Pliny Natural History, Vol. IV (Loeb Latin-English)

...which are described in both Greek and Latin, as never shedding its leaves. A typical Greek story has been handed down from early times: that Jupiter lay with Europa underneath it—just as if there were not another tree of the same species on the island of Cyprus! Slips from this tree, however, were planted first in Crete—so eager is human nature for novelty—and they reproduced the defect. I call it a defect because the plane tree has no greater recommendation than its property of warding off the sun in summer and admitting it in winter. During the reign of Claudius, an extremely wealthy Thessalian eunuch, who was a freedman of Marcellus Aeserninus but had enrolled himself among the emperor’s freedmen for the sake of power, imported this variety of plane tree from Crete into Italy and introduced it at his country estate near Rome. He deserves to be called another Dionysius! These monstrosities from abroad still last on in Italy, in addition to those that Italy has devised for herself.

The dwarf-plane.

VI. There is also the variety called the "ground-plane," stunted in height. Since we have discovered the art of producing abortions even in trees, we must speak of the unhappy subject of dwarfs in this category. The ground-plane is produced by specific methods of planting and lopping. Clipped arbors were invented within the last 80 years by a member of the Equestrian order named Gaius Matius, a friend of the late Emperor Augustus.

VII. The cherry, the peach, and all the trees with Greek or foreign names are also exotic. However, those among them which have been naturalized here...