The Ladies Delight | Page 3

to any purpose before the fifteenth year; when the fruits coming to good maturity, yield a viscous Juice or balmy succus, which being from time to time discharged at the Pistillum is mostly bestow'd upon the open Calyx's_ of the _Frutex Vulvaria_ or _flow'ring Shrub usually spreading under the shade of this tree, and whose parts are by a wonderful mechanism adapted to receive it. The ingenious Mr. _Richard Bradley_ is of opinion, the Frutex is hereby impregnated, and then first begins to bear; he therefore accounts this Succus_ the Farina foecundans_ of the plant: and the learned Leonhard Fucksius, in his Historia Stirpium insigniorum, observes the greatest sympathy between this tree and shrub, They are_, says he, of the same genus, and do best in the same bed, the_ Vulvaria _itself being indeed no other than a_ female Arbor Vitae.
It is produced in most Countries, tho' it thrives more in some than others, where it also increases to a larger size. The height here in England rarely passes nine, or at the most, eleven inches, and that chiefly in Kent_, whereas in _Ireland, it comes to far greater dimensions, is so good, that many of the natives entirely subsist upon it, and when transplanted, have been sometimes known to raise good houses with single plants of this sort.
As the Irish soil is accounted the best, others are as remarkably bad for its cultivation; and the least and worst in the world are said to be about Harborough_ and the _Forest of Sherard.
The stem seems to be of the sensitive tribe, tho' herein differing from the more common Sensitives; that whereas they are known to shrink and retire from even the gentlest touch of a Lady's hand, this rises on the contrary, and extends itself when it is so handled.
In winter it is not easy to raise these trees without a hot bed; but in warmer weather they stand well in the open air.
In the latter season they are subject to become weak and flaccid, and want support; for which purpose some gardeners have thought of splintering them up with birchen Twigs, which has seem'd of some service for the present, tho' the plants have very soon come to the same or a more drooping state than before.
The late ingenious Mr. Motteux thought of restoring a fine plant he had in this condition, by tying it up with a Tomex or cord made of the bark of the Vitex_, or _Hempen-Tree: but whether he made the ligature too straight, or that the nature of the Vitex is really in itself pernicious, he quite kill'd his plant thereby; which makes this universally condemn'd, as a dangerous experiment.
Some Virtuosi have thought of improving their trees for some purposes, by taking off the Nutmegs, which is however a bad way; they never seed after, and are good for little more than making whistles of, which are imported every year from Italy, and sell indeed at a good price.
Some other curious Gentlemen have endeavour'd to inoculate their plants on the stock of the Medlar_ and that with a manure of _human Ordure, but this has never been approv'd; and I have known some tree brought to a very ill end by such management.
The natural soil is certainly the best for their propagation; and that is in hollow places, that are warm and near salt water, best known by their producing the same sort of Tendrils as are observ'd about the roots of the Arbor itself. Some cautions however are very necessary, especially to young Botanists; and first, to be very diligent in keeping their trees clean and neat; a pernicious sort of insect, not, unlike a Morpione_ or _Cimex, being very subject to breed amongst the Fibrillae, which, if not taken heed of, and timely destroy'd, proves often of very dangerous consequence.
Another caution, no less useful, we have from that excellent and judicious Botanist Mr. Humphrey Bowen, to beware of a poisonous species of Vulvaria, too often mistaken for the wholesome one, and which, if suffer'd too near our trees, will very greatly endanger their well-being. He tells us, in the 12th volume of his large abridgment of la Quintinye, that before he had acquir'd his judgment and experience, some of his plants have often been sufferers through this mistake; and he has seen a tall thriving tree, by the contact: only of this venomous shrub, become porrose, scabiose_, and cover'd with fungous Excrescences_ not unlike the fruits of the Ficus sylvestris in which case the succus also has lost both its colour and vertue; and the tree itself has so much partaken of the nature of the venomous shrub that had hurt it, that itself has become venomous, and spread the poison through a whole Plantation.
These distempers of a tree of the greatest