The mother plant admires the leaves unknown Of alien trees, and apples not her own. Of vegetable woods are various kinds, And the same species are of several minds. Lotes, willows, elms, have different forms allowed; So funeral cypress, rising like a shrowd. Fat olive-trees of sundry sorts appear, Of sundry shapes their unctuous berries bear. Radii long olives, Orchites round produce, And bitter Pausia, pounded for the juice. Alcinoüs' orchard various apples bears: Unlike are bergamots and pounder pears. Nor our Italian vines produce the shape, Or taste, or flavour, of the Lesbian grape. The Thasian vines in richer soils abound; The Mareotic grow in barren ground. The Psythian grape we dry: Lagean juice Will stammering tongues and staggering feet produce. Rath ripe are some, and some of later kind, Of golden some, and some of purple rind. How shall I praise the Rhætian grape divine, Which yet contends not with Falernian wine? The Aminean many a consulship survives, And longer than the Lydian vintage lives, Or high Phanæus, king of Chian growth: But, for large quantities and lasting, both, The less Argitis bears the prize away. The Rhodian, sacred to the solemn day, In second services is poured to Jove, And best accepted by the gods above. Nor must Bumastus his old honours lose, In length and largeness like the dugs of cows. I pass the rest, whose every race, and name, And kinds, are less material to my theme; Which who would learn, as soon may tell the sands, Driven by the western wind on Libyan lands, Or number, when the blustering Eurus roars, The billows beating on Ionian shores. Nor every plant on every soil will grow: The sallow loves the watery ground, and low; The marshes, alders: Nature seems to ordain The rocky cliff for the wild ashes reign; The baleful yew to northern blasts assigns, To shores the myrtles, and to mounts the vines. Regard the extremest cultivated coast, From hot Arabia to the Scythian frost: All sorts of trees their several countries know; } Black ebon only will in India grow, } And odorous frankincense on the Sabæan bough. } Balm slowly trickles through the bleeding veins Of happy shrubs in Idumæan plains. The green Egyptian thorn, for medicine good, With Æthiops' hoary trees and woolly wood, Let others tell; and how the Seres spin Their fleecy forests in a slender twine; With mighty trunks of trees on Indian shores, Whose height above the feathered arrow soars, Shot from the toughest bow, and, by the brawn Of expert archers, with vast vigour drawn. Sharp-tasted citrons Median climes produce, (Bitter the rind, but generous is the juice,) A cordial fruit, a present antidote Against the direful stepdame's deadly draught, Who, mixing wicked weeds with words impure, The fate of envied orphans would procure.