page_title: Historia Plantarum (Theophrastus book)
section_title: Book 5: Wood
hierarchical_section_title: Historia Plantarum (Theophrastus book) / Contents / Book 5: Wood
caption_attribution_description: Ancient Olympia, Greece. Photo taken with Nokia N8 (12 Megapixel). Αρχαία Ολυμπία. Φωτογραφία που τράβηξα με το Nokia N8.
context_page_description: Theophrastus's Enquiry into Plants or Historia Plantarum was, along with his mentor Aristotle's History of Animals, Pliny the Elder's Natural History and Dioscorides's De materia medica, one of the most important books of natural history written in ancient times, and like them it was influential in the Renaissance. Theophrastus looks at plant structure, reproduction and growth; the varieties of plant around the world; wood; wild and cultivated plants; and their uses. Book 9 in particular, on the medicinal uses of plants, is one of the first herbals, describing juices, gums and resins extracted from plants, and how to gather them.
  Historia Plantarum was written some time between c. 350 BC and c. 287 BC in ten volumes, of which nine survive. In the book, Theophrastus described plants by their uses, and attempted a biological classification based on how plants reproduced, a first in the history of botany. He continually revised the manuscript, and it remained in an unfinished state on his death.
context_section_description: Theophrastus describes the wood of different trees, the effects of climate on wood, of knots and 'coiling' in timber and other differences in quality. He discusses which woods to use for specific purposes such as for carpentry, shipbuilding and for building houses, and the making of charcoal. The most useful trees are said to be silver-fir and fir, and they have the best wood in the largest sizes; the silver-fir is softer than the fir, and its wood has layers like an onion, and is made entirely of these layers. The strongest and most attractive wood is smooth, without knots. In Syria, terebinth wood is dark and close-grained, Theophrastus reports, and used both for the handles of daggers and, turned on the lathe, for making cups. He claims that the hardest timber is of oak and holm oak, while elm warps the least, so it is used for the pivots and sockets of doors, which must be straight. The wood of palms is light and soft like cork-oak, but is tougher and less brittle, so it is good for carving images. Timber from the cedar, ebony, box, olive, oak and sweet chestnut keeps well and resists decay. He asserts that Tamarisk wood from Greece is weak, but from the Arabian island of Tylos it is as strong as kermes-oak. The wood of oak and the knotted parts of fir and silver-fir are described as the hardest to work. Ships are generally made of silver-fir, fir, and Syrian cedar; in Cyprus they use Aleppo pine which is better than the fir that grows there. Theophrastus records that in the lowlands of Italy (the country of the Latins) they grow bay, myrtle and excellent beech trees long enough for the whole length of a ship.
caption: Aleppo pines, like these at ancient Olympia, yielded wood suitable for shipbuilding, according to Theophrastus in Book 5.
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