They had a commodious radiation in their growth; and a due expansion of their branches, for shadow or delight. For trees thickly planted, do runne up in height and branch with no expansion, shooting unequally or short, and thinne upon the neighbouring side. And therefore Trees are inwardly bare, and spring, and leaf from the outward and Sunny side of their branches.
Whereby they also avoided the perill of συνολεθρισμὸς or one tree perishing with another, as it happeneth ofttimes from the sick effluviums or entanglements of the roots, falling foul with each other. Observable in Elmes set in hedges, where if one dieth the neighbouring Tree prospereth not long after.
In this situation divided into many intervals and open unto six passages, they had the advantage of a fair perflation from windes, brushing and cleansing their surfaces; relaxing and closing their pores unto due perspiration. For that they afford large effluviums perceptible from odours, diffused at great distances, is observable from Onyons out of the Earth; which though dry, and kept until the spring, as they shoot forth large and many leaves, do notably abate of their weight. And mint growing in glasses of water, until it arriveth unto the weight of an ounce, in a shady place, will sometimes exhaust a pound of water.
And as they send forth much, so may they receive somewhat in: For beside the common way and road of reception by the root, there may be a refection and imbibition from without; For gentle showrs refresh plants, though they enter not their roots; And the good and bad effluviums of Vegetables, promote or debilitate each other. So Epithymum and Dodder, rootlesse and out of the ground, maintain themselves upon Thyme, Savory, and plants, whereon they hang. And Ivy divided from the root, we have observed to live some years, by the cirrous parts commonly conceived but as tenacles and holdfasts unto it. The stalks of mint cropt from the root stripped from the leaves, and set in glasses with the root end upward, and out of the water, we have observed to send forth sprouts and leaves without the aid of roots, and scordium to grow in like manner, the leaves set downward in water. To omit severall Sea-plants, which grow on single roots from stones, although in very many there are side-shoots fibres, beside the fastening root.
By this open position they were fairly exposed unto the rayes of Moon and Sunne, so considerable in the growth of Vegetables. For though Poplars, Willows, and severall Trees be made to grow about the brinks of Acharon, and dark habitations of the dead; Though some plants are content to grow in obscure Wells; wherein also old Elme pumps afford sometimes long bushy sprouts, not observable in any above ground: And large fields of Vegetables are able to maintain their verdure at the bottome and shady part of the Sea; yet the greatest number are not content without the actual rayes of the Sun, but bend, incline, and follow them; As large lists of solisequious and Sun-following plants. And some observe the method of its motion in their own growth and conversion twining towards the West by the South, as Bryony, Hops, Woodbine, and several kindes of Bindeweed, which we shall more admire; when any can tell us, they observe another motion, and Twist by the North at the Antipodes. The same plants rooted against an erect North-wall full of holes, will finde a way through them to look upon the Sun. And in tender plants from mustard-seed, sown in the winter, and in a plot of earth placed inwardly against a South-window, the tender stalks of two leaves arose not erect, but bending towards the window, nor looking much higher then the Meridian Sun. And if the pot were turned they would work themselves into their former declinations, making their conversion by the East. That the Leaves of the Olive and some other Trees solstitially turn, and precisely tell us, when the Sun is entred Cancer, is scarce expectable in any Climate; and Theophrastus warily observes it; Yet somewhat thereof is observable in our own, in the leaves of Willows and Sallows, some weeks after the Solstice. But the great Convolvulus or white-flower’d Bindweed observes both motions of the Sunne, while the flower twists Æquinoctionally from the left hand to the right according to the daily revolution; The stalk twineth ecliptically from the right to the left, according to the annual conversion.
Some commend the exposure of these orders unto the Western gales, as the most generative and fructifying breath of heaven. But we applaud the Husbandry of Solomon, whereto agreeth the doctrine of Theophrastus. Arise O North-winde, and blow thou South upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out; For the North-winde closing the pores, and shutting up the effluviums, when the South doth after open and relax them; the Aromatical gummes do drop, and sweet odours fly actively from them. And if his garden had the same situation, which mapps and charts afford it, on the East side of Jerusalem, and having the wall on the West; these were the winds, unto which it was well exposed.
By this way of plantation they encreased the number of their trees, which they lost in Quaternio’s, and square-orders, which is a commodity insisted on by Varro, and one great intent of nature, in this position of flowers and seeds in the elegant formation of plants, and the former Rules observed in naturall and artificiall Figurations.
Whether in this order and one Tree in some measure breaking the cold, and pinching gusts of windes from the other, trees will not better maintain their inward circles, and either escape or moderate their excentricities, may also be considered. For the circles in Trees are naturally concentricall, parallel unto the bark, and unto each other, till frost and piercing windes contract and close them on the weatherside, the opposite semi-circle widely enlarging, and at a comely distance, which hindreth oftentimes the beauty and roundnesse of Trees, and makes the Timber lesse serviceable; whiles the ascending juyce not readily passing, settles in knots and inequalities. And therefore it is no new course of Agriculture, to observe the native position of Trees according to North and South in their transplantations.
The same is also observable underground in the circinations and sphærical rounds of Onyons, wherein the circles of the Orbes are ofttimes larger, and the meridionall lines stand wider upon one side then the other. And where the largenesse will make up the number of planetical Orbes, that of Luna, and the lower planets excede the dimensions of Saturne, and the higher: Whether the like be not verified in the Circles of the large roots of Briony and Mandrake, or why in the knotts of Deale or Firre the Circles are often eccentrical, although not in a plane, but vertical and right position, deserves a further enquiry.
Whether there be not some irregularity of roundnesse in most plants according to their position? Whether some small compression of pores be not perceptible in parts which stand against the current of waters, as in Reeds, Bull-rushes, and other vegetables toward the streaming quarter, may also be observed, and therefore such as are long and weak, are commonly contrived into a roundnesse of figure, whereby the water presseth lesse, and slippeth more smoothly from them, and even in flags or flat-figured leaves, the greater part obvert their sharper sides unto the current in ditches.