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BOOK II. 7
827a
[There is also a class of plant which has neither root nor leaves, and another which has a stalk, but no fruit or leaves, the tamarisk, for example.][1] 9–11
All herbs and all things that grow above or in the earth have their origin in one of five ways, namely, either from seed, or from putrefaction, or from the moisture of water, or from being planted, or from growing as parasites on other plants. These are the five causes of plants.
7 Trees have three different methods of production; they produce their fruit either before their leaves, or at the same time as their leaves, or else after their leaves have grown.[2] A plant which produces its fruit before its leaves contains a considerable amount of oily juice, and when the heat which is natural to the plant has assimilated the juice, its maturity will quickly follow, and the juice will acquire 15 force and boil up within the branches of the plant and will prevent the moisture from rising; the result is that the fruit appears before the leaves. But in plants which produce their leaves more quickly than their fruits, the effects of the moisture are various. When the heat of the sun begins to disperse the particles of water, the sun attracts the particles of this moisture upwards, and the process of ripening will be delayed, because the concoction of the fruit will only take place through coagulation, and so the leaves come before the fruit. A plant which produces its leaves and fruit simultaneously has much moisture, and frequently also contains an oily juice. When the heat has assimilated the moisture, it will, as a result, rise upward, carrying the juice with it, and the air and sun will draw it out, and the oily juice which forms the fruit will come out, while the moisture will produce the leaves, leaves and fruit coming forth together. The wise men of old used to assert that all leaves were really fruits, but so much moisture was present, because the fruit did not mature or solidify owing to the presence of heat above and the sudden attraction- ↑ This sentence is transferred to this place by Meyer from ll. 9–11 below, where it makes no sense. Jovis barba is, according to Meyer, the Arabic tharfa jonani, the Greek μνρίκη, tamarisk.
- ↑ Transferring est quoque … barba Jovis to the end of chapter vi, and omitting adhuc …. operationes with G ii.
