LIBER XVI · CAPUT 21
TREES WHICH DO NOT LOSE THEIR FOLIAGE. THE RHODODENDRON. TREES WHICH DO NOT LOSE THE WHOLE OF THEIR FOLIAGE. PLACES IN WHICH THERE ARE NO TREES
Latine · Mayhoff 1906
Silvestrium generis folia non decidunt abieti, larici, pinastro, iunipero, cedro, terebintho, buxo, ilici, aquifolio, suberi, taxo, tamarici. inter utraque genera sunt andrachle in Graecia et ubique unedo; reliqua enim folia decidunt iis praeterquam in cacuminibus. non decidunt autem et in fruticum genere cedro cuidam, rubo, calamo. in Thurino agro, ubi Sybaris fuit, ex ipsa urbe prospiciebatur quercus una numquam folia demittens nec ante mediam aestatem germinans; idque mirum est, Graecis auctoribus proditum, apud nos postea sileri. nam locorum tanta vis est, ut circa Memphim Aegypti et in Elephantine Thebaidis nulli arborum decidant, ne vitibus quidem.
English · Bostock & Riley 1855–57
The following among the forest-trees do not lose their leaves: the fir, the larch, the pinaster, the juniper, the cedar, the terebinth, the box, the holm-oak, the aquifolia, the cork, the yew, and the tamarisk. A middle place between the evergreens and those which are not so, is occupied by the andrachle in Greece, and by the arbutus in all parts of the world; as they lose all their leaves with the exception of those on the top of the tree. Among certain of the shrubs, too, the bramble and the calamus, the leaves do not fall. In the territory of Thurii, where Sybaris formerly stood, from the city there was a single oak to be seen that never lost its leaves, and never used to bud before midsummer: it is a singular thing that this fact, which has been so often alluded to by the Greek writers, should have been passed over in silence by our own. Indeed, so remarkable are the virtues that we find belonging to some localities, that about Memphis in Egypt, and at Elephantina in Thebais, the leaves fall from none of the trees, not the vine even.