[3]. The parkineers is a term used in the Banda Islands.
The nutmeg tree is a handsome, bushy evergreen with straight and lofty undivided trunk, and with reddish-brown bark and verticillate branching head, much resembling our apple tree. It is cut back in the Straits to about twenty feet. The bark on the young branches is bright green, the dark, shining leaves, glossy on the upper surface and whitish below, are alternate, simple, and entire and oblong and obliptic and very aromatic. They are strongly veined, the petiolate being devoid of stipules or having very short foot stalks.
The nutmeg tree will begin to bear when from five to six years old and will then produce from five to six pounds of nutmegs and half a pound of mace to a tree. The yield is more profitable when the tree is ten years old. The tree will continue to produce fruit at sixty years of age, and has been known to bear a crop when one hundred years old. The male tree has a much shorter life than the fruit-bearing trees. The flowers are very small and are clustered in the axils of the leaves. They are a pale yellow and have a fragrance much like that of the lily of the valley.
The nuts will often split before reaching maturity, by reason of cold, damp weather and sudden changes. The nutmeg tree, like the orange, is a constant bearer, producing two crops in one year, and sometimes three, in the East. A much larger crop, however, is harvested in the later months of the year, and the smaller crops in April, May, and June, and even in July. Some are harvested every month of the year, as is the case to some extent on the Banda Islands, and they are delivered every month to the government boats. But the months especially devoted to harvesting are the same on the Banda Islands as in the Straits Settlement. From the Straits the shipments are made quarterly.
The nutmeg fruit is about three inches long and about two inches in diameter, and is found intermingled with the flowers of the tree, it requires from six to nine months to mature; fruits all the year around in a hot, moist climate. In the Banda Islands the fruit hangs upon longer and more slender stalks than is the case in the Straits Settlement. The fruit hangs pendulous from the tree and is fleshy and firm. At first it is round or oval and smooth, much like a damson plum, but it soon takes on the marked longitudinal, dented line and pale green color—characteristics that give it more the appearance of a peach or an apricot. It finally changes to a golden or yellow color and to the shape of a pear when ripe. This outer covering, which is at first thin, gradually grows fleshy, abounding in an astringent mass which becomes dry and leathery, at which time it bursts open into two valves from the apex, disclosing a brilliant scarlet aril or net-like membrane, revealing the nutmeg kernel, which is closely invested in a thin brown shell, which separates the kernel from the aril or mace which envelopes both.
In the early days the Dutch owned the Banda Islands. They attempted to control the nutmeg trade. Accordingly, they used to heat or lime the kernels before shipping, to keep them from sprouting and so to prevent the propagation of the trees. At one time they burned three piles of nutmegs, each as large as a church, to keep up the price. But Nature did not fancy this kind of business and a large pigeon, called the “nutmeg pigeon,” also known by the name of walor and nut eater (species of carpophoga), was attracted by the bright color of the mace and, feeding on it extensively, swallowing the mace and rejecting the nutmegs, accomplished what the Dutch tried to prevent, by planting the nuts in all the surrounding countries of Penang, China, Ceylon, and India. Thus the world at large was benefited.
HARVESTING NUTMEGS
The brown shell which covers the nutmeg has about one-fourth the weight of the nutmeg kernel. When the nutmegs are exported without removing the shell they keep better, but the cost of freight to the importers is increased.