Palm trees of the Amazon and their uses

by Alfred Russel Wallace

PLATE VI.
Leopoldinia piassaba, n. sp.

Piassába, Lingoa Geral. Chíquichíqui, Barré. [An Indian language spoken on the Upper Rio Negro in Venezuela.]

This tree, the “Piassaba” of Brazil and the “Chíquichíqui” of Venezuela, I have little hesitation in referring to the genus Leopoldinia, though I have never seen it in flower or in fruit. The texture and form of the leaves, the peculiar branching of the spadix, and the extraordinary development of the fibres from the margins of the sheathing petioles, show it to be very closely allied to the other species of this genus.

The stem is generally short, but reaches twenty to thirty feet in height, and is much thicker than in either of the preceding species. The leaves are very large and regularly pinnate, with the pinnæ gradually smaller to the end, as in the two former species. The leaflets are rigid, broadest in the middle, and gradually tapering to a fine point, spreading out flat on each side of the midrib, but slightly drooping at the tips. The petioles are slender and smooth. The spadix is large, excessively branched and drooping, and there are often several on the same tree. The marginal processes of the petioles are interlaced as in the two former species, and are produced into long riband-like strips, which afterwards split into fine fibres, and hang down five or six feet, entirely concealing the stem, and giving the tree a most curious and unique appearance. The leaves form an excellent thatch, and are almost universally used in that portion of Venezuela situated on the upper Rio Negro, and the adjacent tributaries of the Orinoco. The fruit is said to resemble that of the Jará in colour, but it is globose and eatable, being used principally to form a thick drink by washing off the outer coating of pulp.

The fibrous or hairy covering of the stem is an extensive article of commerce in the countries in which it grows. It seems to have been used by the Brazilians from a very early period to form cables for the canoes navigating the Amazon. It is well adapted for this purpose, as it is light (the cables made of it not sinking in water) and very durable. It twists readily and firmly into cordage from the fibres being rough-edged, and as it is very abundant, and is procured and manufactured by the Indians, piassaba ropes are much cheaper than any other kind of cordage. The price in the city of Barra in June 1852, was 400 reis or 1s. for 32 lbs. of the fibre, and 800 reis or 2s. for every inch in circumference of a cable sixty fathoms long, which is the standard length they are all made to.

Before the independence of Brazil, the Portuguese government had a factory at the mouth of the Paduarí, one of the tributaries of the Rio Negro, for the purpose of making these cables for the use of the Pará arsenal, and as a government monopoly. Till within these few years the fibre was all manufactured into cordage on the spot, but it is now taken down in long conical bundles for exportation from Pará to England, where it is generally used for street sweeping and house brooms, and will probably soon be applied to many other purposes. It is cut with knives by men, women and children, from the upper part of the younger trees, so as to secure the freshest fibres, the taller trees which have only the old and half-rotten portion within reach, being left untouched. It is said to grow again in five or six years, the fibres being produced at the bases of the new leaves. The trees are much infested by venomous snakes, a species of Craspedocephalus, and the Indians are not unfrequently bitten by them when at work, and sometimes with fatal consequences.

The distribution of this tree is very peculiar. It grows in swampy or partially flooded lands on the banks of black-water rivers. It is first found on the river Padauarí, a tributary of the Rio Negro on its northern side, about 400 miles above Barra, but whose waters are not so black as those of the Rio Negro. The Piassaba is found from near the mouth to more than a hundred miles up, where it ceases. On the banks of the Rio Negro itself not a tree is to be seen. The next river, the Darahá, also contains some. The next two, the Maravihá and Cababurís, are white-water rivers, and have no Piassaba. On the S. bank, though all the rivers are black-water, there is no Piassaba till we reach the Marié, not far below St. Gabriel. Here it is extensively cut for about a hundred miles up, but there is still none immediately at the mouth or on the banks of the Rio Negro. The next rivers, the Curicuríarí, the great river Uaupés, and the Isánna, though all black-water, have none; while further on, in the Xié, it again appears. On entering Venezuela it is found near the banks of the Rio Negro, and is abundant all up to its sources, and in the Témi and Atabápo, black-water tributaries of the Orinoco. This seems to be its northern limit, and I cannot hear of its again appearing in any part of the Amazon or Orinoco or their tributaries. It is thus entirely restricted to a district about 300 miles from N. to S. and an equal distance from E. to W. I am enabled so exactly to mark out its range, from having resided more than two years in various parts of the Rio Negro, among people whose principal occupation consisted in obtaining the fibrous covering of this tree, and from whom no locality for it can have remained undiscovered, assisted as they are by the Indians, whose home is the forest, and who are almost as well acquainted with its trackless depths as we are with the well-beaten roads of our own island.

The fibre imported into this country has been supposed to be produced only by the Attalea funifera, a species not found in the Amazon district. In the London Journal of Botany for 1849, Sir W. Hooker gave some account of the material, and of the tree producing it; stating that he had received the fruit of the tree with the fibre from a mercantile house connected with Brazil, and that the fruit was that of the Attalea funifera. This species is mentioned by Martius as furnishing a fibre used for cordage and other purposes in Southern Brazil, and he states that it is called “piaçaba”; so that the Indian name is applied to two distinct trees producing a similar material in different localities; and the two having been brought to England under the same name and from not very distant ports of the same country, were naturally supposed to be produced by the same tree. The greater part, if not all of the Piassaba now imported, comes, however, from the Rio Negro, where several hundred tons are cut annually and sent to Pará, from which place scarcely a vessel sails for England without its forming a part of her cargo.

Genus Euterpe, Gærtner.

Male and female flowers intermingled on the same spadix, the former more abundant in the upper part of the branches, the latter in the lower. Spathe entire, membranaceous, fusiform and deciduous. Flowers with bracts, male with six stamens and a rudimentary pistil, female with three sessile stigmas. Spadix simply branched, spreading horizontally.