through more stubbornly; in this class are the vine, vitex, willow, lime, birch, elder, both poplars. Lightest of these are vitex and willow, and therefore most useful; all are suited for chests and for what is made of flexible wickerwork. They have whiteness, stiffness, and ease in carving. The plane has toughness, but moist, as the alder does. Drier in the elm, ash, mulberry, cherry, but heavier.

210| The elm keeps its stiffness most strongly, and for that reason is most useful for hinges and the planking of doors, since it twists least, but it must be exchanged in this way, that the top is by the lower hinge, the root above. The palm is [….]. Similar also is the timber of cork; dense too are apple and pear, and the maple as well, but brittle, and whatever is curled. In all of them the wild and the male increase the difference of each kind. And the barren are firmer than the fertile, except in the kinds in which the males bear, as the cypress and cornel. Cypress, cedar, ebony, lotus, box, yew, juniper, wild olive, olive do not feel decay and age; of the rest, most slowly larch, oak, cork, chestnut, walnut. A crack and split cedar, cypress, olive, box do not take of their own accord. They think ebony and cypress and cedar most everlasting, with a famous judgment among all timbers in the temple of Ephesian Diana, since, with all Asia building, it was completed in 120 years. It is agreed that its roof is of cedar beams. About the image of the goddess itself there is doubt. Others report it to be of ebony; Mucianus, three times consul, one of those who wrote after seeing it most recently, says it is of vine-wood and never changed though the temple was restored seven times, and that Endoeus chose this material, even naming the artist, at which I am indeed surprised, since he attributes to it an antiquity greater than Minerva's, not merely than father Liber's. He adds that it is watered with nard through many openings, so that the medicated liquid may nourish it and hold the joints together—which I am surprised to find at all in so very modest a statue—that the doors are of cypress and that for almost 400 years now all the timber has lasted like new. This too should be noted, that the doors lay four years in the joining with glue. Cypress was chosen for them, since beyond all else in one kind of timber the gloss is most strongly everlasting. Does not the image of Veiovis on the citadel, of cypress, also last, dedicated in the 561st year from the founding of the city?

216| Memorable also is the temple of Apollo at Utica, where the beams of Numidian cedar endure just as they were laid at the first origin of that city, 1178 years ago; and in Spain at Saguntum the temple of Diana, brought from Zacynthus with the founders 200 years before the destruction of Troy, as Bocchus is authority; below the town itself they have it—Hannibal spared it, led by religious feeling—the beams of juniper lasting even now. Above all is to be recalled the temple at Aulis of the same goddess, built ages before the Trojan war, of what kind of timber is unknown, the knowledge having been blotted out. It can be said without reserve that those which excel in scent also excel in everlastingness. After those named the mulberry is next praised, which even blackens with age. And yet some woods are longer-lasting in certain uses than others: elm in a draught, oak buried in the ground, and oak sunk in waters. The same above ground makes cracked work by twisting itself. Larch is outstanding in damp, and so is black alder. Oak is spoiled by sea water. Beech in water is not disapproved of, nor walnut, and these are even first rate among things buried in the ground, and likewise juniper, which is also very suitable for open-air use. Beech and the cerrus rot quickly. The aesculus too cannot endure moisture. On the other hand alder driven into the ground in marshes is everlasting and bears any load. Cherry is firm, elm and ash tough, but they bend easily, though they are pliant, and when standing and dried by a ring-cutting they are more reliable. They report that larch in sea-going ships is liable to the shipworm, and all woods except wild olive and olive. For some are more exposed to damage in the sea, some on land. Of the pests there are four kinds: the teredines, with a head very large in proportion, gnaw with their teeth. These are felt only in the sea, and they think no other is properly called teredo. The land ones they call tiniae, those like gnats thripes.

220| The fourth is also of the kind of little worms, and of these some are produced in the timber itself as the sap putrefies, others, as in trees, from the creature that is called cerastes. When it has gnawed so far that it can turn itself round, it breeds another. In some woods bitterness prevents these from being born, as in cypress, in others hardness, as in box. They report also that fir, barked about the time of budding, in the moon we have described, is not spoiled by waters. The companions of Alexander the Great reported that on Tylos, an island of the Red Sea, there are trees from which ships were made; these were found to have lasted two hundred years, and, even if sunk, to be uncorrupted. On the same island, they said, is a shrub of a thickness suited only to walking sticks, variegated with tiger-like spots, heavy and, when it falls on something denser, brittle like glass. Among us some timbers split of themselves, and for that reason architects order them to be smeared with dung and dried, so that draughts may not harm them. Fir and larch are strong to bear weight, even laid crosswise. Oak and olive bend and yield to the weight. The others resist and do not break rashly, and fail through decay before they fail in strength. The palm tree is also strong; for it bends the opposite way, [and the poplar] all the rest sag downward, the palm on the contrary in the form of an arch. Pine and cypress are the firmest against decay and moths. Walnut bends easily, for beams are made from it too. It announces its breaking with a crackling, which happened also at Antandrus, when people, frightened by the sound, ran out from the baths. Pines, piceae and alders are hollowed into pipes for conducting water; buried in the earth they will last very many years, but if not covered, they soon grow old, and are wonderfully stronger if moisture also remains on the outside.

225| The firmest in a straight line is the fir, which is also most suitable for the leaves of doors and for any inner work one likes, whether in the Greek, the Campanian or the Sicilian style of the craft, remarkable for the locks of its shavings, always rolling in a tendrilled ring at the swift strokes of the plane, and of all the most capable of being joined with glue, to such a degree that it splits first where it is solid. Gluing is also of great importance for those things that are covered with veneers or in some other way. For this use they approve a thread-like vein, and call it ferulaceous by the argument of likeness, since veins that are pitted and curled in every kind reject glue. Some woods are unsociable to glue both with each other and with others, as oak, and they scarcely hold together unless similar in nature, as if someone should join stone and wood. The cornel is hated most by the service tree, hornbeam, box, and afterwards lime. For any work all the pliant kinds are easy, which we have called tough, and in addition the mulberry and wild fig. Those can be bored and sawn which are moderately moist. For dry ones give way more broadly than you rub, green ones, except oak and box, resist more stubbornly and fill the teeth of saws with an inert sticky mass. For this reason they have cleared the sawdust by alternate slanting. The most obedient in any work is ash, which is also better for spears than hazel, lighter than cornel, tougher than service tree, and the Gallic even for chariots, with a flexible lightness. The elm would rival it, were weight not at fault. Beech is easy too, although brittle and tender. It is also pliable in thin veneers and alone useful for boxes and cases. The holm oak is also sawn into very thin sheets, not unpleasing in colour either, but most trustworthy in things that are rubbed, as in the axles of wheels, for which ash is chosen for toughness, holm oak for hardness, and the elm for both.

230| There are indeed also notable small uses in the workshop's tools, and so it is reported that sheaths for borers are most usefully made of wild olive, box, holm oak, elm, ash, and mallets of the same, and larger ones of pine and holm oak. And for these the reason for firmness is greater from cutting in season than out of season, since doorposts made of olive, the hardest wood, left unmoved in doors for a long time, have sprouted like a cutting. Cato orders crowbars to be made of holly, laurel, elm; Hyginus orders handles for countrymen of hornbeam, holm oak, cerrus. The woods that are sawn into sheets, and with which other timber is clothed over, are chiefly citrus, terebinth, the kinds of maple, box, palm, holly, holm oak, the root of elder, poplar. Alder too, as has been said, gives a sawable burl, as do citrus and maple. The burl of other trees is no longer in esteem. The middle part of trees is more curled, and the nearer to the root the smaller and more twisting the markings. This was the first origin of luxury in trees, that one wood was covered with another, and a skin for a cheaper wood made out of a more precious one. So that one tree might sell more often, thin leaves of wood were devised. Nor was it enough; they began to dye the horns of animals, to saw teeth, to inlay wood with ivory, and soon to cover it. Then it was found pleasing to seek material in the sea also. The tortoise-shell was cut for this, and lately, by prodigious ingenuity under the principate of Nero, it was invented that it should lose itself by pigments and sell the dearer by imitating wood. So prices are sought for couches, so it is a pleasure to surpass terebinth, so citrus is made more precious, so maple is deceived. A while ago luxury had not been content with wood, and now makes wood even out of tortoise-shell. The life of some trees can be believed immense, if one thinks of the depths of the world and the inaccessible forests.

234| But of those which the memory of men preserves, there endures at Liternum an olive planted by the hand of the elder Africanus, likewise a myrtle in the same place of conspicuous size—beneath is a cave in which a serpent is said to guard his shade—and at Rome a lotus in the precinct of Lucina, whose temple was founded in the year that was without magistrates, which was the 379th year of the city. It is uncertain how much older it is itself; that it is older is not doubtful, since Lucina is named from that grove. It has now about 500 years. Older, but of uncertain age, is the one called the capillata, because the hair of the Vestal virgins is carried to it. But another lotus, in the Volcanal, which Romulus established out of the victory by the tithes, is understood to be of the same age as the city, as Masurius is authority. Its roots penetrate as far as the forum of Caesar through the offices of the municipalities. With it was a cypress of equal age, which fell and was neglected about the last days of the emperor Nero. Older than the city, however, is the holm oak on the Vatican, on which an inscription in Etruscan bronze letters shows that the tree was already then worthy of reverence. The people of Tibur also have their origin long before the city of Rome. Among them are three holm oaks even older than Tiburnus, their founder, beside which he is said to have taken the auspices. They report that he was the son of Amphiaraus, who perished at Thebes one generation before the Trojan war. There are authorities also for a plane at Delphi planted by the hand of Agamemnon, and another at Caphya, a place in Arcadia. There are today, opposite the city of the Ilians near the Hellespont, on the tomb of Protesilaus, trees which in all ages since then, when they have grown so far that they look on Ilium, dry up and grow again. Near the city, however, oaks on the mound of Ilus are said to have been planted when it began to be called Ilium. At Argos an olive is said still to endure, to which Argus tied her who had been changed into a cow.

239| In Pontus on this side of Heraclea there are altars of Jupiter surnamed Stratios; there are two oaks planted by Hercules. In the same region is the harbour of Amycus, famous for the killing of King Bebryx. His mound is covered from his last day by a laurel which they call the mad, because if anything plucked from it is brought on board ships, quarrels arise until it is thrown away. We have mentioned the region Aulocrene, through which one goes from Apamea to Phrygia. There a plane is shown from which Marsyas, beaten by Apollo, hung, which was even then chosen for its size. Nor less is a palm seen at Delos from the age of the same god, at Olympia the wild olive from which Hercules was first crowned, and the sanctity is still guarded. At Athens too an olive is reported to endure, brought forth by Minerva in the contest. On the other hand the shortest life is that of pomegranates, fig, apples, and of these the early are shorter-lived than the late, sweet than sour, and the sweeter among pomegranates, likewise in vines, and especially the more fertile. Graecinus is authority that vines have lasted sixty years each. Water-loving ones seem also to perish more quickly. They grow old quickly, but from the roots laurels and apples and pomegranates sprout again. The olives, then, are the firmest for living, since it is agreed among authorities that they last 200 years. There is in the suburban region of the Tusculan country, on a hill called Corne, a grove consecrated by ancient religion to Diana by the Latins, with a clipped foliage as though by art in the beech wood. In this, in our time, Passienus Crispus, twice consul, orator, more famous afterwards for his marriage to Agrippina and for Nero as stepson, loved an outstanding tree, used to kiss it and embrace it, and not only to lie beneath it and pour wine over it. Near the grove is a holm oak, itself also noble, with a girth of trunk of 34 feet, sending out ten trees each of a size worth seeing, and alone making a wood. It is certain that trees are killed by ivy.

243| Some think that mistletoe too does them a similar injury, though a slower one. For this too grows on trees besides their fruit, and it is not the least of their marvels. Some things cannot be produced in the ground and are born on trees; for since they have no home of their own, they live in another's, like mistletoe, and the plant in Syria called cadytas, which twines itself not only around trees but even around thorn bushes; likewise, around Tempe in Thessaly, the one called polypodion, and those called dolichos and serpyllum. What grows on a wild olive when it has been pruned they call phaunos; and what grows on the fuller's thorn is hippophaeston, with hollow stalks, small leaves and a white root, whose juice is considered most useful for purging in epilepsy. There are three kinds of mistletoe. Euboea says that the one called stelis grows on the fir and the larch, Arcadia the hyphear, while most say that viscum grows on the oak, the robur, the ilex, the wild pear and the terebinth, and on other trees as well. The one they call hyphear is most plentiful on the oak. On every tree except the ilex and the oak, smell and rankness make a difference, and the leaf is of an unpleasant smell, both kinds of mistletoe being bitter and sticky. The hyphear is the more useful for fattening cattle.

246| It first merely purges them of their ailments, and then fattens those that have survived the purging; those that have some wasting inside, they say, do not last. This method of treatment takes 40 days of summer. They add a distinction: the mistletoe on trees that lose their leaves loses its own as well, whereas that which grows on evergreen foliage keeps them.

247| In general, if sown, it does not grow at all, nor does it grow unless it has been passed through the belly of birds, especially of the wood pigeon and the thrush. Its nature is such that it does not come up unless it has been ripened in the belly of birds. Its height does not exceed a cubit; it is always bushy and green. The male is fertile, the female barren, except that even the fertile one sometimes does not bear.

248| Birdlime is made from the berries, which are gathered unripe at the time of the harvest; for if rains have come, they grow larger in size, but the lime in them goes off. They are then dried, and when dry they are pounded, and they are steeped in water and left to rot for about 12 days; and this is the one thing in the world that gains in value by rotting. Then they are pounded again with a mallet in running water, and when they have lost their skins, the inner flesh becomes sticky. This is the birdlime that, worked up with oil, catches the wings of birds at a touch, when one wishes to set traps.

249| In this connection the veneration of the Gauls must not be left out either. The Druids (that is what they call their magi) hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided that it is a robur. They choose groves of robur for their own sake, and perform no sacred rites without its foliage, so that they may even seem to have been named Druids from it, by interpretation of the Greek. Indeed, whatever grows on these trees they regard as sent from heaven and as a sign that the tree has been chosen by the god himself.

250| It is, however, very rarely found, and when found it is gathered with great ceremony, and above all on the sixth day of the moon, which for them marks the beginnings of their months and years and of an age after the thirtieth year, because by then the moon has strength enough and is not yet at its half. In their own language they call it "the all-healing". When the sacrifice and the feast have been duly prepared under the tree, they bring up two bulls of white colour, whose horns are then bound for the first time.

251| A priest dressed in white climbs the tree and cuts it with a golden sickle, and it is caught in a white cloak. Then they sacrifice the victims, praying that the god will make his gift propitious to those to whom he has given it. They believe that a drink of it gives fertility to any barren animal, and that it is a remedy against all poisons. So great is the religious awe that peoples have for the most part for trivial things.

Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/pliny/027-natural-history-book-xvi#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.

← All of Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder: Letters, Panegyricus & Natural History