O nata, merito sapiens dicere omnibus
Nisi utile est quod facimus, stulta est gloria,
reciting the ancient trees sacred to the deity, the most desirable being those that were fruitful, and for use.
6. The alaternus, which we have lately receiv’d from the hottest parts of Languedoc, (and that is equal with the heat of almost any country in Europe) thrives with us in England, as if it were an indigine and natural; yet sometimes yielding to a severe Winter, follow’d with a tedious eastern wind in the Spring, of all the most hostile and cruel enemies of our climate; and therefore to be artificially and timely provided against with shelter.
7. I have had the honour to be the first who brought it into use and reputation in the kingdom, for the most beautiful and useful of hedges and verdure in the world (the swiftness of the growth consider’d) and propagated it from Cornwall, even to Cumberland: The seed grows ripe with us in August; and the honey-breathing blossoms afford an early and marvellous relief to the bees.
8. The celastrus (of the same class) ligustrum and privits, so flexible and accommodate for topiary-works, and so well known, I shall need say no more of.
9. The philyrea, (of which there are five or six sorts, and some variegated) are sufficiently hardy, (especially the serratifole) which makes me wonder to find the angustifolia planted in cases, and so charily set into the stoves, amongst the oranges and lemmons; when by long experience, I have found it equalling our holley, in suffering the extreamest rigours of our cruel frosts and winds, which is doubtless (of all our English trees) the most insensible and stout.
10. They are (both alaternus, and this) raised of the seeds, (though those of the philyrea will be long under ground) and being transplanted for espalier hedges, or standards, are to be governed by the shears, as oft as there is occasion: The alaternus will be up in a month or two after it is sown: I was wont to wash them out of the berry, and drying them a little in a cloath, commit them to the nursery-bed. Plant it out at two years growth, and clip it after rain in the Spring, before it grows sticky, and whilst the shoots are tender; thus will it form an hedge (though planted but in single rows, and at two foot distance) of a yard in thickness, twenty foot high (if you desire it) and furnish’d to the bottom: but for an hedge of this altitude, it would require the friendship of some wall, or a frame of lusty poles, to secure against the winds one of the most delicious objects in nature: But if we could have store of the philyrea folio leviter serrato (of which I have rais’d some very fine plants from the seeds) we might fear no weather, and the verdure is incomparable, and all of them tonsile, fit for cradle-work and umbracula frondium: a decoction of the angustifolia soveraign for sore mouths.
11. The myrtil. The vulgar Italian wild myrtil (though not indeed the most fragrant) grows high, and supports all weathers and climates; they thrive abroad in Bretany, in places cold and very sharp in Winter; and are observ’d no where to prosper so well, as by the sea-coasts, the air of which is more propitious to them (as well as to oranges and lemmons, &c.) than the inland air. I know of one near eighty years old, which has been continually expos’d; unless it be, that in some exceeding sharp seasons, a little dry straw has been thrown upon it; and where they are smitten, being cut down near the ground, they put forth and recover again; which many times they do not in pots and cases, where the roots are very obnoxious to perish with mouldiness. The shelter of a few mats, and straw, secur’d very great trees (both leaf and colour in perfection) this last Winter also, which were planted abroad; whilst those that were carried into the conserve, were most of them lost. Myrtils (which are of six or eight sorts) may be rais’d of seeds; as also may several varieties of oranges and lemmons, and made (after some years attendance) to produce fruit in the cold Rhetia and Helvetick valleys; but with great caution, and after all, seldom prove worth the pains, being so abundantly multiplied of suckers, slips and layers: The double-flower (which is the most beautiful) was first discovered by the incomparable Fabr. Piereshy, which a mule had cropt from a wild shrub. Note, that you cannot give those plants too much compost or refreshing, nor clip them too often, even to the stem; which will grow tall, and prosper into any shape; so as arbours have been made of single trees of the hardy kind, protected in the Winter with sheads of straw and reeds. Both leaves and berries refrigerate, and are very astringent and drying, and therefore seldom us’d within, except in fluxes: With wine and honey it heals the noisome polypus, and the powder corrects the rankness of the arm-pits, and gousset (as the French term it) to which divers of the female sex are subject: The berries mitigate the inflammations of the eyes, consolidate broken-bones; and a decoction of the juice, leaves, and berries, dyes the hair black, & enecant vitiligenes, as Dioscorides says, l. 1. c. 128. And there is an excellent sweet water extracted from the distill’d leaves and flowers: To which the naturalist adds, that they us’d the berries instead of pepper, to stuff and farce with them. Hence the mortadella a mortatula, still so call’d by the Italians, perhaps the μυρτίδες of Athenæus, deip. l. 2. c. 12. The vinum myrtites so celebrated by the[290:1] ancients, and so the oyl; And in some places the leaves for tanning of leather: and trees have grown to such substance, as of the very wood curious cups and boxes have been turn’d.
The variety of this rare shrub, now furnishing the gardens and portico’s (as long as the season and weather suits) and even in the severest Winters in the conclave, are cut and contriv’d into various figures, and of divers variegations, most likely to be produc’d by the seeds, as our learned Mr. Ray believes, rather than by layers, suckers, or slips, or from any difference of species: In the mean time, let gardeners make such trials, whilst those most worth the culture, are the small and broad-leav’d, the Tarentine, the Belgick, latifolia, and double-flower’d, and several more among the curious; and of old, sacred to Venus, so call’d from a virgin belov’d of Minerva, the garlands of the leaves and blossoms, impaling the brows of incruentous, and unbloody victors and ovations.
And now if here for the name only, I mention the myrtus Brasantica, or candle-berry shrub (which our plantations in Virginia, and other places have in plenty) let it be admitted: It bears a berry, which being boil’d in water, yields a suet or pinguid substance, of a green colour, which being scumm’d and taken off, they make candles with, in the shape of such as we use of tallow, or wax rather; giving not only a very clear and sufficient light, but a very agreeable scent, and are now not seldom brought hither to us, but the tree it self, of which I have seen a thriving one.