Theophrasti De Historia Plantarum (1483 Incunabulum)

...if one left more shoots, which by their own nature might rather be shrub-like. Neither the apple, nor the pomegranate, nor the pear—in short, nothing that is plant-bearing from the lowest part—appears to be of a single trunk. But by cultivation, others being cut away, they are indeed rendered such. We also leave some spread out by a trunk, due to the multiple cause of slenderness, such as the pomegranate or the apple. Olives and figs are also usually allowed to grow multifid. Indeed, some might perhaps have judged that they should be divided entirely by magnitude and paucity. Some also by strength and weakness, and by longevity and brevity of time. For since some of the sprouts and vegetables consist of one trunk, and are seen to attain almost the nature of a tree, such as the radish or rue. For which reason, some call such vegetables "vegetable trees," and certainly all or most of the genera of vegetables, when they have remained, take on certain branches and change entirely into the figure of a tree, yet they cannot last long. For which reasons, as we have said, definitions ought to be accepted not by an exquisite and narrow reason, but rather by a certain known way of signing and formula. For divisions also must be taken in a similar way, such as urban and wild, fruit-bearing and sterile, flower-bearing and lacking flowers, evergreen and leaf-losing. For wild and urban seem to be more of cultivation. For Hippon a Greek philosopher is the author that every plant can be made both wild and urban, that is, having obtained or not having obtained cultivation. Likewise, sterile and fruit-bearing, and flower-bearing and those lacking flowers, are rendered in the same way because of the place and the surrounding sky; likewise for evergreens and leaf-losers. For they say that around the Elephantine territory, neither vines nor figs lose their leaves. But it is fitting to embrace all things with the same matters. For there is that which is common by nature equally to trees, shrubs, undershrubs, and herbs, the causes of which, when it pleases to report them, it is necessary to teach about all by a common reason, having omitted the determination of individuals entirely. For there is also a reason that the causes of all are general. Indeed, a certain natural difference presents itself to us immediately in the genus of wild and urban things. If, indeed, some things cannot live without cultivation, such as those that are accustomed to be cultivated. Others suffer no cultivation, but are rendered worse, such as the fir, the pine, or the lastrus wild privet or similar. To the sum, those that love cold and snowy places, we ought to call them in the genus of shrubs and herbs—capers, or urban and wild lupine—reducing them then to those aforementioned things, and most especially to that which is established to be the most urban of all: that which is either alone or is the most urban species of citizens. In the forms themselves, there are differences of the wholes and the parts, such as magnitude, smallness, hardness, softness, smoothness, roughness, of the bark, of the leaves, and of the rest; in short, beauty and a certain deformity, also the goodness and badness of fruits, for since the wild ones generally seem more, such as the wild pear and the wild olive, the urban ones offer better fruits, sweeter, more pleasant, and, as I have said in total, more tempered. Thus, these certain humble things, as has been said, are distinct, and much more so those that are sterile, fruit-bearing, leaf-losing, and evergreen, since there is another of this kind. But all those which are said should always be accepted according to the places, since they perhaps cannot be taken otherwise, yet such distinctions seem to be able to make a certain general distinction, such as terrestrial and aquatic, just as in the genus of animals.