monk's rhubarb; but some have large side-roots, as celery and beet, and in proportion to their size these root deeper than trees. Again of some the roots are fleshy, as in radish turnip cuckoo-pint crocus; of some they are woody, as in rocket and basil. And so with most wild plants, except those whose roots are to start with numerous and much divided, as those of wheat barley and the plant specially[1] called 'grass.' For in annual and herbaceous plants this is the difference between the roots:—Some are more numerous and uniform and much divided to start with, but the others have one or two specially large roots and others springing from them.
To speak generally, the differences in roots are more numerous in shrubby plants and pot-herbs; [2]for some are woody, as those of basil, some fleshy, as those of beet, and still more those of cuckoo-pint asphodel and crocus; some again are made, as it were, of bark and flesh, as those of radishes and turnips; some have joints, as those of reeds and dog's tooth grass and of anything of a reedy character; and these roots alone, or more than any others, resemble the parts above ground; they are in fact like[3] reeds fastened in the ground by their fine roots. Some again have scales or a kind of bark, as those of squill and purse-tassels, and also of onion and things like these. In all these it is possible to strip off a coat.
Now all such plants, seem, as it were, to have two kinds of root; and so, in the opinion of some, this is true generally of all plants which have a solid 'head'[4] and send out roots from it downwards. These have,
