“The form and colour of the fruit also present more variety than is generally supposed to be the case in Europe. Mauritia flexuosa has egg-shaped fruits, whose smooth, brown, and scaly surface gives them the appearance of young pine cones. How great is the difference between the large triangular cocoa-nut, the berry of the date, and the small stone-fruit of the Corozo! But of all the fruits of the palm, none can be compared for beauty with those of the Pirijao (Pihiguao) of San Fernando de Atabapo and of San Balthasar. They are oval, and of a golden colour (one-half being of a purplish red); are mealy, without seed, two or three inches in thickness, and hang in clusters like grapes from the summits of their majestic palm-trunks.” I have already spoken in the earlier part of this work of these beautiful fruits, of which there are seventy or eighty clustered together in one bunch, and which can be prepared in a variety of ways like bananas and potatoes.
The spathe enclosing the blossom bursts suddenly open in some species of palms, with an audible report. Richard Schomburgk has like myself observed this phenomenon[[OB]] in the flowering of the Oreodoxa oleracea. This first opening of the blossoms of the palm accompanied with noise, reminds us of Pindar’s Dithyrambus on Spring, and of the moment when in the Argive Nemæa, “the first opening shoot of the date-palm announces the coming of balmy spring.”[[OC]]
Palms, bananas, and arborescent ferns constitute three forms of especial beauty peculiar to every portion of the tropical zone; wherever heat and moisture co-operate, vegetation is most exuberant and vegetable forms present the greatest diversity. Hence South America is the most beautiful portion of the palm world. In Asia the palm form is rare, in consequence perhaps of a considerable part of the Indian continent beneath the equator having been destroyed and covered by the ocean in some earlier revolution of our planet. We know scarcely anything of the African palms between the Bay of Benin and the coast of Ajan; and we are, generally speaking, as already observed, acquainted with only a very small number of African palm-forms.
Palms, next to Coniferæ, and some species of Eucalyptus belonging to the family of the Myrtaceæ, afford examples of the loftiest growth. Stems of the Cabbage-palm (Areca oleracea) have been seen from 160 to 170 feet in height.[[OD]] The Wax-palm, our Ceroxylon andicola, which we discovered in the Montaña de Quindiu on the side of the Andes, between Ibague and Carthago, attains the enormous height of 180 to 190 feet. I was able to make an accurate measurement of the trunks of some of these trees, which had been felled in the woods. Next to the Wax-palm, the Oreodoxa Sancona, which we found in flower in the valley of Cauca, and which affords a very hard and admirable wood for building, appeared to me to be the highest of all American palms. The fact, that notwithstanding the enormous mass of fruit yielded by some single palms, the number of individuals of each species growing wild is not very considerable, can only be explained by the frequent abortive development of the fruit, and by the voracity of the enemies by whom they are assailed from all classes of animals. In the basin of the Orinoco, however, whole tribes find the means of subsistence for many months together in the fruit of the palm. “In palmetis, Pihiguao consitis, singuli trunci quotannis fere 400 fructus ferunt pomiformes, tritumque est verbum inter Fratres S. Francisci, ad ripas Orinoci et Guainiæ degentes, mire pinguescere Indorum corpora, quoties uberem Palmæ fructum fundant.”[[OE]]
[86]. p. 224—“From the earliest infancy of human civilization.”
We find, as far as history and tradition extend, that the Banana has constantly been cultivated in all continents within the tropical zone. The fact of African slaves having, in the course of centuries, brought some varieties of the Banana fruit to America is as certain as that of the cultivation of this vegetable product by the natives of America prior to its discovery by Columbus. The Guaikeri Indians in Cumana assured us that on the coast of Paria, near the Golfo Triste, the Banana will occasionally produce germinating seeds, if the fruit be suffered to ripen on the stem. It is from this cause, that wild Bananas are occasionally found in the recesses of the forests, in consequence of the ripe seeds being scattered abroad by birds. At Bordones also, near Cumana, perfectly formed and matured seeds have been occasionally found in the fruit of the Banana.[[OF]]
I have already remarked, in another work,[[OG]] that Onesicritus and other companions of the great Macedonian, make no mention of high arborescent ferns, although they speak of the fan-leaved umbrella palms and of the tender evergreen verdure of the banana-plantations. Among the Sanscrit names given by Amarasinha for the Banana (the Musa of botanists) we find bhanu-phala (sun-fruit), varana-buscha, and moko. Phala signifies fruit generally. Lassen explains Pliny’s words (xii. 6), “Arbori nomen palæ, pomo arienæ,” to this effect, that “The Roman mistook the word pala, fruit, for the name of the tree, whilst varana, changed in the mouth of a Greek to ouarana, was transformed into ariena. The Arabic mauza, our Musa, may have been formed from moko. The Bhanu fruit seems to approach to Banana fruit.”[[OH]]
[87]. p. 224—“Form of the Malvaceæ.”
Larger forms of the Mallow appear, as soon as we have crossed the Alps; Lavatera arborea, near Nice and in Dalmatia; and L. olbia, in Liguria. The dimensions of the Baobab (monkey bread-tree) have already been given. (See pp. 270–272.) With the form of the Malvaceæ are associated the botanically allied families of the Byttneriaceæ, (Sterculia, Hermannia, and the blossoms of the large-leaved Theobroma Cacao, whose flowers break forth from the bark of the trunk as well as from the roots); the Bombaceæ (Adansonia, Helicteres, and Cheirostemon); and, lastly, the Tiliaceæ (Sparmannia Africana). Our Cavanillesia plantanifolia of Turbaco, near Carthagena in South America, and the celebrated Ochroma-like Hand-tree, the Macpalxochiquahuitl of the Mexicans, (from Macpalli, the flat of the hand,) Arbol de las manitas of the Spaniards, our Cheirostemon platanoides, are splendid representatives of the mallow form. In the last named, the anthers are connected together in such a manner as to resemble a hand or claw rising from the beautiful purplish-red blossoms. There is in all the Mexican free states only one individual remaining, one single primæval stem of this wonderful genus. It is supposed not to be indigenous, but to have been planted by a king of Toluca, about five hundred years ago. I found that the spot where the Arbol de las Manitas stands is 8825 feet above the level of the sea. Why is there only one tree of the kind? Whence did the kings of Toluca obtain the young tree or the seed? It is equally enigmatical, that Montezuma should not have possessed one of these trees in his botanical gardens of Huaxtepec, Chapoltepec, and Iztapalapan, which were used as late as by Philip the Second’s physician, Hernandez, and of which gardens traces still remain; and it appears no less striking that the Hand-tree should not have found a place among the drawings of subjects connected with natural history, which Nezahual Coyotl, king of Tezcuco, caused to be made, half a century before the arrival of the Spaniards. It is asserted that the Hand-tree grows wild in the forests of Guatimala.[[OI]] We found two Malvaceæ, Sida Phyllanthos (Cavan.), and Sida Pichinchensis, rising in the equatorial region to the great height of 13,430, and 15,066 feet on the mountain of Antisana and at the volcano of Rucu Pichincha.[[OJ]] The Saxifraga Boussingaultii rises from 600 to upwards of 700 feet higher, on the declivity of Chimborazo.
[88]. p. 225—“Form of the Mimosæ.”