PALM TREES OF THE AMAZONAND THEIR USES.
PALM TREES OF THE AMAZONAND THEIR USES.
PALM TREES OF THE AMAZONAND THEIR USES.
PALM TREES OF THE AMAZON
AND THEIR USES.
INTRODUCTION.
Palms are endogenous or ingrowing plants, belonging to the same great division of the Vegetable Kingdom as the Grasses, Bamboos, Lilies and Pineapples, and not to that which contains all our English forest trees. They are perennial, not annual like most of the above-named plants, and probably reach a great age. Their stems are simple or very rarely forked, slender, erect, and cylindrical, not tapering as in most other trees; they are hardest on the outside, and are marked more or less distinctly with scars or rings, marking the situation of the fallen leaves.
The leaves are generally terminal, forming a bunch or head at the summit of the tree; they are of very large size, have long petioles or footstalks, and are alternately placed on the stem. In shape they are pinnate or flabellate, or rarely simple, sheathing at the base, without stipules; and they have a plicate vernation, or are folded up lengthways before they open. The margins of the sheathing bases of the leaf-stalksare often fibrous, and give out a variety of singular processes.
The flowers are numerous, small, symmetrical, uncoloured, or obscurely so, six-parted, and hermaphrodite or polygamous. They are produced in a spadix from the axils of the leaves, and are generally enclosed in a spathe or sheath. The ovary or seed-vessel is three-celled or three-lobed, but the fruit is generally one-seeded from abortion, and the seed is large and albuminous with a fibrous or fleshy covering.
Palms are almost exclusively tropical plants, very few species being found in the temperate zone, and those only in the warmer parts of it, while the nearer we approach the equator the more numerous they become both in species and individuals. Dr. Martius, a Prussian botanist and traveller in South America, has published a magnificent work in three folio volumes, entirely devoted to the Botanical history of this family of plants. He divides the portion of the earth which produces palms into five regions, namely,—
The North Palm Zone, extending from the northern limit of Palms to the tropic of Cancer.
The transition North Palm Zone, from the tropic of Cancer to 10° north latitude.
The Chief Palm Zone, from 10° north to 10° south latitude.
The transition South Palm Zone, from 10° south latitude to the tropic of Capricorn, and
The South Palm Zone, from the tropic of Capricorn to the southern limit of the family.
The Northern limit of Palms is, in Europe 43° of latitude, in Asia 34°, and in America 34°.
The Southern limit is 34° in Africa, 38° in New Zealand, and 36° in South America.
To the north of the tropic of Cancer there are 43 species of Palms known, and to the south of the tropic of Capricorn only 13, while as we advance from either side towards the equator the number increases, until in the Chief Zone, between 10° north and 10° south latitude, there are more than 300 species (see Frontispiece Map).
In the Old World, the rich islands of the Eastern Archipelago produce the greatest number of Palms; in the New, the great valleys of the Amazon and Orinoco on the main land, are most prolific.
In proportion to its extent, America is the most productive palm country; for while the Old World, including Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Eastern Archipelago, with New Holland and all the Pacific Islands, contain 307 species, the New World or America alone has 275 different kinds.
In the Old World the islands produce more species than the continents, the former containing 194, while the latter have only 113.
In the New World, however, the reverse is the case, the continent there containing 234, while the islands possess only 42 kinds of Palms.
The total number of Palms at present known is less than 600. Dr. Martius thinks that the probable number existing on the earth may be from 1000 to 1200;though, as similar calculations have hitherto almost invariably been proved, as our knowledge increased, to be far below the truth, it is not unlikely that a few years may render double this number a more probable estimate.
Palms present to our view the most graceful and picturesque, as well as some of the most majestic forms in the vegetable kingdom. Though many of them have a sameness of aspect, yet there is a sufficient contrast and variety of forms to render them interesting objects in the landscape. The stems in some species do not appear above the ground, in others they rise to the height of 200 feet; some resemble reeds and are no thicker than a goose quill, others swell out to the bulk of a hogshead. There are climbing palms too, which trail their long flexible stems over trees and shrubs, or hang in tangled festoons between them.
The trunks of some are almost perfectly smooth, others rough with concentric rings, or clothed with a woven or hairy fibrous covering, which binds together the sheathing bases of the fallen leaves. Many are thickly beset with cylindrical or flat spines, often 8 or 10 inches long and as sharp as a needle; and the fallen leaves and stems of these offer a serious obstacle to the traveller who attempts to penetrate the tropical forests.
The leaves are large and often gigantic, surpassing those of any other family of plants. In some species they are 50 feet long and 8 wide; these are pinnate or composed of numerous long narrow leaflets placed atright angles to the midrib, but in others the leaves are entire and undivided, and yet are 30 feet or more in length and 4 or 5 in width. But the most remarkable form of leaf is the fan-shaped, which characterizes a considerable number of species, and gives them such a completely different aspect, as to render it, to ordinary observers, the most palpable feature dividing the whole family into two distinct groups. The Palms having fan-shaped leaves are, however, comparatively few, being only 91 out of 582 known species.
The flowers are small and inconspicuous, generally of a white, pale yellow or green colour, but often produced in such dense masses as to have a striking appearance. They sometimes emit a very powerful odour, which attracts swarms of minute insects; and a newly-burst palm spathe may often be discovered by the buzzing cloud of small flies and beetles which hover over it.
The fruits are generally small, when compared with the size of the trees; the common cocoa-nut being one of the largest in the whole family. The kernel of many is too hard to be eaten, and the outer covering is often fibrous or woody; but in others the seeds are covered with a pulpy or farinaceous mass, which in most cases furnishes a grateful and nutritious food.
The purposes to which the different parts of Palms are applied are very various, the fruit, the leaves, and the stem all having many uses in the different species. Some of them produce valuable articles of export to our own and other countries, but they are of far more value to the natives of the districts where they grow, in manycases furnishing the most important necessaries for existence.
The Cocoa-nut is known to us only as an agreeable fruit, and its fibrous husk supplies us with matting, coir ropes, and stuffing for mattresses; but in its native countries it serves a hundred purposes; food and drink and oil are obtained from its fruit, hats and baskets are made of its fibre, huts are covered with its leaves, and its leaf-stalks are applied to a variety of uses. To us the Date is but an agreeable fruit, but to the Arab it is the very staff of life; men and camels almost live upon it, and on the abundance of the date harvest depends the wealth and almost the existence of many desert tribes. It is truly indigenous to those inhospitable wastes of burning sand, which without it would be uninhabitable by man.
A palm tree of Africa, theÆleis guianensis, gives us oil and candles. It inhabits those parts of the country where the slave trade is carried on, and it is thought by persons best acquainted with the subject that the extension of the trade in palm oil will be the most effectual check to that inhuman traffic; so that a palm tree may be the means of spreading the blessings of civilization and humanity among the persecuted negro race.
Sago is another product of a palm, which is of comparatively little importance to us, but in the East supplies the daily food of thousands. In many parts of the Indian Archipelago it forms almost the entire subsistence of the people, taking the place of rice in Asia, corn in Europe, and maize and mandiocca in America, andis worthy to be classed with these the most precious gifts of nature to mankind. Unlike them, however, it is neither seed nor root, but is the wood itself, the pithy centre of the stem, requiring scarcely any preparation to fit it for food; and it is so abundant that a single tree often yields six hundred pounds weight.
The canes used for chair bottoms and various other purposes, are the stems of species ofCalamus, slender palms which abound in the East Indian jungles, climbing over other trees and bushes by the help of the long hooked spines with which their leaves are armed. They sometimes reach the enormous length of 600 or even 1000 feet, and as four millions of them are imported into this country annually, a great number of persons must find employment in cutting them.
A variety of species, in all parts of the world, furnish a sugary sap from their stems or unopened spathes, which when partly fermented is the palm wine of Africa and the Toddy of the East Indies; and a similar beverage is procured from theMauritia viniferaand other species in South America. Indeed, at the mouth of the Orinoco dwell a nation of Indians whose existence depends almost entirely on a species of Palm, supposed to be theMauritia flexuosa. They build their houses elevated on its trunks, and live principally upon its fruit and sap, with fish from the waters around them.
Among the most singular products of palm trees are the resins and wax produced by some species. The fruits of a species ofCalamusof the Eastern Archipelago are covered with a resinous substance of a red colour,which, in common with a similar product from some other trees, is the Dragon’s blood of commerce, and is used as a pigment, for varnish, and in the manufacture of tooth powder. TheCeroxylon andicola, a lofty palm growing in the Andes of Bogotá, produces a resinous wax which is secreted in its stem and used by the inhabitants of the country for making candles and for other purposes. Again, in some of the northern provinces of Brazil is found a palm tree called Carnaúba, theCopernicia cerifera, having the underside of its leaves covered with white wax, which has no admixture of resin, but is as pure as that procured from our hives.
The leaves of palms, however, are applied to the greatest variety of uses; thatch for houses, umbrellas, hats, baskets and cordage in countless varieties are made from them, and every tropical country possesses some species adapted to these varied purposes, which in temperate zones are generally supplied by a very different class of plants. The Chip, or Brazilian-grass hats, so cheap in this country, are made from the leaves of a palm tree which grows in Cuba, whence they are imported for the purpose: the palm is theChamærops argentea; and in Sicily an allied species, theChamærops humilis(the only European palm), is applied in a similar manner to form hats, baskets, and a variety of useful articles.
The papyrus of the ancient Egyptians, and the metallic plates on which other nations wrote, were not used in India, but their place was supplied by the leaves of palms, on whose hard and glossy surface the charactersof the Pali and Sanscrit languages were inscribed with a metallic point. The leaves of theCorypha talieraare used for this purpose, and when strung together, form the volumes of a Hindu library.
A favourite stimulant too of the Malays is furnished by a palm. The fruit of theAreca catechuis the betelnut, which they chew with lime, and which is their substitute for the opium of the Chinese, the tobacco of Europeans, and the coca of the South Americans.
One of the most recent introductions into our own domestic economy is the fibre of a palm, the Piassaba, which is now generally used for coarse brooms and brushes; and in the valley of the Amazon, of which it is a native, the same material is manufactured into cables, which are cheap and very durable in the water.
We have now glanced at a few of the most important uses to which Palms are applied, but in order to be able to appreciate how much the native tribes of the countries where they most abound are dependent on this noble family of plants, and how they take part in some form or other in almost every action of the Indian’s life, we must enter into his hut and inquire into the origin and structure of the various articles we shall see around us.
Suppose then we visit an Indian cottage on the banks of the Rio Negro, a great tributary of the river Amazon in South America. The main supports of the building are trunks of some forest tree of heavy and durable wood, but the light rafters overhead are formed by the straight cylindrical and uniform stems of the Jará palm. The roof is thatched with large triangular leaves, neatlyarranged in regular alternate rows, and bound to the rafters with sipós or forest creepers; the leaves are those of the Caraná palm. The door of the house is a framework of thin hard strips of wood neatly thatched over; it is made of the split stems of the Pashiúba palm. In one corner stands a heavy harpoon for catching the cow-fish; it is formed of the black wood of thePashiúba barriguda. By its side is a blowpipe ten or twelve feet long, and a little quiver full of small poisoned arrows hangs up near it; with these the Indian procures birds for food, or for their gay feathers, or even brings down the wild hog or the tapir, and it is from the stem and spines of two species of Palms that they are made. His great bassoon-like musical instruments are made of palm stems; the cloth in which he wraps his most valued feather ornaments is a fibrous palm spathe, and the rude chest in which he keeps his treasures is woven from palm leaves. His hammock, his bow-string and his fishing-line are from the fibres of leaves which he obtains from different palm trees, according to the qualities he requires in them,—the hammock from the Mirití, and the bow-string and fishing-line from the Tucúm. The comb which he wears on his head is ingeniously constructed of the hard bark of a palm, and he makes fish hooks of the spines, or uses them to puncture on his skin the peculiar markings of his tribe. His children are eating the agreeable red and yellow fruit of the Pupunha or peach palm, and from that of the Assaí he has prepared a favourite drink, which he offers you to taste. That carefully suspendedgourd contains oil, which he has extracted from the fruit of another species; and that long elastic plaited cylinder used for squeezing dry the mandiocca pulp to make his bread, is made of the bark of one of the singular climbing palms, which alone can resist for a considerable time the action of the poisonous juice. In each of these cases a species is selected better adapted than the rest for the peculiar purpose to which it is applied, and often having several different uses which no other plant can serve as well, so that some little idea may be formed of how important to the South American Indian must be these noble trees, which supply so many daily wants, giving him his house, his food, and his weapons.
To the lover of nature Palms offer a constant source of interest, reminding him that he is amidst the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics, and offering to him the realization of whatever wild and beautiful ideas he has from childhood associated with their name.
In the equatorial regions of South America they are seldom absent. Either delicate species flourishing in the dense shade of the virgin forest; or lofty and massive, standing erect on the river’s banks; or on the hill side raising their leafy crowns on airy stems above the surrounding trees, creating, as Humboldt styles it, “a forest above a forest;” in every situation some are to be met with as representatives of the magnificent and regal family to which they belong.
In the following pages the genera and species are arranged in the order adopted by Dr. Martius in his elaborate work already alluded to.
Natural OrderPALMACEÆ.GenusLeopoldinia,Martius.
This genus is characterized by having flowers containing stamens or pistils only, intermingled on the same spadix, and by not having a spathe. The male flowers have six stamens and no rudiments of a stigma. The female flowers have three sessile stigmas and rudimentary stamens. The spadix is much branched and decomposed.
The species are trees of a moderate size without any spines or tubercles, but remarkable for the netted fibres which spring from the margins of the sheathing petioles, and cover the stem half way down or sometimes even to its base. The leaves are terminal and pinnate, the leaflets spreading out regularly in one plane. There are often three or four spadices on a tree, bearing abundance of small flowers, and ovate compressed fruit, the outer covering of which is fleshy.
Four species are known, and they are all found in the same limited district near the Rio Negro, some extending to the tributaries of the Orinoco near its source, and one being found south of the Amazon nearly opposite the mouth of the Rio Negro. All however grow on the banks or in the immediate vicinity of black-ater streams, which occur more extensively in South America than in any other part of the globe. Two species are described by Martius, one of which is here figured with two others, which are believed to be new. They are not found more than 1000 feet above the level of the sea.
Pl. IV.W. Fitch lith.Ford & West Imp.LEOPOLDINIA PULCHRA. Ht. 12 Ft.
Pl. IV.W. Fitch lith.Ford & West Imp.LEOPOLDINIA PULCHRA. Ht. 12 Ft.
Pl. IV.W. Fitch lith.Ford & West Imp.LEOPOLDINIA PULCHRA. Ht. 12 Ft.