Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

1. Fraxinus the ash, is with us reputed male and female, the one affecting the higher grounds ; the other the plains, of a whiter wood, and rising many times to a prodigious stature ; so as in forty years from the key, an ash hath been sold for thirty pounds sterling : And I […]

1. Ostrys the horn-beam, (by some called the horse-beech, from the resemblance of the leaf) in Latin (ignorantly) the Carpinus, is planted of sets ; though it may likewise be rais’d from the julas and seeds, which being mature in August, should he sown in October, and will lie a year in the bed, which […]

1. The beech, [ fagus] (of two or three kinds) and numbred amongst the glandiferous trees, I rank here before the martial ash, because it commonly grows to a greater stature. But here I may not omit a note of the accurate critic Palmerius, upon a passage in Theophrastus, 1 where he animadverts upon his […]

1. Ulmus the elm, there are four or five sorts, and from the difference of the soil and air divers spurious : Two of these kinds are most worthy our culture, the vulgar, viz. the mountain elm, which is taken to be the oriptelea of Theophrastus ; being of a less jagged and smaller leaf […]

1. Robur, the oak ; I have sometimes consider’d it very seriously, what should move Pliny to make a whole chapter of one only line, which is less than the argument alone of most of the rest in his huge volume : but the weightiness of the matter does worthily excuse him, who is not […]

1. The arbutus, (by us call’d the strawberry-tree) too much I think neglected by us; making that a rarity, which grows so common and naturally in Ireland: It is indeed with some difficulty raised by seeds, but propagated by layers, if skilfully prun’d, grows to a goodly tree, patient of our clime, unless the weather […]

Syring, jasmine and other Exoticks We do not exclude this useful tree from those of the glandiferous and forest ; but being inclin’d to gratify the curious, I have been induc’d to say some-thing farther of such semper virentia, as may be made to sort with those of our own, (especially of the next Chapter.) […]

1. But now after all the beautiful and stately trees, clad in perpetual verdure, Quid tibi odarato referam sudantia ligno ? Should I forget the cedar ? which grows in all extreams; in the moist Barbadoes, the hot Bermudas, (I speak of those trees so denominated) the cold New England, even where the snows lie, […]

1. Abies, picea, pinus, pinaster, larsh, &c. are all of them easily rais’d of the kernels and nuts, which may be gotten out of their polysperm and turbinate cones, clogs, and squams, by exposing them to the sun, or a little before the fire, or in warm-water, till they begin to gape, and are ready […]

1. Platanus, that so beautiful and precious tree, anciently sacred to ‘ Helena, (and with which she crown’d the Lar, and Genius of the place) was so doated on by Xerxes, that AElian and other authors tell us, he made halt, and stopp’d his prodigious army of seventeen hundred thousand soldiers, which even cover’d the […]