previous next

CHAP. 40.—THE DURATION OF LIFE IN THE VARIOUS KINDS OF FLOWERS.

At the very utmost, the white1 violet never lasts longer than three years: should it exceed that period, it is sure to degenerate. The rose-tree will last so long as five years without being pruned or cauterized,2 methods by which it is made to grow young again. We have already stated3 that the nature of the soil is of the very greatest importance; for in Egypt, we find, all these plants are perfectly inodorous, and it is only the myrtle that has any particular smell. In some countries, too, the germination of all the plants precedes that in other parts of the world by so long a period as two months even. The rose-beds should be well spaded immediately after the west winds begin to prevail, and, a second time, at the summer solstice: every care, however, should be paid, between these two periods, to keeping the ground well raked and cleaned.

1 See c. 38 of this Book.

2 This method of cultivation, also mentioned by Theophrastus, is never employed in modern horticulture.

3 In c. 10 of this Book.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (2 total)
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (2):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: