Latin Texts & Translations

Belonging to this last class, there are the following trees which do not lose their leaves: the olive, the laurel, the palm, the myrtle, the cypress, the pine, the ivy, the rhododendron, ^[Note] and, although it may be rather called a herb than a tree, the savin. ^[Note] The rhododendron, as its name indicates, comes from Greece. By some it is known as the nerium, ^[Note] and by others as the rhododaphne. It is an evergreen, bear-

ing a strong resemblance to the rose-tree, and throwing out numerous branches from the stem; to beasts of burden, goats, and sheep it is poisonous, but for man it is an antidote ^[Note] against the venom of serpents.

(21.) The following among the forest-trees do not lose their haves: the fir, the larch, the pinaster, the juniper, the cedar, the terebinth, the box, the holm-oak, the aquifolia, the cork, the yew, and the tamarisk. ^[Note] A middle place between the evergreens and those which are not so, is occupied by the an- drachle ^[Note] in Greece, and by the arbutus ^[Note] in all parts of the world; as they lose all their leaves with the exception of those on the top of the tree. Among certain of the shrubs, too, the bramble and the calamus, the leaves do not fall. In the territory of Thurii, where Sybaris formerly stood, from the city there was a single oak ^[Note] to be seen that never lost its leaves, and never used to bud before midsummer: it is a singular thing that this fact, which has been so often alluded to by the Greek writers, should have been passed over in silence by our own. ^[Note] Indeed, so remarkable are the virtues that we find belonging to some localities, that about Memphis in Egypt, and at Ele- phantina, in Thebais, the leaves ^[Note] fall from none of the trees, not the vine even.