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ENQUIRY INTO PLANTS, I. ix. 3-5
 

andrachne arbutus terebinth 'wild bay' (oleander). Andrachne and arbutus seem to cast their lower leaves, but to keep those at the end of the twigs perennially, and to be always adding leafy twigs. These are the trees which are evergreen.

[1]Of shrubby plants these are evergreen:—ivy bramble buckthorn reed kedris (juniper)—for there is a small kind of kedros so called which does not grow into a tree. Among under-shrubs and herbaceous plants there are rue cabbage rose gilliflower southernwood sweet marjoram tufted thyme marjoram celery alexanders poppy, and a good many more kinds of wild plants. However some of these too, while evergreen as to their top growths, shed their other leaves, as marjoram and celery . . . . . .[2] for rue too is injuriously affected and changes its character.

[3]And all the evergreen plants in the other classes too have narrower leaves and a certain glossiness and fragrance. Some moreover which are not evergreen by nature become so because of their position, as was said[4] about the plants at Elephantine and Memphis, while lower down the Nile in the Delta there is but a very short period in which they are not making new leaves. It is said that in Crete[5] in the district of Gortyna there is a plane near a certain spring[6] which does not lose its leaves; (indeed the story is that it was under[7] this tree that Zeus lay with Europa), while all the other plants in the neighbourhood shed their leaves. [8]At Sybaris there is an oak within sight of the city which does not shed

  1. Plin. 16. 80.
  2. Some words probably missing (W.) which would explain the next two clauses.
  3. Plin. 16. 82.
  4. 1.3.5
  5. Plin. 12. 11; Varro, 1. 7.
  6. πηγῇ conj. H. from G; σκηνῇ UMVAld.; κηνῆ P2; κρηνῇ mBas.
  7. ὑπὸ conj. Hemsterhuis; ἐπὶ Ald.
  8. Plin. 16. 81.
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