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Those attuned to nature’s clues will spot the trees on the streets change from usual suspects to rarer salt-tolerant species, like oleasters, just before the sea appears.

Some punster will say, respecting oleaster, that it is olea sterilis.

—Can any of your correspondents tell me why the termination aster is used in a depreciatory sense in Latin, as poetaster, a bad poet; oleaster, the wild olive; pinaster, the wild pine?

Olive be admitted, tho’ it produce no other fruit than the verdure of the leaf; nor will it kindly breath our air, nor the less tender oleaster, without the indulgent winter-house take them in.

Take for a sign the plenteous growth hard by Of oleaster, and the fields strewn wide With woodland berries.