A history of the Brazil

by James Henderson

Mucory is a large tree of excellent timber; its fruit is of the size of a sloe, yellow, and odoriferous, of very fine flavour, and has a large stone.

Muricy is a shrub, with large thick and harsh leaves, rounded at the end and pointed at the base; the flowers are in bunches, beginning with yellow and turning to a carnation colour; the fruit is very small, with little flavour. There is another called muricy-bravo, (or wild,) differing in the flower, which is white, and in the leaves, which are much less elliptical and varnished on both sides.

Oyty is a middling tree, of good timber, with fruit well flavoured, and of the colour and form of a pear, with a large stone, which, when ground or scraped, and used as a beverage or as a clyster, is an efficacious remedy against diarrhæas.

The Palm-tree of Dates, which is so abundant in Asia and Africa, are introduced only, and very partially, in the province of Rio de Janeiro.

Amongst the multiplied species of Palm-trees that denominated Tucum or Tycum is particularly remarkable; its trunk is thorny, slender, and of proportionable size; its leaves differ a little from the common resemblance observed amongst all the other palm-trees; from its fibres a flax is made that is a little harsh, but as lustrous as silk, without any appearance of the coarsest description of flax, and which, from its strength, is generally consumed in making fishing-tackle. It is well adapted for making a certain sort of lace.

Pindahiba is a handsome tree, and of proportionable size according to the quality of the soil in which it grows; its wood is light; its leaves are lancet, one inch in width, and from three to four in length; it fructifies in very small bunches, and its berries are sometimes used as peppers.

Piquiha, is a medium-sized tree, affording fruit like the quince, with a thick and hard rind, and full of a gray liquor, very sweet and cooling, with some seed like those of an apple.

Pitangueira, or Pitanga-Tree, which reaches the size of a plum-tree when planted in good ground, but generally not exceeding the size of a middling shrub in the woods; its leaf resembles that of the myrtle; the flower is white and small, with a great number of capillaments; the fruit is the size of an unripe cherry, of a scarlet or purple colour, and rather sour. An agreeable spirit is distilled from it.

Quinaquina, the Jesuit or Peruvian Bark, was discovered about three centuries ago in Peru, and met with only a few years since near the heads of the river Cuiaba; it is a high tree, nine inches in diameter; the leaves are round at the base and pointed at the end, glossy and of a beautiful green above, and striped with a brilliant dark green in the half near the base. The flowers, which are in bunches at the extremity of the branches, are shaped like a funnel, with the edge parted into five lancet forms, and shorter than the tube, hairy, green in the middle, bounded with white, and fringed at the borders. The pistil is white, and surrounded with five capillaments, within the tube of the flower. When the flower falls the cup swells at the middle, and takes the shape of an olive, changing into a fruit, whose numerous seed, which are long, thick, of a green colour, and flat at the edge, are enclosed in two lodgements, divided by a double membrane. Thus a tree so useful to mankind is propagated abundantly.

Amongst the Resin-Trees are the Angico, which produce the gum-copal; those that produce mastick, benzoin, and storax; amongst those that distil balsam are the cabureigba, better known by the name of Balsam of the Holy Spirit, the cupahybu, or capivi, and the cumaru.