in these two ways—while some of them, such as silver-fir fir and Aleppo pine grow only from seed. All those that have seed and fruit, even if they grow from a root, will grow from seed too for they say that even those which, like elm and willow, appear to have no fruit reproduce themselves. For proof they give the fact that many such trees come up at a distance from the roots of the original tree, whatever the position may be; and further, they have observed a thing which occasionally happens; for instance, when at Pheneos[1] in Arcadia the water which had collected in the plain since the underground channels[2] were blocked burst forth, where there were willows growing near the inundated region, the next year after it had dried up they say that willows grew again; and where there had been elms, elms[3] grew, even as, where there had been firs and silver-firs, these trees reappeared—as if the former trees followed the example[4] of the latter.
But the willow is said to shed its fruit early, before it is completely matured and ripened; and so the poet[5] not unfittingly calls it "the willow which loses its fruit."
That the elm also reproduces itself the following taken to be a proof: when the fruit is carried by the winds to neighbouring spots, they say that young trees grow from it. Something similar to this appears to be what happens in the case of certain under-shrubs and herbaceous plants; though they have no visible seed, but some of them only a sort of
- ↑ cf. 5. 4. 6.
- ↑ 'Katavothra' (now called 'the devil's holes,' see Lawson, cited below); cf. Paus. 8. 14; Catull. 68. 109; Plut. de sera numinis vindicta, 557 c; Plin. 31. 36; Frazer, Pausanias and other Greek Sketches, pp. 315 foll.; Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, p. 85.
- ↑ πτελέας αὖθις πτελέας conj. St.; πτελέας ἀντὶ πελέας U; πτελέας ἀντὶ πτελέας MV; πτελέας αὖθις πτελέας P; πτελέας αὖθις πτελέας Ald.
- ↑ i.e. by growing from seed, as conifers normally do.
- ↑ Homer, Od. 10. 510; cf. Plin. 16. 110.
