On the Upper Amazon cattle eat the fruits of the Murumurú, wandering about for days in the forest to procure it. The hard stony seeds pass through their bodies undigested and become thickly scattered over the pastures adjoining the houses. They are so hard that it is almost impossible to break them, except by a very hard blow with a large hammer. The internal albumen or kernel is also excessively hard, nearly approaching to vegetable ivory. Yet pigs are very fond of these little cocoa-nuts, and on one estate on the Upper Amazon where I was staying, they had scarcely anything else to eat during a part of the year but those which had passed through the stomachs of the cows. They might constantly be seen cracking the shell with their powerful jaws, and grinding up the hard kernels, on which the teeth of few other animals could make any impression. They not only existed on this food, but in some cases got actually fat upon it. The black vultures (Cathartes) occasionally eat the outer covering of this and other palm fruits, when hard-pushed for food.
This tree grows on the tide-flooded lands of the Lower Amazon and on the margins of the rivers and gapós of the Upper Amazon, though it is possible that the two may be distinct species. The specimen figured is from near Pará. There are living plants in the Palm House at the Royal Kew Gardens.
A portion of a leaf is enlarged to show the spines, and a fruit is represented of the natural size.
Pl. XXXIX.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
ASTROCARYUM GYNACANTHUM. Ht. 15 Ft.
PLATE XXXIX.
Astrocaryum gynacanthum, Martius.
Mumbáca, Lingoa Geral.
This species has a rather slender stem about fifteen feet high, covered with long, flat, black spines, arranged in regular rings and pointing downwards. The leaves are terminal, rather large and pinnate. The leaflets spread regularly in one plane, and are elongate and acute, the terminal pair being rather shorter and broader. The bases of the petioles are broadly sheathing, and are all densely spiny.
The spadices grow from the bases of the lower leaves, and are erect when in flower, but hang down with the ripe fruit, which grows in a dense cluster at the end of the long stalk which is very spiny, as is also the elongate persistent spathe. The fruit is small, ovate, of a red colour and not eatable.
This palm grows in the virgin forests of the Upper Rio Negro, and a nearly allied or perhaps identical species is common about the city of Pará.