Chap. 48.] 
THE MODE IN WHICH TREES BEAR. 
387 
CHIP. 47. — TREES WHICH AEE IJNPEODrCTIVE IN CERTAIN PLACED. 
Certain trees also become unproductive, owing to some fault 
in the locality, such, for instance, as a coppice- wood in the 
island of Paros, which produces nothing at all : in the Isle of 
Ehodes, too, the peach-trees never do anything more than 
blossom. This distinction may arise also from the sex : and 
when such is the case, it is the male"^ tree that never produces. 
Some authors, however, making a transposition, assert that it 
is the male trees only that are prolific. Earrenness may also 
arise from a tree being too thickly covered with leaves, 
CHAP. 48. THE MODE IN WHICH TREES BEAR. 
Some among the fruit-trees^^ bear on both the sides of the 
branches and the summit, the pear, for instance, the fig- 
tree, and the myrtle. In other respects the trees are pretty 
nearly of a similar nature to the cereals, for in them we find 
the ear growing from the summit, while in the leguminous 
varieties the pod grows from the sides. The palm, as we have 
already stated, is the only one that has fruit hanging down 
in bunches enclosed in capsules. 
CHAP. 49. — TREES IN WHICH THE FETIIT APPEARS BEFORE THE 
LEAVES. 
The other trees, again, bear their fruit beneath the leaves, 
I for the purpose of protection, with the exception of the fig, the 
leaf of which is very large, and gives a great abundance of 
shade ; hence it is that we find the fruit placed above it ; in 
addition to which, the leaf makes its appearance after the fruit. 
There is said to be a remarkable peculiarity connected with 
one species of fig that is found in Cilicia, Cyprus, and Hellas ; 
; the fruit grows beneath the leaves, while at the same time the 
green abortive fruit, that never reaches maturity, is seen grow- 
ing on the top of them. There is also a tree that produces an 
22 ^ 3-y_ Q jg impossible that Pliny may have mistaken 
here the Persea, or Balanites jEgyptiaca, for the Persica, or peach. See p. 296. 
Fee remarks, that this expression is remarkable as giving a just notion 
of the relative functions of the male and female in plants. He says that 
one might almost be tempted to believe that they suspected something 
of the nature and functions of the pistils and stamens. 
2^ This statement, which is drawn from Theophrastus, is rather fanciful 
than rigorously true. '^^ B. xiii. c. 7. 
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