PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
ii j 
which, according to Chinese tradition, have been grown in 
China for 1500 years, and which are now produced in great 
variety of colour; P. corallina , for the beauty of its coral-like 
seeds ; P. Cretica , for its earliness in flowering; P. tenuifolia , 
single and double, for its elegant foliage ; P. Wittmamiana , 
for its pale yellow but very fleeting flowers, which, before they 
are fully expanded, have all the appearance of immense Globe¬ 
flowers (, trollius); P. lobata , for the wonderful richness of its 
bright crimson flowers; and P . Whitleyi, a very old and very 
double form of P. edulis , of great size, and most delicate pink 
and white colour. 
Pippin, see apple. 
plane. 
I have sent him where a Cedar, 
Higher than all the rest, spreads like a Plane 
Fast by a brook. — Two Noble Kinsmen , ii. 6, 4. 
There is no certain record how long the Plane has been 
introduced into England; it is certainly not a native tree, nor 
even an European tree, but came from the East, and was 
largely planted and much admired both by the Greeks and 
Romans. We know from Pliny that it was growing in France 
in his day on the part opposite Britain, and the name occurs 
in the old vocabularies. But from Turner’s evidence in 1548 
it must have been a very scarce tree in the sixteenth century. 
He says: “I never saw any Plaine tree in Englande, saving 
once in Northumberlande besyde Morpeth, and an other 
at Barnwell Abbey besyde Cambryge.” And more than a 
hundred years later Evelyn records a special visit to Lee to 
inspect one as a great curiosity. The Plane is not only a very 
handsome tree, and a fast grower, but from the fact that it 
yearly sheds its bark, it has become one of the most useful 
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