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labruscagrape - Re: [OFEX] Ancient Figs - Pliny

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  • From: "bert dunn" <helbert@idirect.com>
  • To: "Ontario Fruit Explorers" <labruscagrape@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [OFEX] Ancient Figs - Pliny
  • Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 13:19:36 -0400

oh, good heavens, hope you did not 2 finger all of Pliny's speech. It's far
beyond my ken. Thanks anyway for sending it. Bert



Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 10:33 AM
Subject: [OFEX] Ancient Figs - Pliny



Hi Bert,

This may interest you... Pliny wrote on figs too. He discusses how to
use wild figs to help ripen domestic figs by making use of the insects
that infect wild figs. Tom

===
CHAP. XVIII.

Of Figs, 29 sorts of them.

Of all other fruits which have tender pils or skins, and are called in
Latine, Poma, Figs are the biggest:68 for some of them are found to be as
great as Peares. As touching the Sycomor of Ægypt and Cypres, and of their
admirable fruit, we have written ynough in the treatise of forraine
Trees.69 The Idæan Figs that come from the mountaine Ida, are of colour
red, of the bignesse of Olives, onely rounder they be, & in tast resemble
Medlars. In the region about Troas neare unto the said hill Ida, they call
that fig-tree Alexandrina. It is as thicke as a mans arme about at the
cubite or elbow, and full of braunches: the wood thereof is tough and
strong, howbeit, pliable to wind and bend which way a man would have it.
Void of milkie substance it is, clad with a greene barke, bearing leaves
like the Tillet or Linden tree, but that they be soft. Onesicritus
writeth, that the Fig-trees in Hycania beare more pleasant fruit than ours
in Italie, without all comparison: also that they carie a greater burden,
and be farre more plentifull, insomuch, as one of them doth ordinarily
yeeld 270 Modij of Figs. We have here also in Italie many Fig-trees
brought out of other forraine countries, to wit, from Chalcis and Chios:
whereof there be many sorts. For both our Lydian Figs which are of a
reddish purple colour, and also the Mamillane or teat-Figs, have a
resemblance of the said Chalcidian and Chian figs, yea, and the
Callistruthion Figs beyond others not a little, in goodnesse of tast: and
these of all the rest are the coldest. For as touching the Affricane Figs,
which many men prefer before all others, they hold the name of Affricke,
as if it were their native countrey: and yet there is a great question
thereabout, and I wot not well what to say thereof, considering that it is
not long agoe that Affricke begun first to have Fig-trees. For the
Alexandrine Figs are of the blacke kind, having a white rift or chamfre,
and are surnamed Delicate. The Rhodian Fig is likewise blacke of hue: and
so is the Tiburtine, which also is of the hastie kind, and ripe before
others.












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