History of Phoenicia

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George Rawlinson. History of Phoenicia

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George Rawlinson

Camden Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford

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The plane-tree, common in Asia Minor, is not very frequent either in Phoenicia or Palestine. It occurs, however, on the middle course of the Litany, where it breaks through the roots of Lebanon, and also in many of the valleys on the western flank of the mountain. The maritime pine (Pinus maritama) extends in forests here and there along the shore, and is found of service in checking the advance of the sand dunes, which have a tendency to encroach seriously on the cultivable soil.

Of the upland trees the most common is the oak. There are three species of oak in the country. The most prevalent is an evergreen oak (Quercus pseudococcifera), sometimes mistaken by travellers for a holly, sometimes for an ibex, which covers in a low dense bush many miles of the hilly country everywhere, and occasionally becomes a large tree in the Lebanon valleys, and on the flanks of Casius and Bargylus. Another common oak is Quercus Ægilops, a much smaller and deciduous tree, very stout-trunked, which grows in scattered groups on Carmel and elsewhere, “giving a park-like appearance to the landscape." The third kind is Quercus infectoria, a gall-oak, also deciduous, and very conspicuous from the large number of bright, chestnut-coloured, viscid galls which it bears, and which are now sometimes gathered for exportation.

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