Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot

by Philip Henry Gosse

A phenomenon analogous to that which we have just observed is presented by yonder Pashiuba Palm (Iriartea exorhiza). Its straight arrowy stem has shot up to the height of fifty feet, like a slender iron column. On the summit there is the usual divergent crown of leaves that distinguishes this most graceful and queenly tribe; and at the foot, a tall open cone of roots, strangely supporting the column on its apex.

"But what most strikes attention in this tree, and renders it so peculiar, is, that the roots are almost entirely above ground. They spring out from the stem, each one at a higher point than the last, and extend diagonally downwards till they approach the ground, when they often divide into many rootlets, each of which secures itself in the soil. As fresh ones spring out from the stem, those below become rotten and die off; and it is not an uncommon thing to see a lofty tree supported entirely by three or four roots, so that a person may walk erect beneath them, or stand with a tree seventy feet high growing immediately over his head."

"In the forests where these trees grow, numbers of young plants of every age may be seen, all miniature copies of their parents, except that they seldom possess more than three legs, which gives them a strange and almost ludicrous appearance."[53]

This tall Pashiuba before us, however, is supported on several scores of roots, in various stages of development, some descending through the air, some already fixed in the soil. As the presence of these, moreover, implies the decay and disappearance of earlier ones, their number and height may be accepted as a fair testimony to the age of the tree; independent of what we might have deduced from the trunk and other sources. (My reader will bear in mind, that, throughout this chapter, I am supposing that we have the opportunity of seeing each organism at the moment following that of its creation.) The Iriartea before us, then, notwithstanding its marks of maturity, is but—a new-born infant, I was about to say, rather—a new-made adult.

Another and more massive Palm appears, where a moment ago there was nothing but smooth ground and empty air. It is the Sugar Palm (Saguerus saccharifer), remarkable in its appearance for the swathes of what looks to be sackcloth of hair, in which its stem is enveloped. Each of its great pinnate leaves forms with the dilated base of its midrib a broad sheath, which springs out of a loose fold of this coarse cloth that is wrapped around it. And not only the bases of the still flourishing leaves are swathed in this natural textile fabric, but the dead and dry leaf-bases of the former leaves, which may be traced all down the stem. But let us look at this strange cloth: what is it? It is composed of the exterior fibres of the leaf-bases themselves, which in process of growth have partially separated themselves, and from which the parenchyma and the lamina have decayed away. The appearance of a woven fabric is deceptive; there is no interlacing; but its semblance is produced by the fibres lying in layers one over the other, and by some of them having a direction at right angles to the others. Originally all the fibres were parallel and longitudinal, but as they have been, in the growth of the leaf, pulled out laterally, the main fibres, which are indefinitely divisible, have adhered to each other at various parts, and the result has been that innumerable constituent fibrillæ have been stretched across from fibre to fibre.

Every square inch, then, of this sackcloth tells of the lapse of time; these horse-hair-like fibres were once green and vascular, enclosing a soft pulp; in short, they were a part of a verdant leaf; the reduction of each congeries of veins to this condition was a work of time, and this has been effected by many leaf-bases in succession.

An examination of this gomuti, as it is called, does not indeed help us to identify the actual interval lapsed in the history of the plant; but we may arrive at this from other considerations. The great sheathing bases themselves remain in numbers attached to the upper portion of the stem, though the greater portion of the midrib with the pinnæ has decayed and fallen; and in the lower part, where even the bases have disappeared, still broad lateral scars are left, marking off the stipe into horizontal rings, which are not less conclusively certain evidences of the former existence of similar bases, and therefore, still earlier, of leaves.

The Sugar Palm developes and matures on an average six leaves every year.[54] On counting the dry leaf-bases, and the scars, I find on this trunk, a hundred and twenty: besides which there are about a dozen expanded leaves, and two visible, which are not unfolded. A hundred and thirty-four leaves then have left proofs of their existence here; which divided by six, gives about twenty-two years as the age of this Palm. This is the age of this tree, however, since it began to form a stem; but several years of infancy must be added to the sum, during which its fronds sprang in succession from the surface of the soil.

Look at this Areca. By-and-by it will grow to the loftiest stature attained by any of its tribe, and its noble crown of leaves will wave on the summit of a slender pillar a hundred and fifty feet in height. But at present it has no stem at all; the widely arching leaves diverge from a central point which is below the surface of the soil. Here, then, are no dead leaf-bases; here are no old historical scars:—have we any evidence of past time here? Yes, surely. See this fully developed leaf. It is composed of a stout midrib, along the two opposite edges of which grow, like the beards of a feather, narrow sword-like leaflets, separated from each other by intervals of about two inches. But this pinnate condition,—which is so inseparable from the developed leaf of a great division of the Palm tribe, that our idea of a palm-leaf almost always is that of an enormous feather,—is by no means the original state. Observe this young leaf which is not yet thoroughly expanded; the leaflets are, indeed, separated everywhere, except that the tips of all are connected by a very narrow ribbon of the common green lamina, which runs from one to another. In the fully opened leaves, this has been torn apart and is not distinguishable.