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 unbranched stems without knots; though some of these are long and stout. Nevertheless it also submits to cultivation. The cultivated form differs in producing better fruit and larger leaves; in both forms the leaf has a jagged edge: the leaf of the alder most closely resembles it, but is broader, and the tree itself is bigger. The filbert is always more fruitful if it has its slender boughs cut off. There are two kinds of each sort; some have a round, others an oblong nut; that of the cultivated tree is paler, and it fruits best in damp places. The wild tree becomes cultivated by being transplanted. Its bark is smooth, consisting of one layer, thin glossy and with peculiar white blotches on it. The wood is extremely tough, so that men make baskets even of the quite thin twigs, having stripped them of their bark, and of the stout ones when they have whittled them. Also it has a small amount of yellow heart-wood, which makes the branches hollow. Peculiar to these trees is the matter of the catkin, as we mentioned.

The terebinth has a 'male' and a 'female' form. The 'male' is barren, which is why it is called 'male': the fruit of one of the 'female' forms is red from the first and as large as an unripe lentil; the other produces a green fruit which subsequently turns red, and, ripening at the same time as the grapes, becomes eventually black and is as large as a bean, but resinous and somewhat aromatic. About Ida and in Macedonia the tree is low shrubby and twisted, but in the Syrian Damascus, where it abounds, it is tall and handsome; indeed they say