Enquiry into Plants/Volume 1/Chapter 66
Of differences in timber as to hardness and heaviness.
IV. Difference in weight is clearly to be determined by closeness or openness of texture, dampness or dryness, degree of glutinousness, hardness or softness. Now some woods are both hard and heavy, as box and oak, while those that are brittle and hardest owing to their dryness, are not heavy. [1]All wood of wild trees, as we have said before, is closer harder heavier, and in general stronger than that of the cultivated forms, and there is the same difference between the wood of 'male' and of 'female' trees, and in general between trees which bear no fruit and those which have fruit, and between those which bear inferior fruit and those whose fruit is better; on the other hand occasionally the 'male' tree is the more fruitful, for instance, it is said, the cypress the cornelian cherry and others. However of vines it is clear that those which bear less fruit have also more frequent knots and are more solid,[2] and so too with apples and other cultivated trees.