des,
observe that to thriving trees Nature hath given leaves, both for the
preservation of the fruit and of the stock itself; for those sometimes
warming, sometimes cooling it, the seasons creep on by degrees, and
do not assault it with all their violence at once. But now the flower,
whilst it is on the plant, is of no profit at all, unless we use it to
delight our nose with the admirable smell, and to please our eyes when
it opens that inimitable variety of colors. And therefore, when the
leaves are plucked off, the plants as it were suffer injury and grief.
There is a kind of an ulcer raised, and an unbecoming nakedness attends
them; and we must not only (as Empedocles says)

By all means spare the leaves that grace the palm,

but likewise of all other trees, and not injuriously against Nature
robbing them of their leaves, bring deformity on them to adorn
ourselves. But to pluck the flowers doth no injury at all. It is like
gathering of grapes at the time of vintage; unless plucked when ripe,
they wither of themselves and fall. And therefore, like the barbarians
who clothe themselves with the skins more commonly than with the wool of
sheep, those that wreathe leaves rather than flowers into garlands seem
to me to use the plants neither according to the dictates of reason nor
the design of Nature. And thus much I say in defence of those who sell
chaplets of flowers; for I am not grammarian enough to remember those
poems which tell us that the old conquerors in the sacred games were
crowned with flowers. Yet, now I think of it, there is a story of a rosy
crown that belongs to the Muses; Sappho mentions it in a copy of verses
to a woman unlearned and unacquainted with the Muses:--

Thou shalt unregarded lie
Cause ne'er acquainted with the Muses' Rose.
(From Sappho, Frag. 68.)

But if Trypho can produce anything to our advantage from physic, pray
let us have it.

Then Trypho taking the discourse said: The ancients were very curious
and well acquainted with all these things, because plants were the chief
ingredients of their physic. And of this some signs remain till now;
for the Tyrians offer to Agenor, and the Magnesians to Chiron, the first
supposed practitioners of physic, as the first fruits, the roots of
those plants which have been successful on a patient. And Bacchus was
not only counted a physician for finding wine, the most pleasing
and most potent remedy, but for bringing ivy, the great