Trees have always been important as natural entities carrying a strong symbolic and metaphorical weight, not to mention their practical uses. Therefore, words and their gender, used to name natural entities as important as trees and particularly fruit-trees and their fruits, are also important. Starting from the finding that Portuguese and Mirandese, the second official spoken language of Portu...

In a previous paper (1), the authors have shown that the fumigation of citrus trees with hydrocyanic acid (HCN) for pest control, at a time of the year when the fruit buds are in a certain stage of development, produced ridges and sectors in the outer portion of the peel (flavedo) of the fruit. In the navel orange, Valencia orange and grapefruit varieties, fumigation of trees in February produc...

In 2002, daily fluctuations in trunk diameter and fruit diameter on ‘Conference’ pear trees were measured with linear voltage displacement transducers. On an average sunny day in July, trunk diameter started to decrease around 10 a.m. when air temperature increased. This continued until 8 p.m. when air temperature started to decline. Fruit diameter growth of ‘Conference’ ceased as soon as trunk...