Almost countless are the varieties of trees in the Amazonian forests,
and wonderful the diversity in their combination. Rarely is the soil
found occupied for any extent by the same kind of tree. A vast
proportion are yet unknown to science. The palms surpass in number and
variety all their sylvan brethren. They differ wonderfully in form and
size: some, sturdy giants towering up towards the sky with
wide-spreading branches; others, delicate little pigmies with slender
stems and small broom-like crowns; while others assume the form of
creepers, and wind in many folds round the supporting trunks of other
trees.
"Among them are four essentially different forms:--the tall ones, with a
slender and erect stem, terminating with a crown of long feathery
leaves, or with broad fan-shaped leaves," remarks Professor Agassiz;
"the bushy ones, the leaves of which rise, as it were, in tufts from the
ground, the stem remaining hidden under the foliage; the brush-like
ones, with a small stem, and a few rather large leaves; and the winding,
creeping, slender species. Their flowers and fronds are as varied as
their stalks. Some of these fruits may be compared to large woody nuts
with a fleshy mass inside, others have a scaly covering, others resemble
peaches or apricots, while others, still, are like plums or grapes.
Most of them are eatable, and rather pleasant to the taste."
Among the most beautiful is the mauritia, or miriti, with pendent
clusters of reddish fruit; its enormous, spreading, fan-like leaves cut
into ribbons. Contrasted with it appears the manicaria, or the bussu,
with stiff entire leaves, some thirty feet in length, almost upright,
and very close in their mode of growth, and serrated all along their
edges. The leaves all sprout from, a comparatively short stem.
More curious is the raphia, with plume-like leaves, sometimes from forty
to fifty feet in length, starting also from a short stem--almost from
the ground. Its vase-like form is peculiarly graceful and symmetrical.
Among the most curious is the pashiuba barrigudo, or bulging-stemmed
palm (Iriartea ventricosa); which, rising on a pyramid of roots for
several feet, runs up in a single column for some distance, and then
swells in a curious spindle-form, again to assume the same proportions
as below, till its head spreads out in several fan-like branches with
web-shaped leaflets. The tree looks as if supported on stilts, and a
person can stand upright among the roots of old trees with the
perpendicular stem above his head. These roots have the form of
straight rods, and are studded with stout thorns, whilst the trunk is
quite smooth. The purpose of this curious arrangement is probably to
recompense the tree by root-growth above the soil for its inability, in
consequence of the competition of neighbouring roots, to extend itself
underground.
Here, too, grows the slender and graceful assai-palm, with its perfectly
smooth trunk,--the fruit appearing in a heavy cluster of berries just
below the cluster of leaves on its summit. The stem is hard and tough
as horn, and is much made use of, when split into narrow planks, for the
construction of walls and flooring of houses.
The fruit is about the size of a cranberry, and of a dark brown colour.
When boiled and crushed it yields a quantity of juice of about the
consistency of chocolate, somewhat of the colour of blackberry juice,
when it has a sweetish taste--and is eaten, made into cakes with the
flour of the mandioca root. From it also is formed the favourite
beverage of the people. To obtain the fruit, the native fastens a strip
of palm-leaves round his instep, thus binding his feet together, to
enable him to climb the slippery trunk, which he does with wonderful
rapidity, to obtain the fruit at its summit.
Wherever a native village exists, there are seen growing in clusters,
beautiful ornaments beside the palm-thatched huts, the tall and elegant
pupunha, or peach palm--Guilielma speciosa--to the height of sixty feet,
and often perfectly straight. A single bunch of the fruit weighs as
much as a man can carry, and on each tree several are borne. It takes
its name from the colour of the fruit, not from its flavour or nature,
for it is dry and mealy, and may be compared in taste to a mixture of
chestnuts and cheese. It is eagerly devoured by vultures, who come in
quarrelsome flocks to the trees when it is ripe. Dogs often feed on it.
It is one of the few trees which the natives brought with them, it is
said, from their original home, and have here cultivated from time
immemorial. The fruit, when boiled, is nearly as mealy as a potato; and
in perfection is the size of a large peach. It is generally supposed
that there is more nutriment in the fruit than in fish,--about a dozen
forming a meal for a grown-up person. The leaves of its crown are
evenly arched over, forming a deep green vault--the more beautiful from
the rich colour of the foliage. When the heavy cluster of ripe red
fruit hangs under its dark vault, the tree is in its greatest beauty.
The palms are among the most characteristic features of tropical
scenery. The variety of their forms, fruit, foliage, and flowers is
perfectly bewildering, and yet as a group their character is
unmistakable. On the whole, no family of trees is more similar;
generically and specifically, none is more varied. Their leaves follow
the simple arrangement of those of grasses, in which the leaves are
placed alternately on opposite sides of the stem, thus dividing the
space round it in halves. As the stem of the branches elongates, these
pairs of leaves are found scattered along its length, and it is only in
the ears, or spikes of some genera, that we find them growing so
compactly on the axis as to form a close head.
Of this law of growth the palm known as the baccaba is an admirable
illustration, its leaves being disposed in pairs one above another at
the summit of the stem, but in such immediate contact as to form a thick
crown. Its appearance is in consequence totally different from any
other palm, except perhaps the jacitara, which has a slender, winding
stem. Sometimes the crown is more open, as in the inaja--Maximiliana
regia--in which the stem is not very high, and the leaves grow in cycles
of five, separating slightly, so as to form an open vase rising from a
slender stem.
Professor Agassiz remarks that the rest of this tropical forest is as
interesting to the geologist as to the botanist, as it reveals to him
its relation to the vegetable world of past ages, showing those laws of
growth which unite the past and the present.
The tree-ferns--the chamaerops, the pandanus, the araucarias--are modern
representatives of past types. The former is a palm belonging to the
ancient vegetable world, but having its representative in our days. The
modern chamaerops, with its fan-like leaves spreading on one level,
stands, with respect to its structure, lower than the palms with pinnate
leaves, which belong almost exclusively to our geological age, and have
numerous leaflets ranging along either side of a central axis. The
young palms, while their elders tower fifty feet above them, are often
not more than two inches high; and to whatever genus they may belong,
invariably resemble the chamaerops,--having their leaves extending
fan-like on one plane, instead of being scattered along a central axis,
as in the adult tree. The infant palm is, in fact, the mature
chamaerops in miniature; showing that among plants, as among animals--at
least in some instances--there is a correspondence between the youngest
stages of growth in the higher species of a given type, and the earliest
introduction of that type on earth.
More gregarious in their habits than most other palms are the urucuri
palms--Attalea excelsa--groves of which beautify the higher lands, and
grow in vast numbers under the crowns of the more lofty ordinary
forest-trees; their smooth columnar stems being generally fifty feet in
height, while their broad, finely pinnated leaves, interlocking above,
form arches and woven canopies of elegant and diversified shapes. The
fruit, in size and shape like the date, has a pleasant flavoured juicy
pulp, and falls to the ground when ripe.