Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

1. Morus, the mulberry: It may possibly be wonder’d by some why we should insert this tree amongst our forest inhabitants ; but we shall soon reconcile our industrious planter, when he comes to understand the incomparable benefit of it, and that for its timber, durableness, and use for the joyner and carpenter, and to […]

1. Our main plantation is now finish’d, and our forest adorned with a just variety : But what is yet all this labour, but loss of time, and irreparable ex-pence, unless our young, and (as yet) tender plants be sufficiently guarded with munitions from all external injuries ? For, as old Tusser, IF CATTEL, OR […]

1. Qui vineam, vel arbustum constituere volet, seminaria prius facere debebit, was the precept of Columella, I. 3. C. 5. speaking of vineyards and fruit-trees : and doubtless, we cannot pursue a better course for the propagation of timber-trees : For though it seem but a trivial design that one should make a nursery of […]

1. Salix : Since Cato has attributed the third place to the salictum, preferring it even next to the very ortyard ; and (what one would wonder at) before even the olive, meadow, or corn-field it self (for salictum tertio loco, nempe post vineam, &c.) and that we find it so easily rais’d, of so […]

1. Alnus, the alder, (both conifera and julifera) is of all other the most faithful lover of watery and boggy places, and those most despis’d weeping parts, or water-galls of forests ; crassisque paludibus alni ; for in better and dryer ground they attract the moisture from it, and injure it. They are propagated of […]

1. The birch [betula, in British bedw, doubtless a proper indigene of England, (whence some derive the name of Barkshire) though Pliny calls it a Gaulish tree] is altogether produc’d of roots or suckers, (though it sheds a kind of samera about the Spring) which being planted at four or five foot interval, in small […]

1. Nux silvestris, or corylus, the hasel, is best rais’d from the ‘ nuts, (also by suckers and layers) which you shall sow like mast, in a pretty deep furrow to-ward the end of February, or treat them as you are instructed in the walnut ; light ground may immediately be sown and harrow’d-in very […]

1. The quick-beam [ornus, or as the pinax more peculiarly, fraxinus bubula ; others, the wild sorb] or (as some term it) the witchen, is a species of wild-ash. The Berries which it produced in October, may then be sown ; or rather the sets planted : I have store of them in a warm […]

1. Populus. I begin this second class (according to our former distribution) with the poplar, of which there are several kinds ; white, black, &c. (which in Candy ’tis reported bears seed) besides the aspen. The white (famous heretofore for yielding its umbram hospitalem) is the most ordinary with us, to be rais’d in abudance […]

1. Tilia the lime-tree, or [linden] is of two kinds ; the male (which some allow to be but a finer sort of elm) or maple rather, is harder, fuller of knots, and of a redder colour ; but producing neither flower, nor seed, (so constantly and so mature with us) as does the female, […]