The word hortus is used in a punning sense in Epigram 4 to mean both a garden and a boy's posteriors. This second meaning is like the Greek kepos (a woman's privy parts), used by Diogenes. Plautus uses hortus for a woman's privities.
Thyrsumque pangant hurtulo in cupidinis
And let them plant the shoot in the garden of Cupid.
The Latin writers often used an agricultural and horticultural vocabulary tropically in sexual matters, as the following examples will show:
Ager--a field--a woman's parts and even the buttocks
Arare--to plough--to have connection with a woman
Arbor--a tree--the penis
Arvum--a field--a woman's genitals
Beta--the beet--is used by Catullus in describing a languid mentule
Cadurcum--a coverlet--a woman's privities
Campus--a plain, an open space--has a similar meaning
Cucumis--a cucumber--the mentule
Deglubere--to husk off, to shell--to practise masturbation, or perhaps irrumation
Faba--a bean--a testicle
FaIx--a sickle--the penis
Ficus--a fig--piles, from their resemblance in appearance to this fruit
Fodere--to dig, to plough--to have connection with a woman
Folliculus--a husk, pod, follicle--the vulva
Fons--a fountain--is used to signify the vagina of a woman
Fossa--a ditch--employed in the double sense of a woman's natural parts and the posteriors of a catamite
Fossula--a little ditch--see above
Fossor--a ditcher--a fornicator
Hortus--a garden--see above
Mala--apples--the testicles
Marisca--a fig--piles and also a woman's parts
Molere--to grind: and
Mollitor--a grinder--to futter
Nuces--nuts--has reference to the use of boys as catamites
Olera--herbs--is used transf. with an obscene meaning
Palus--a stake and
Pessulus--a bolt are both designations of the male member
Plantaria--ferns--the hair on the privy parts
Poma--apples, fruit--testicles
Radix--a root--penis
Ramus--a bough and
Raster--a hoe--are both designations of the male member
Rigare--to water--to emit semen
Ros--dew--semen
Saltus--a narrow path, a defile--a woman's parts
Sarrire--to hoe, to weed--to swive a woman
Sceptrum--staff--mentule
Scobs--a ditch--the privy parts of a woman
Sulcus--the furrow cut by the plough[1]--used of a female
Thyrsus--a stalk
Trabs--a beam
Truncus--a trunk
Virgula--a wand and
Vomer--a ploughshare--are all metonyms for the penis
Vinea--a vineyard--is a well-known appellation of the female organ of generation.
[1. In Boccaccio's Decameron--'Taking the dibble with which he planted men, he thrust it hastily into the furrow made therefor ... The radical moisture, wherewith all plants are made fast, was by this come . . .']