CHAP. 52.—TREES WHICH BEAR VARIOUS PRODUCTS. CRATÆGUM.
Many trees bears more than one production, a fact which
we have already mentioned[1] when speaking of the glandiferous trees. In the number of these there is the laurel,
which bears its own peculiar kind of grape, and more particularly the barren laurel,[2] which bears nothing else; for
which reason it is looked upon by some persons as the male
tree. The filbert, too, bears catkins, which are hard and compact, but of no use[3] whatever.
(30.) But it is the box-tree that supplies us with the greatest number of products, not only its seed, but a berry also,
known by the name of cratægum;[4] while on the north side
it produces mistletoe, and on the south hyphear; two products of which I shall shortly have to speak more[5] at length.
Sometimes, indeed, this tree has all four of these products
growing upon it at the same moment.
1. In cc. 9–14 of the present Book.
2. This passage is quite unintelligible; and it is with good reason that
Fée questions whether Pliny really understood the author that he copied
from.
3. Fée remarks, that Pliny does not seem to know that the catkin is an
assemblage of flowers, and that without it the tree would be totally barren.
4. Pliny blunders sadly here, in copying from Theophrastus, B. iii. c. 16.
He mixes up a description of the box and the cratægus, or holm-oak, making
the latter to be a seed of the former: and he then attributes a mistletoe to
the box, which Theophrastus speaks of as growing on the cratægus.
5. See c. 93, where he enlarges on the varieties of the mistletoe.