History of Rare Plants

A woodcut botanical illustration showing a branch of a plant with several large, ovate leaves with prominent venation. A small round fruit or bud is depicted at one of the leaf axils. Below the main branch is a small detail showing a section of a woody stem.

Laurus persea
lb 4 529
Sp pl 3. 449

The Persea of Theophrastus.

THEOPHRASTUS, in Book IV, Chapter II of the History of Plants, describes the Persea in this manner: There is also in Egypt another tree called the Persea, great and beautiful in appearance, but very much like the pear tree in its leaves, flowers, branches, and entire form, except that this one is evergreen, while the other is deciduous. It bears much fruit, and yields it ripe at all times, the new always overtaking the old. It matures toward the blowing of the Etesian winds; the remainder they gather while still raw and store away. It is the size of a pear, oblong in shape, in the manner of an almond, grass-green in color, containing a stone within like a plum, but much smaller and softer; its flesh is very sweet, pleasant, and easy to digest, for it causes no distress to those who eat much of it. This tree excels both in the length and thickness of its roots, and also in their number; it has a robust wood, beautiful in appearance, black like the lotus, from which they fashion statues, couches, small tables, and other things of this kind.

IN a similar manner, and in nearly the same words, Pliny describes it in Book XIII, Chapter IX, under the name of the Persica tree, confusing the names themselves, which nevertheless he very clearly separates and distinguishes in Book XV, Chapter XIII. The Persica [peach] trees, he says, passed over late and with difficulty, so that they bear nothing in Rhodes, which was their first host-country from Egypt. It is false that they were born poisonous and with torment in Persia, and were translated into Egypt by the Kings for the sake of punishment, and mitigated by the soil. The Persea of Pliny. For the more diligent record that concerning the Persea, which is entirely different, similar to the reddish myxae [sebestens], and refused to be born outside the Orient. The more learned also denied that it was translated from Persia for the sake of punishments, but was sown at Memphis by Perseus, and on that account Alexander established that the victors there be crowned with it, in honor of his ancestor. It always has leaves and fruit, with others growing up beneath.

Which passage, indeed, most clearly refutes the opinion of those who, more headstrongly, wish to assert that the Persea tree is the same as the Persica [peach]; not to mention that the history of each tree is very different.

The Persea of Strabo.

STRABO likewise makes mention of the Persea in the last book of his Geography, attributing to it perpetual foliage, and a fruit of the size of a pear, oblong in shape, enclosed in a shell and skin in the manner of an almond.
BUT Galen also, in Book II of On Aliments, asserts that he saw the Persea at Alexandria; he mentions it in other places as well.

The Persea as an evergreen.

IN this all agree, that they attribute perpetual foliage to the Persea, an oblong fruit, enclosed in an almond-like shell and skin. This tree which I present is indeed of perpetual foliage, but in its leaf and flower it resembles the laurel more than the pear; it is also of an oblong fruit, but one that is more similar to myxae (such as Pliny attributed to it in the passage just cited) or to oblong plums than to almonds, and of a black color (as Placa reported), not grass-green.

THEREFORE, to confess the truth, although this of ours agrees in some marks with the Persea described by Theophrastus, it nevertheless seems to me to fit more aptly that which Pliny describes in the book already mentioned, or that which Plutarch testifies grows in Egypt, most pleasing to Isis, because The Persea of Plutarch. it bears a fruit emulating the shape of a heart, and a leaf that of a tongue. But I leave that to the judgment of others; it is enough for us to have brought our opinion into the open. I cannot, however, help but wonder that some, weighing the history of the Persea too negligently, have not feared to add to their Commentaries, as the fruit of the Persea, the icon of this fruit of our Cuci stripped of its husk—fruits certainly entirely bony, which were once thrust upon us as the fruit of Bdellium—unless perhaps the form of a pear or a heart, which it expresses in some way, impelled them to do so. But the The Cuci. whole fruit of the Cuci, even when kept for many years and plainly dried out, is larger than a fist, and rather emulates a large Persica [peach] than a plum or pear. Theophrastus in Book IV, Chapter II of his History, and Pliny in Book XIII, Chapter IX, hand down its history a little after the description of the Persea. Neither, however, makes the fruit of the Persea similar to a pear, but only equal to it in size.

OF this tree which I present, I think no one has hitherto made trial, so far as I know.
BUT Dioscorides makes the fruit of the Persea suitable for food and useful to the stomach; and he records that the dried leaves, reduced to a powder, stay eruptions of blood when applied.

Mamay. Gomara, General History of the Indies, ch. LXIIII.

FURTHERMORE, the Mamay described by Spanish historians is a handsome tree, green in a similar manner as the walnut, with a broad crown, but tall, and which tapers somewhat into a pyramid like a cypress; the length of the leaves is greater than their width, the material of the wood is spongy, the fruit is round and large, resembling a quince in its flesh, but in flavor like a clingstone peach: within which are three or four stones, sometimes more, which are very bitter.