# Enquiry into Plants/Volume 1/Chapter 4

Exact classification impracticable: other possible bases of classification.
Indeed it might be suggested that we should classify in some cases simply by size, and in some eases by comparative robustness or length of life. For of under-shrubs and those of the pot-herb class some have only one stem and come as it were to have the character of a tree, such as cabbage and rue: wherefore some call these 'tree-herbs'; and in fact all or most of the pot-herb class, when they have been long in the ground, acquire a sort of branches, and the whole plant comes to have a tree-like shape, though it is shorter lived than a tree.
For these reasons then, as we are saying, one must not make a too precise definition; we should make our definitions typical. For we must make our distinctions too on the same principle, as those between wild and cultivated plants, fruit-bearing and fruitless, flowering and flowerless, evergreen and deciduous. Thus the distinction between wild and cultivated seems to be due simply to cultivation, since, as Hippon remarks, any plant may be either wild or cultivated according as it receives or does not receive attention. ​Again the distinctions between fruitless and fruit-bearing, flowering and flowerless, seem to be due to position and the climate of the district. And so too with the distinction between deciduous and evergreen.Thus they say that in the district of Elephantine neither vines nor figs lose their leaves.
Nevertheless we are bound to use such distinctions. For there is a certain common character alike in trees, shrubs, under-shrubs, and herbs. Wherefore, when one mentions the causes also, one must take account of all alike, not giving separate definitions for each class, it being reasonable to suppose that the causes too are common to all. And in fact there seems to be some natural difference from the first in the case of wild and cultivated, seeing that some plants cannot live under the conditions of those grown in cultivated ground, and do not submit to cultivation at all, but deteriorate under it; for instance, silver-fir fir holly, and in general those which affect cold snowy country; and the same is also true of some of the under-shrubs and herbs, such as caper and lupin. Now in using the terms 'cultivated' and 'wild' we must make these on the one hand our standard, and on the other that which is in the truest sense 'cultivated.'Now Man, if he is not the only thing to which this name is strictly appropriate, is at least that to which it most applies.
* ↑ ῥάφανος conj. Bod. from G; ῥαφανὶς Ald.
* ↑ cf. 3. 2. 2. The Ionian philosopher. See Zeller, Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Eng. trans.), l. 281 f.
* ↑ καὶ add. W.; so G.
* ↑ ἤ conj. Sch.; καὶ UAld.Cam.Bas.H.
* ↑ ἀνθόφορα καὶ ἀνανθῆ conj. Sch. from G: καρπόφορα ἂνθη P$_2$Ald.
* ↑ cf. 1. 9. 5; Plin. 16. 81.
* ↑ τοιαῦτα conj. W.; διαιρετέον conj. Sch.; τοῖς αὐτοῖς Ald. The sense seems to be: Though these 'secondary' distinctions are not entirely satisfactory, yet (if we look to the causes of different characters), they are indispensable, since they are due to causes which affect all the four classes of our 'primary' distinction.
* ↑ i.e. we must take the extreme cases.
* ↑ i.e. plants which entirely refuse cultivation.
* ↑ ὃλως πρὸς τὸ.? πρὸς τὸ ὃλως conj. St.
* ↑ ὀ δ᾽ ἂνθρωπος . . . ἣμερον. I have bracketed this clause, which seems to be an irrelevant gloss.
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