One water, many tastes and colors in plants

For the sweet quality in the vine is one thing, and that in the apple tree, the fig, and the date palm is another. I want you to linger with me over this inquiry a little longer: how the same water is smooth to the senses at one moment, when it becomes sweetened in certain plants, and at another moment it is striking to the taste, when it is made sour as it passes through other plants. And again, when it changes into extreme bitterness, it roughens the sense, as happens in wormwood or scammony. In acorns, or the fruit of the cornel tree, it changes into an astringent and harsh quality; but in terebinths and walnut trees, it is transformed into a soft and oily nature.

And why speak of distant examples, when in the same fig tree it passes over into the most opposite qualities? For it is most bitter in the sap, but most sweet in the fruit itself. And on the vine it is most astringent in the shoots, but most pleasant in the grape clusters. And how many are the differences in colors? You could see in a meadow the same water reddened in one flower, and in another purple, and dark blue in this one, and white in another; and again it provides a difference in scents that is even greater than the variety in colors.

But I see that my discourse is falling into excess through the insatiability of contemplation. Unless I bind it and lead it back to the necessity of the creation account, the day will fail me while I am presenting to you the great wisdom from the smallest things. “Let the earth sprout a fruit-bearing tree, producing fruit upon the earth” (Genesis 1:11). And immediately the mountain peaks were covered with foliage, and gardens were artfully arranged, and riverbanks were adorned with countless kinds of plants. Some had been prepared to adorn the human table; others were providing food for the herds, from their leaves and from their fruits. Others were furnishing us in advance with the benefits of medicine: their juices, their saps, their twigs, their barks, their fruit. And in a word, all the useful things that long experience has discovered for us, gathering what is beneficial from particular occurrences—these the keen forethought of the Creator, foreseeing them from the beginning, brought into being.

But you, whenever you see the cultivated plants, the wild ones, those that love water, those that grow on dry land, those that bear flowers, or those without flowers—recognizing the great in the small—always add to your wonder, and increase for me your love of the Creator. Examine how he made some plants evergreen, and others that are stripped bare; and among the evergreen ones, some shed their leaves, while others are ever-leafed. For both the olive and the pine shed their leaves, even if they exchange their foliage imperceptibly, so that they never seem to be stripped of their covering. But the date palm is ever-leafed, keeping the same leaf from its first sprouting to the end. Then consider also this: how the tamarisk is like an amphibious creature, numbered among the plants that love water, and yet multiplying in the deserts. For this reason Jeremiah fittingly compares the more wicked and wavering characters to this plant.

“Let the earth sprout” (Genesis 1:11). This small command was immediately a great nature and an artful principle, completing the countless properties of growing things more swiftly than our thought.