The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)

Chapter 353: CHAP. 45.—TREES WHICH BEAR NO FRUIT: TREES LOOKED UPON AS ILL-OMENED.

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

The work assembles systematic observations on animals, insects, and trees, combining natural history with practical notes. It surveys insect forms and habits, including bees, silk‑producing worms, spiders, and parasitic species, and discusses reproduction, classification, diseases, and useful products like honey and silk. It then examines animal anatomy in detail, limb by limb and organ by organ, comparing organs, vital functions, and bodily peculiarities across species. Later sections catalogue trees and exotic plants, describing aromatic gums, spices, frankincense, myrrh, and methods for producing and testing unguents and perfumes, and noting their uses and regions of origin.

CHAP. 45.—TREES WHICH BEAR NO FRUIT: TREES LOOKED UPON AS ILL-OMENED.

The only ones among all the trees that bear nothing whatever, not so much as any seed even, are the tamarisk,2499 which is used only for making brooms, the poplar,2500 the alder, the Atinian elm,2501 and the alaternus,2502 which has a leaf between that of the holm-oak and the olive. Those trees are regarded as sinister,2503 and are considered inauspicious, which are never propagated from seed, and bear no fruit. Cremutius informs us, that this tree, being the one upon which Phyllis 2504 hanged herself, is never green. Those trees which produce a gum open of themselves after germination: the gum never thickens until after the fruit has been removed.