| Title: | Quincunx, staggered row |
| Original Title: | Quinconce |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 13 (1765), p. 714 |
| Author: | Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt (biography) |
| Translator: | Ann-Marie Thornton [Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey] |
| Subject terms: |
Gardening
|
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Source: | Russell, Terence M. and Anne Marie Thornton. Gardens and landscapes in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert : the letterpress articles and selected engravings. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. Used with permission. |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0002.326 |
| Citation (MLA): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Quincunx, staggered row." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Ann-Marie Thornton. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2013. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0002.326>. Trans. of "Quinconce," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 13. Paris, 1765. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Quincunx, staggered row." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Ann-Marie Thornton. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0002.326 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Quinconce," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 13:714 (Paris, 1765). |
Quincunx, staggered row, pronounced ‘quinconge’ and derived from Latin ‘quincunx’, meaning five ounces or parts. [1] It is a plantation of four trees in the shape of a square with a fifth tree at the centre. This arrangement is repeated in order to compose a symmetrically-planted wood, which forms identical, parallel walks when viewed from the corners. Cicero refers to this type of quincunx in his Cato Maior, as does Quintilian. [2]
Today, a quincunx takes the form of a plantation of trees positioned in several rows, the length and breadth of which are parallel. The second row of trees begins at the centre of the square formed by the pairs of trees at the top of the first and third rows; there are no other trees in the square. When this quincunx is meshed together and the allées are viewed from the side, the quincunx is seen to form a perfect chequered pattern. Examples are the quincunxes near the Invalides in Paris and in the garden at Marly.
The beauty of a quincunx lies in the proper alignment and interconnection of the walks. Palissades and underwood are excluded from this wood, but occasionally one may sow pieces of turf under the trees, retaining some hoed allées in order to form a number of designs.
Notes
1. ‘Quinque’ is Latin for five, and ‘uncia’ (also ounce or inch) is a small spot on a die: the arrangement of the trees in a quincunx resembles the spots on the side of a die marked 5 (Skeat, 1994, p. 386).
2. ‘What could be more visually attractive than a quincunx, which offers the spectacle of straight lines whatever angle it is approached from? But this plantation has also the advantage of absorbing the earth’s juices evenly’ ( Institutio Oratoria, book VIII, ch. 3, line 9). The Roman Marcus Fabius Quintilianus ( c. AD 35) was a celebrated teacher of rhetoric. His Institutio Oratoria ( c. AD 95), in twelve books, detailed the education of an orator from childhood to adulthood; Howatson and Chilvers, 1996, pp. 463-4. On Cicero’s Cato Maiorde Senectute, see article To Deep trench (ground).