also erect, and it has soft wood and a soft heart-wood, so that the slender boughs are hollow throughout. The leaf is like that of the pear, but larger and more fibrous. It has rough bark, which on the inner side is red: wherefore it is used for dyeing hides. It has shallow roots …[1] the flower is as large as that of the bay. It grows in wet places[2] and nowhere else.
The semyda[3] has a leaf like that of the tree called the 'Persian nut' (walnut), but it is rather narrower: the bark is variegated and the wood light: it is only of use for making walking-sticks and for no other purpose.
The bladder-senna[4] has a leaf near that of the willow, but is many-branched and has much foliage; and the tree altogether is a large one. The fruit is in a pod, as in leguminous plants: the pods in fact are broad rather than narrow, and the seed in them is comparatively small, and is moderately hard, but not so very hard. For its size the tree does not bear much fruit. It is uncommon to have the fruit in a pod in fact there are few such trees.
Of filbert, terebinth, box, krataigos.
XV. The filbert is also naturally a wild tree, in that its fruit is little, if at all, inferior to that of the tree in cultivation, that it can stand winter, that it grows commonly on the mountains, and that it bears abundance of fruit in mountain regions[5] also because it does not make a trunk, but is shrubby with
- ↑ Part of the description of the flower, and perhaps of the fruit, seems to be missing. Sch.
- ↑ cf. 4. 8. 1; but in 1. 4. 3 the alder is classed with 'amphibious' trees, and in 3. 3. 1 with 'trees of the plain.'
- ↑ Betulam, G from Plin. 16. 74.
- ↑ Sch. remarks that the description of κολυτέα is out of place: cf. 3. 17. 2. W. tinks the whole section spurious. The anitheses in the latter part suggest a different context, in which κολυτέα was described by comparision with some other tree.
- ↑ ὀρείοις conj. W.; φοραῖς Ald.
