"Many old writers mention the great and famous city of Damascus. Now in the territory of the Damascenes there is a very large quantity of the so‑called cuckoo-apples, cultivated with great skill. Hence this fruit gets the special name of "damson," excelling the same kind grown in other countries."
— Plums

January 1, 1970

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Fruit
Original Language: English

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But this fruit, though smaller round than a plum, is the same in taste, but slightly more acrid. Seleucus in his Dialect Lexicon says that êla, cuckoo-apples, and madrya are the same kind of plum. Madrya is for malodrya ("apple-fruit"); brabyla are so called because, being laxative, they "eject the food"; and êla is for mêla ("apples"), according to Demetrius Ixion in his Etymology. But Theophrastus says (Historia Plantarum, III, 6, 4): coccymêlea ('plum-tree') and spodias ('bullace') — the latt