The wood of this tree is very hard, heavy and black, and is used by the Indians for making harpoons and spears with which they hunt the cow-fish. The swollen part of the stem is sometimes cut down and made into a canoe, when one is required in a hurry; otherwise it is not made use of.
The tree grows on the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro, on hill sides and on the banks of brooks and springs; and the Indians say that wherever it abounds sarsaparilla will be found growing near.
A fruit is represented on the Plate of the natural size.
Pl. XV.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
IRIARTEA SETIGERA. Ht. 20 Ft.
PLATE XV.
Iriartea setigera, Martius.
Pashiúba miri, Lingoa Geral.
This small species has the stem from fifteen to twenty feet high, and varying from the thickness of a finger to that of the wrist, which it never exceeds. The stem is smooth and cylindrical, but distinctly ringed. The roots appear only a few inches above the ground. The leaves are pinnate, the leaflets elongate, triangular and cut at the ends. The column is short and cylindrical, and both it and the petioles are covered with short hairs or down. The spadices have long stalks and grow from beneath or from among the leaves; they are rather large and are simply branched. The spathes form sheaths at the bases of the spadices, and are persistent. The fruit is oval, of an orange-red colour, and about the size of the “hip” or wild rose fruit.
These trees grow on the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro in the dry virgin forest, where they occur in small scattered groves.
This species is of great importance to the Indian of the Rio Negro. With its stem he constructs his “gravatána” or blowing tube, which, with the little arrows before described as made from the spines of the Patawá, forms a most valuable weapon, enabling him to bring down monkeys, parrots and curassow birds from their favourite stations on the summits of the loftiest trees of the forest.