In The Vegetable Productions Of
This Plain The Botanist Would Perhaps Discover Several Unknown Species
Of Trees And Plants; The
Reports of the Arabs on this subject are so
vague and incoherent, that it is almost impossible to obtain any
Precise
information from them; they speak, for instance, of the spurious
pomegranate tree, producing a fruit exactly like that of the
pomegranate, but which, on being opened, is found to contain nothing but
a dusty powder; this, they pretend, is the Sodom apple-tree; other
persons however deny its existence. The tree Asheyr (Arabic), is very
common in the Ghor. It bears a fruit of a reddish yellow colour, about
three inches in diameter, which contains a white substance, resembling
the finest silk, and enveloping some seeds. The Arabs collect the silk,
and twist it into matches for their fire-locks, preferring it to the
common match, because it ignites more readily. More than twenty camel
loads might be annually procured, and it might perhaps be found useful
in the silk and cotton manufactories of Europe. At present the greater
part of the fruit rots on the trees. On making an incision into the
thick branches of the Asheyr a white juice exsudes, which is collected
by putting a hollow reed into the incision; the Arabs sell the juice to
the druggists at Jerusalem, who are said to use it in medicine as a
strong cathartic.[It is the same plant called Oshour by the people of
Upper Egypt and Nubia.
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