Palms have ridges running lengthwise of their leaves, as you may see by examining a palm leaf fan. One ridged leaf of the talipot palm, when well grown, it is said, will shelter forty persons. This sounds like a traveler’s story, but single leaves of this tree have been brought to this country, and one of them will completely cover the ceiling of a good-sized room.
THE GUTTA PERCHA TREE.
The leaves of the cocoanut palm are several feet long.
The juices of many vegetables possess very singular properties. The cow-tree, is so called because the sap that flows from it closely resembles milk, and is used as such by the natives.
A substance, with which you are very familiar, India-rubber, is nothing but the sap of a tree. A very useful sap it is; and, when hardened, and properly prepared, is impervious to water; and shoes, coats, coverlets, &c., are made of it. Put through another hardening process it takes a fine polish, and is made up into beautiful ornaments and useful articles.
India-rubber trees are found in South America, the East Indies, and in some parts of Africa.
In the same countries there grows a beautiful tree, which yields a thick sap, called gutta-percha. This is similar, in substance, to India-rubber, and is used for a great variety of purposes, from making lifeboats to knife-handles.
Sugar and molasses are made from the juice of a cane; maple sugar from the sap of a tree that grows plentifully in all our mountain districts. You think it wonderful that milk can be taken from a tree. Is it not quite as strange to find sugar there? I suppose you will reply to this that the milk is ready prepared, while we have to make the sugar. That is true, but we add nothing to what we take from the tree. We simply apply heat to the sap, and behold the sugar! The chief reason, I think, why we are not surprised at this sugar tree is that we are familiar with it. The inhabitants of Central America do not see anything strange in the fact of a tree bearing milk.
But there is a tree that produces sugar ready-made. This is the manna tree of Sicily. The sap hardens on the trunk and branches into sugary particles, which are scraped off with wooden knives. This kind of sugar is used principally in medicine. It is insipid in taste.