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

Chapter 355: CHAP. 47.—TREES WHICH ARE UNPRODUCTIVE IN CERTAIN PLACES.

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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. 47.—TREES WHICH ARE UNPRODUCTIVE IN CERTAIN PLACES.

Certain trees also become unproductive, owing to some fault in the locality, such, for instance, as a coppice-wood in the island of Paros, which produces nothing at all: in the Isle of Rhodes, too, the peach-trees 2509 never do anything more than blossom. This distinction may arise also from the sex; and when such is the case, it is the male 2510 tree that never produces. Some authors, however, making a transposition, assert that it is the male trees only that are prolific. Barrenness may also arise from a tree being too thickly covered with leaves.