The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 · the Elder Pliny
CHAP. 36.—THE TRAGION: TRAGACANTHE.
The island of Crete is the only place that produces the shrub called “tragion.”[963] It is similar in appearance to the terebinth;[964] a similarity which extends to the seed even, said to be remarkably efficacious for healing wounds made by arrows. The same island produces tragacanthe[965] also, with a root which resembles that of the white thorn; it is very much preferred[966] to that which is grown in Media or in Achaia; the price at which it sells is three denarii per pound. CHAP. 37.—THE TRAGOS OR SCORPIO; THE MYRICA OR BRYA; THE OSTRYS. Asia, too, produces the tragos[967] or scorpio, a thorny shrub, destitute of leaves, with red clusters upon it that are employed in medicine. Italy produces the myrica, which some persons call the “tamarix;”[968] and Achaia, the wild brya,[969] remarkable for the circumstance that it is only the cultivated kind that bears a fruit, not unlike the gall-nut. In Syria and Egypt this plant is very abundant. It is to the trees of this last country that we give the name of “unhappy;”[970] but yet those of Greece are more unhappy still, for that country produces the tree known as “ostrys,” or, as it is sometimes called, “ostrya,”[971] a solitary tree that grows about rocks washed by the water, and very similar in the bark and branches to the ash. It resembles the pear-tree in its leaves, which, however, are a little longer and thicker, with wrinkled indentations running down the whole length of the leaf. The seed of this tree resembles barley in form and colour. The wood is hard and solid; it is said, that if it is introduced into a house, it is productive of painful deliveries and of shocking deaths.
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