Category: Trees

1. Juglans, quasi Jovis glans, the’ wall or welch-nut (though no where growing of it self, some say, in Europe) is of several sorts ; Monsieur Rencaume (of the French Academy) reckons nine ; the soft-shell and the hard, the whiter and the blacker grain : This black bears the worst nut, but the timber […]

1. The next is the chesnut, [castanea] of which Pliny reckons many kinds, especially about Tarentum and Naples ; Janus Cornarius, upon that of Aetius, (verho oo:ç) speaks of the Lopimi, as a nobler kind, such as the Euboicae, which the Italians call maroni, quasi castaneae maris ; but we commend those of Portugal or […]

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, […]