9To begin with, nature has varied ways of producing trees. 10For some, with no man compelling them, come up of themselves of their own accord and occupy the plains and winding rivers far and wide, like the soft osier and the pliant broom, the poplar and the willow-beds whitening with grey-green leaf; 14but some rise from planted seed, like the tall chestnuts, and the durmast oak, mightiest of the groves in its leafage for Jupiter, and the oaks the Greeks held to be oracles. 17For others a very dense thicket sprouts from the root, as for cherries and elms; 18the Parnassian laurel too, while small, springs up beneath its mother's huge shade.
20These ways nature first gave; by these every kind of forest and shrub and sacred grove grows green. 22There are other ways, which experience itself has found for itself by method. 23One man has cut suckers from the tender body of their mothers and set them in furrows; another has buried stocks in the field, both four-split stakes and poles of sharpened wood; 26and some forest trees await the pressed-down arches of the layer, and nurseries living in their own soil; 28others need no root, and the pruner does not hesitate to entrust the topmost shoot to the earth, giving it back to her. 30Indeed, even when the trunks are cut — wonderful to tell — an olive root pushes out from the dry wood.
32And often we see the branches of one tree turn without harm into those of another, the pear, transformed, bear grafted apples, and stony cornels blush red on plum trees.