The cabbage-palm of the Antilles (Oreodoxa oleracea) almost rivals the mountain Ceroxylon in magnificence of growth, as its stem, which near to its base is about seven feet in circumference, ascends straight and tapering to the height of 130 feet. Its lofty fronds, moved by the gentlest breeze, are an object of beauty which can hardly be conceived by those who are unused to the magnificent vegetation of a tropical sun. Within the leaves which surround the top of the trunk, the cabbage, composed of longitudinal flakes, like ribands, but so compact as to form a crisp and solid body, lies concealed. It is white, about two or three feet long, as thick as a man’s arm, and perfectly cylindrical. When eaten raw, it resembles the almond in flavour, but is more tender and delicious. It is usually cut into pieces, boiled, and served as an auxiliary vegetable with meat. To obtain this small portion, borne on the pinnacle of the tree, and hidden from the eye of man, the axe is applied to the stately trunk, and its towering pride laid low.
Besides its cabbage, the Oreodoxa furnishes another great delicacy to the table. After the removal of the heart, a kind of black-beetle deposits its egg in the cavity, from which fat grubs are developed, growing to the size and thickness of a man’s thumb. These, though disgusting in appearance, when fried in a pan, with a very little butter and salt, have a taste which savours of all the spices of India.
Both the Oreodoxa and the Ceroxylon are far surpassed in height by the Californian firs and the Eucalypti of Australia, but no other trees rise so proudly in the air on shafts comparatively so slender. While the enormous trunks of the Sequoias and Wellingtonias remind one of the massy pillars of our old gothic churches, the graceful palms recall to our memory the slender Ionic or Corinthian columns which adorn the masterpieces of Grecian architecture.
The oil of the Corozo (Elæis oleifera) is usually burnt in the houses and churches of Carthagena and New Granada; and the Oenocarpus disticha is cultivated in Brazil, as it furnishes an excellent oil for culinary purposes. The Pirijao (Gulielma speciosa) is planted round the huts of the Indians, and replaces in some districts the Mauritia as the tree of life. The Piaçava (Attalia funifera), whose stone-hard dark-brown nuts are manufactured into rosaries by the inhabitants of Villa Nova de Olivenza, is far more important, on account of its fibres, which, unknown a few years ago, are now imported into England in large quantities, where they serve for making brooms; and the amazingly hard nuts of the Cabeza di Negro (Phytelephas), rivalling ivory in whiteness, solidity, and beauty, are extensively used by our turners for similar purposes.
Though no trees are more characteristic of the tropics than the palms, yet specimens are found far within the temperate regions. Along with the date-tree the Chamærops humilis graces the environs of Nizza, and the Areca sapida flourishes in the mild insular climate of New Zealand (38° S. lat). In Africa, the Hyphæne coriacea grows at Port Natal (30° S. lat.), and in America the palms extend to 35° S. lat., both in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, and in Chili, where the Choco indicates the extreme limits of the family.
As these species are able to exist under a mean annual temperature of 58°, they might possibly be made to adorn the gardens of Penzance; most palms, however, require a mean temperature of from 70° to 72°, and on advancing towards the equator increase in beauty, stateliness of growth, and variety of form. Their chief seats are the lower regions of the torrid zone; but as some species range far to the north or south, thus others ascend the mountain-slopes, almost to the limits of perpetual snow.
In South America, the Ceroxylon andicola and the Kunthia montana are found growing at an altitude of 6,000 and 9,000 feet, and in the Paramo de Guanacos, Humboldt even saw palms 13,000 feet above the level of the sea.
Besides the height of the shaft, the position of the leaves serves chiefly to impart a more or less majestic character to the palms: those with drooping leaves being far less stately than those whose fronds shoot more or less upwards to the skies. Nothing can exceed the elegance of the Jagua palm, which along with the splendid Cucurito adorns the granite rocks in the rapids of the Orinoco at Atures. The fronds, which are but few in number, rise almost perpendicularly sixteen feet high, from the top of the lofty columnar shaft, and their feathery leaflets of a thin and grass-like texture play lightly round the tall leaf-stalks, slowly bending in the breeze. In the palms with a feathery foliage, the leaf-stalks rise either immediately from a brown ligneous trunk (cocoa-nut, date), or, as in the beautiful Palma Real of the Havana, from a smooth, slender, and grass-green shaft, placed like an additional column upon the dark-coloured trunk. In the fan-palms, the crown frequently rests upon a layer of dried leaves, which impart a severe character to the tree.
YRIARTEA VENTRICOSA.