Note 985 — BOOK XIII. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF EXOTIC TREES, AND AN ACCOUNT OF UNGUENTS.
John Bostock translation
It is still used for that purpose in the south of Europe. The Roman schoolmasters, as we learn from Juvenal, Martial, and others, employed it for the chastisement of their scholars. Pliny is in error in reckoning it among the trees, it really having no pretensions to be considered such. It is said to have received its name from “ferio,” to “beat.”