Can you name any plants, Willie, of which the fern tree puts you in mind?
I know of none, unless it be the Bamboo, for that is hard outside and hollow within, and it seems, like this, to grow up straight about the same thickness throughout.
There is another tree of this character which we have in Australia, some kinds of which grow in other countries, producing dates, of which boys are so fond.
Any one can guess that:—it is the Palm. But whence have we Palms, father?
There are some in Gipps’ Land, at the foot of the Australian Alps; other finer ones are at Illawarra, south of Sydney; but more northerly, in the hotter parts, Palms are very common.
Is that one from which we get our Cabbage Tree Hats?
It is so. The head of the Cabbage Palm is so good tasting and nourishing, that many trees were felled on purpose to get at this sort of cabbage, especially in the early days of the New South Wales Colony.
Then Palms, and Bamboo, and Fern trees grow the same way, as their stems look the same, and as they have neither branches nor solid timber. But how do they grow, father? There is no new wood formed outside the last ring, as in the Gum tree.
It so happens, my boy, that new layers are formed for a while, inside instead of outside. Our new class of trees are, therefore, called Endogenous, from their growing internally, in opposition to the ordinary forest trees, which are Exogenous, from growing externally.
I suppose the new shoots arise from where we see the joints in the cane; but where is the fruit of our new Endogenous friend?