Enquiry into Plants/Volume 1/Chapter 5

by Theophrastus

Differences as to appearance and habitat.

IV. Again the differences, both between the plants as wholes and between their parts, may be seen in the appearance itself^[1] of the plant. I mean differences such as those in size, hardness, smoothness or their opposites, as seen in bark, leaves, and the other parts; also, in general, differences as to comeliness or its opposite and as to the production of good or of inferior fruit. For the wild kinds appear to bear more fruit, for instance, the wild pear and wild olive, but the cultivated plants better fruit, having even flavours which are sweeter and pleasanter and in general better blended, if one may so say.

These then as has been said, are differences of natural character, as it were, and still more so are those between fruitless and fruitful, deciduous and evergreen plants, and the like. But with all the differences in all these cases we must take into account the locality,^[2] and indeed it is hardly possible to do otherwise. Such ^[3]differences would seem to give us a kind of division into classes, for instance, between that of aquatic plants and that of plants of the dry land, corresponding to the division which we make in the case of animals. For there are some plants which cannot live except in wet; and again these are distinguished from one another by their fondness for different kinds of wetness; so that some grow in marshes, others in lakes, others in rivers, others even in the sea, smaller ones in our own sea, larger ones in the Red Sea.^[4] Some again, one may say, are lovers of very wet places,^[5] or plants of the marshes, such as the willow and the plane. Others again cannot live at all^[6] in water, but seek out dry places; and of the smaller sorts there are some that prefer the shore.

However, if one should wish^[7] to be precise, one would find^[8] that even of these some are impartial and as it were amphibious, such as tamarisk willow alder, and that others even of those which are admitted to be plants of the dry land sometimes live in the sea,^[9] as palm squill asphodel. But to consider all these exceptions and, in general, to consider in such a manner is not the right way to proceed. For in such matters too nature certainly does not thus go by any hard and fast law. Our distinctions therefore and the study of plants in general must be understood accordingly. ^[10]To return—these plants as well as all others will be found to differ, as has been said, both in the shape of the whole and in the differences between the parts, either as to having or not having certain parts, or as to having a greater or less number of parts, or as to having them differently arranged, or because of other differences^[11] such as we have already mentioned. And it is perhaps also proper to take into account the situation in which each plant naturally grows or does not grow. For this is an important distinction, and specially characteristic of plants, because they are united to the ground and not free from it like animals.

 

1. κατ᾽ αὐτὰς τὰς conj. Sch.; [κα] καὶ τά τ᾽ αὐτὰς τὰς U; κατὰ ταύτας τὰς MVAld.
2. τάντων . . . τόπους, text perhaps defective.
3. i.e. as to locality.
4. cf 4.7.1.
5. i.e. though not actually living in water.
6. οὐδ᾽ ὅλως conj. W.; ἐν τόυτοις Ald.H. Minime G.
7. θέλοι conj. Sch.; θέλει Ald.H.
8. εὓροι conj. Sch.; εὓρη Ald.; εὓρῃ H.
9. Presumably as being sometimes found on the shore below high-water mark.
10. ἃπαντα . . . ζῶα. This passage seems not to belong here (W.).
11. τρόποι conj. Sch.; τόποι UMVAId.

Layout 2