THE FLORA OF JAMAICA
CHAPTER XX
THE FLORA OF JAMAICA
Because Jamaica is famous for its woods and plants and scented blossoms, one may be pardoned for roughly cataloguing a few of the three or four thousand different species of flowering plants, ferns and forest trees. Little is known of the lichens, mosses and fungi of the island. The casual explorer will notice the beauty of the mosses, and he will observe many varieties of the lichen, and there, unless he happens to be an expert botanist, his interest in these smaller plants will end. But with the flowering plants, the shrubs, and the gorgeous trees it is different. No matter whether one is a botanist or a heathen, frequently the wild luxuriance of a lovely bush forces us to ask its name. And the name frequently cements one’s first affection for a wild plant’s loveliness. The Hibiscus, the blue and white lignum vitae flower, the yellow Kill Buckra weed, the evening primrose and the passion flower, the wild convolvulus, the iris and the orchid. All these are fascinating names representing fascinating plants and blossoms. In Jamaica, one drives through wild jungleland, and mistakes it for a cultivated garden. Green bushes are spangled with flowers of flaming scarlet; yellow bands of dense scrub are patched with fragrant blooms of the most exquisite blue. The wild passion flower, gawdy yet dignified, is to be seen everywhere, and in many places, especially on the lower slopes of the blue mountains, we find a rich profusion of the mysterious orchids—Arpophyllum spicatum, Phaius grandifolius, Dendrophylax funalis, and a hundred other species. The forty varieties of the convolvulus deserve a chapter to themselves. What could be more beautiful than a field smothered by these graceful flowers, showing every tint from scarlet to rose colour, violet, crimson, blue and yellow? Then there are the poppies, the Mexican thistle and John Crow bush; the buttercups, the wild pansies, sweet-william, the scented furze, the acres of white clover and the dandelion. We could go through a list of thousands. I think there is no bush, certainly there is no acre of rural Jamaica, that does not contain its floral decorations, its dozen brilliant blossoms.
Of the trees, the first that thrusts itself upon the notice of the English traveller is the cocoanut palm, which Mark Twain or some one else once described as an inverted feather dusting-brush. Besides the cocoa palm there are a dozen other species—the groo groo, silver thatch, mountain cabbage, oil palm, and the rest. In the Savannahs, near the coast, we notice the French cotton-tree, and among the malarial swamps the long-rooted mangrove—a tree which is a certain indication of the unhealthiness of its neighbourhood. Inland, we
find the lignum vitae, hod-wood, calabash, locust, raintree, the West Indian birch, coccus-wood, the sidis-tree (called woman’s tongue), the Spanish elm, mahogany, cedar, and the crooked divi-divi. These are mostly timber trees. Among the fruits we find the mango, plum, nazeberry, star-apple, the banana and the orange. These are but names, and though I have not mentioned one tenth of the whole, I will spare you the rest. Jamaica is the land of wood and water, of rich forests and richer plains. You drive along a road which forms a natural arbour miles long, decked at every yard with clusters of flowers, and scented with all the sweetest perfumes of the universe. Then you break into flat plain land, and the fields on either side are a blaze of coloured ground plants; you find the mountain slope and drive along a narrow, precipitous road, and look down from an eerie height on to a deep valley clothed in greenery of the most luxuriant beauty. Fruit-trees are everywhere, oranges green or gold, bananas green or yellow, brown nazeberries, golden grape-fruit, custard apples, mangoes and plums. Then you pass a plantation of pine-apples, and come to the coffee district. It is the richest country in the world, par excellence—the flower and fruit gardens of the West. If you burn a patch of jungle and leave a charred acre of black earth, in two months you will return and find no trace of your destruction. Mother Earth quickly clothes her nakedness in this land of sunshine. If you plant a banana sprig and leave it alone for eight or nine months, you then find a seven or eight foot tree, and a heavy bunch of fruit ready for gathering. In West Africa they say that if you plant a rotten stick, a barren tree will grow to the height of twenty feet in twenty months, but if you plant a grain of corn nothing will appear. They might with justice say in Jamaica, that the grain of corn would produce a loaf, and the barren stick a lotus tree.