CHAP. 47.—TREES WHICH ARE UNPRODUCTIVE IN CERTAIN PLACES.

Certain trees also become unproductive, owing to some fault in the locality, such, for instance, as a coppice-wood in the island of Paros, which produces nothing at all: in the Isle of Rhodes, too, the peach-trees[1] never do anything more than blossom. This distinction may arise also from the sex; and when such is the case, it is the male[2] tree that never produces. Some authors, however, making a transposition, assert that it is the male trees only that are prolific. Barrenness may also arise from a tree being too thickly covered with leaves.

1. See B. xv. c 13. It is not impossible that Pliny may have mistaken here the Persea, or Balanites Ægyptiaca, for the Persica, or peach. See p. 296.

2. Fée remarks, that this expression is remarkable as giving a just notion of the relative functions of the male and female in plants. He says that one might almost be tempted to believe that they suspected something of the nature and functions of the pistils and stamens.