Fig. 8—FLOWERS OF PARKIA.
It detaches itself easily from the seed, while the internal layer, which adheres firmly to the exterior of the seed, can be detached only by maceration in water. This fresh pulp has a sweet and agreeable although slightly insipid taste. Upon growing old and becoming dry, it takes on a still more agreeable taste, for it preserves its sweetness and gets a perfume like that of the violet.
As for the seed, which is of a brown color and provided with a hard, shining skin, that is 0.4 inch long, 0.3 inch wide, and 0.2 inch thick. It is oval in form, with quite a prominent beak at the hilum (Fig. 4). The margin is blunt and the two convex sides are provided in the center with a gibbosity limited by a line parallel with the margin, and this has given the plant its specific name of biglobosa. The mean weight of each seed is 4½ grains. The skin, though thick, is not very strong. It consists, anatomically, of four layers (Fig. 5) of a thick cuticle, c; of a zone of palissade cells, z p; of a zone of cells with thick tangential walls arranged in a single row; and of a zone tougher than the others, formed of numerous cells with thick walls, without definite form, and filled with a blackish red coloring matter, cs. This perisperm covers an exalbuminous embryo formed almost entirely of two thick, greenish yellow cotyledons having a strong taste of legumine.
When examined under the microscope, these cotyledons, the alimentary part of the seed, have the appearance represented in Fig. 6, where ep is the epidermic layer and cp constitutes the uniform parenchyma of the cotyledonary leaf. This parenchymatous mass consists of oval cells filled with fatty matter and granules of aleurone.
According to some chemical researches made by Professor Schlagdenhauffen, the pulp has the following composition per 100 parts:
| Fatty matter | 2.407 |
| Glucose | 33.92 |
| Inverted sugar | 7.825 |
| Coloring matter and free acids | 1.300 |
| Albuminous matter | 5.240 |
| Gummy matter | 19.109 |
| Cellulose | 8.921 |
| Lignose | 17.195 |
| Salts | 4.080 |
| ——— | |
| Total | 100.000 |
The salient point of these analytical results is the enormous quantity of matter (nearly 60 per cent.) formed almost exclusively by sugar. It is not surprising, from this that this product constitutes a food both agreeable and useful.
An analysis of the entire seed, made by the same chemist, has given the following results:
| Solid fatty matter | 21.145 |
| Unreduced sugar | 6.183 |
| Undetermined matters | 5.510 |
| Gummy matters | 10.272 |
| Albuminoid matters | 24.626 |
| Cellulosic matters | 5.752 |
| Lignose and losses | 20.978 |
| Salts | 5.534 |
| ——— | |
| Total | 100.000 |