We have not much account of the products of Assyria Proper in early times. Its dates were of small repute, being greatly inferior to those of Babylon. It grew a few olives in places, and some spicy shrubs, which cannot be identified with any certainty. Its cereal crops were good, and may perhaps be regarded as included in the commendations bestowed by Herodotus and Strabo on the grain of the Mesopotamian region. The country was particularly deficient in trees, large tracts growing nothing but wormwood and similar low shrubs, while others were absolutely without either tree or bush. The only products of Assyria which acquired such note as to be called by its name were its silk and its citron trees. The silk, according to Pliny, was the produce of a large kind of silkworm not found elsewhere. The citron trees obtained a very great celebrity. Not only were they admired for their perpetual fruitage, and their delicious odor; but it was believed that the fruit which they bore was an unfailing remedy against poisons. Numerous attempts were made to naturalize the tree in other countries; but up to the time when Pliny wrote, every such attempt had failed, and the citron was still confined to Assyria, Persia and Media.
It is not to be imagined that the vegetable products of Assyria were confined within the narrow compass which the ancient notices might seem to indicate. Those notices are casual, and it is evident that they are incomplete: nor will a just notion be obtained of the real character of the region, unless we take into account such of the present products as may be reasonably supposed to be indigenous. Now setting aside a few plants of special importance to man, the cultivation of which may have been introduced, such as tobacco, rice, Indian corn, and cotton, we may fairly say that Assyria has no exotics, and that the trees, shrubs, and vegetables now found within her limits are the same in all probability as grew there anciently. In order to complete our survey, we may therefore proceed to inquire what are the chief vegetable products of the region at the present time.
In the south the date-palm grows well as far as Anah on the Euphrates and Tekrit on the Tigris. Above that latitude it languishes, and ceases to give fruit altogether about the junction of the Khabour with the one stream and the Lesser Zab with the other. The unproductive tree, however, which the Assyrians used for building purposes, will grow and attain a considerable size to the very edge of the mountains. Of other timber trees the principal are the sycamore and the Oriental plane, which are common in the north the oak, which abounds about Mardin (where it yields gall-nuts and the rare product manna), and which is also found in the Sinjar and Abd-el-Aziz ranges; the silver poplar, which often fringes the banks of the streams; the sumac, which is found on the Upper Euphrates; and the walnut, which grows in the Jebel Tur, and is not uncommon between the foot of Zagros and the outlying ranges of hills. Of fruit-trees the most important are the orange, lemon, pomegranate, apricot, olive, vine, fig, mulberry, and pistachio-nut. The pistachio-nut grows wild in the northern mountains, especially between Orfah and Diarbekr. The fig is cultivated with much care in the Sinjar. The vine is also grown in that region, but bears better on the skirts of the hills above Orfah and Mardin. Pomegranates flourish in various parts of the country. Oranges and lemons belong to its more southern parts, where it verges on Babylonia. The olive clothes the flanks of Zagros in places. Besides these rarer fruits, Assyria has chestnuts, pears, apples, plums, cherries, wild and cultivated, qinces, apricots, melons and filberts.