white, and conversely. Again the seed of an excellent vine produces a degenerate result, which is often of quite a different kind and at times this is not a cultivated kind at all, but a wild one of such a character that it does not ripen its fruit; with others again the result is that the seedlings do not even mature fruit, but only get as far as flowering.
Again the stones of the olive give[1] a wild olive, and the seeds of a sweet pomegranate[2] give a degenerate kind, while the stoneless kind gives a hard sort and often an acid fruit. So also is it with seedlings of pears and apples; pears give a poor sort of wild pears, apples produce an inferior kind which is acid instead of sweet; quince produces wild quince.[3] Almond again raised from seed is inferior in taste and in being hard instead of soft; and this is why men[4] bid us graft on to the almond, even when it is fully grown, or, failing that, frequently plant the offsets.
The oak also deteriorates from seed; at least many persons having raised trees from acorns of the oak at Pyrrha[5] could not produce one like the parent tree. On the other hand they say that bay and myrtle sometimes improve by seeding, though usually they degenerate and do not even keep their colour, but red fruit gives black—as happened with the tree in Antandros; and frequently seed of a 'female' cypress produces a 'male' tree. The date-palm seems to be about the most constant of these trees, when raised from seed, and also the 'cone-bearing pine'[6] (stone-pine) and the 'lice-bearing pine.'[7] So much for degeneration in cultivated trees; among wild kinds it is plain that more in proportion
