CHAP. 33. (20.)—TREES WHICH DO NOT LOSE THEIR FOLIAGE. THE RHODODENDRON. TREES WHICH DO NOT LOSE THE WHOLE OF THEIR FOLIAGE. PLACES IN WHICH THERE ARE NO TREES.
Belonging to this last class, there are the following trees which do not lose their leaves: the olive, the laurel, the palm, the myrtle, the cypress, the pine, the ivy, the rhododendron,2424 and, although it may be rather called a herb than a tree, the savin.2425 The rhododendron, as its name indicates, comes from Greece. By some it is known as the nerium,2426 and by others as the rhododaphne. It is an evergreen, bearing a strong resemblance to the rose-tree, and throwing out numerous branches from the stem; to beasts of burden, goats, and sheep it is poisonous, but for man it is an antidote2427 against the venom of serpents.
(21.) The following among the forest-trees do not lose their leaves: the fir, the larch, the pinaster, the juniper, the cedar, the terebinth, the box, the holm-oak, the aquifolia, the cork, the yew, and the tamarisk.2428 A middle place between the evergreens and those which are not so, is occupied by the andrachle2429 in Greece, and by the arbutus2430 in all parts of the world; as they lose all their leaves with the exception of those on the top of the tree. Among certain of the shrubs, too, the bramble and the calamus, the leaves do not fall. In the territory of Thurii, where Sybaris formerly stood, from the city there was a single oak2431 to be seen that never lost its leaves, and never used to bud before midsummer: it is a singular thing that this fact, which has been so often alluded to by the Greek writers, should have been passed over in silence by our own.2432 Indeed, so remarkable are the virtues that we find belonging to some localities, that about Memphis in Egypt, and at Elephantina in Thebais, the leaves2433 fall from none of the trees, not the vine even.