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I spent last week driving with the family thru the American south, and at our stop in Monticello I learned a bit about Latin horticultural terms.

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Thomas Jefferson was a voracious reader, and his library catalogue contains many classical works, including Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria. Here, the professor is comparing the proper arrangement of language in a well-delivered speech to the proper arrangement of fruit trees (assume arboribus–borrowed from the next sentence–in apposition with frugiferis), and asks the rhetorical questions:

Nullusne ergo etiam frugiferis adhibendus est decor? Quis negat?

His reasoning:

Nam et in ordinem certaque intervalla redigam meas arbores. Quid illo quincunce speciosius,
qui in quamcumque partem spectaveris rectus est? (IX.3.9)

And while the arrangement is pleasing to the eye, there is an additional advantage:

Sed protinus in id quoque prodest, ut terrae sucum aequaliter trahat.

Now, if you don’t know what a quincunx is, there are enough clues in this passage to deduce it. Obviously the word itself indicates some relation with the number 5 (quinque), and its use in the passage we learn it refers to trees placed in ordinem certaque intervalla. If you’re still unsure, it’s an arrangement that gives you a “proper/straight” view (rectus) in quamcumque partem spectaveris and allows each tree terrae sucum aequaliter.