Flora of Tropical Asia—Of the Indian Archipelago, India, and Arabia.
TROPICAL Asia is divided by nature into three distinct botanical
regions: the Malayan peninsula, with the Indian Archipelago; India,
south of the Himalaya, with the island of Ceylon; and the Arabian
peninsula. The two first have strong points of resemblance, though their
floras are peculiar.
FLORA OF THE INDO-CHINESE PENINSULA AND THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO.
Many of the vegetable productions of the peninsula beyond the Ganges are
the same with those of India, mixed with the plants of the Indian
Archipelago, so that this country is a region of transition, though it
has a splendid vegetation of innumerable native productions, dyes of the
most vivid hues, spices, medicinal plants, and many with the sweetest
perfume. The soil in many places yields three crops in the year; the
fruits of India, and most of those of China, come to perfection in the
low lands. The arang forms an exception to the extreme beauty of the
multitude of palms which adorn the Malayan peninsula; though it is
eminently characteristic of that country, it is an ugly plant, covered
with black fibres like horsehair, sufficiently strong to make cordage.
It is cultivated for the sugar and wine made from its juice. Teak is
plentiful; almost all that is used in Bengal comes from the Birman
empire, though it is less durable than that of the Malabar coast. The
Hopea odorata is so large that a canoe is made of a single trunk; the
Gordonia integrifolia is held in such veneration that every Birman house
has a beam of it.
There are seven species of native oak in the forests; the Mimosa
catechu, which furnishes the terra japonica used in medicine; the trees
which produce varnish and stick-lac; the Glyphyria nitida, a myrtle, the
leaves of which are used as tea in Bencoolen, called by the natives the
tree of long life. The coasts are wooded by the Heritiera robusta, a
large tree which thrives within reach of the tide; bamboos with stems a
foot and a half in diameter grow in dense thickets in the low lands. The
Palmyra palm and the Borassus flabelliformis grow in extensive groves in
the valley of the Irawaddy: it is a magnificent tree, often 100 feet
high, remarkable for its gigantic leaves, one of which would shelter 12
men.
The anomalous trees the Zamias and Cycadeæ, somewhat like a palm with
large pinnated leaves, but of a different family, are found here and in
tropical India; those in America are of a different species. Orchideæ
and tree-ferns are innumerable in the woody districts of the peninsula.
The vegetation of the Indian Archipelago is gorgeous beyond description;
although in many instances it bears a strong analogy to that of the
Malayan peninsula, tropical India, and Ceylon, still it is in an eminent
degree peculiar. The height of the mountains causes variety in the
temperature sufficient to admit of the growth of dammar pines, oaks,
rhododendrons, magnolias, valerians, honeysuckles, bilberries, gentians,
oleasters, and other European orders of woody and herbaceous plants; yet
there is not one species in common.
Palm-trees are more abundant in these islands than in any other part of
the world, especially in the Sunda group, the origin of many, a few of
which are now widely spread over the eastern countries. Three species of
Areca, attaining a height of from 40 to 50 and more feet, are cultivated
in all the hot parts of India; and Caryota Urens, the fruit of which is
acrid, yet it yields wine and sugar, are all native. The attempt is vain
to specify the multitudes of these graceful trees which form so
characteristic a feature in the vegetation of these tropical islands,
where a rich moist soil with intense heat brings them to such
perfection. It has been observed that monocotyledonous plants are
generally more plentiful in islands than on continents, and also that
they extend farther into the southern than into the northern hemisphere,
which may be accounted for by the moist and mild climate of the former.
Jungle and dense pestilential woods entirely cover the smaller islands
and the plains of the larger; the coasts are lined with thickets of
mangroves, a matted vegetation of forest-trees, bamboos, and coarse
grass, entwined with climbing and creeping plants, and overgrown by
orchideous parasites in myriads; and the gutta-percha is also a native
of these alluvial tracts. The forest-trees of the Indian Archipelago are
almost unknown; teak and many of the continental trees grow there, but
the greater number are peculiarly their own. The naturalist Rumphius had
a cabinet inlaid with 400 kinds of wood, the produce of Amboyna and the
Molucca islands.
Sumatra, Java, and the adjacent islands, are the region of the
Dryobalanops camphora, in the stems of which solid lumps of a remarkable
and costly kind of camphor are found. All the trees of that order, and
of several others, are peculiar to these islands, and 78 species of
trees and shrubs of the Melastomaceous tribe grow there and in
continental India. There are thickets of the sword-leaved vaquois-tree
and of the Pandanus or screw-pine, a plant resembling the anana, with a
blossom like that of a bulrush, very odoriferous, and in some species
edible.
This is the region of spices, which are very limited in their
distribution: the Myristica moschata (the nutmeg and mace-plant) is
confined to the Banda Islands, but it is said to have been discovered
lately in New Guinea. The Amboyna and the Molucca groups are the focus
of the Caryophyllus aromaticus, a myrtle, the buds of which are known as
cloves. Various species of cinnamon and cassia, both of the laurel
tribe, together with varieties of pepper, different from those in India
and Ceylon, grow in this archipelago. All the pepper-plants require
great heat: they are rare in Africa, but plentiful in America and the
Indian Archipelago; the common black pepper is peculiar to the hottest
parts of Asia, extending only a few degrees on each side of the equator.
In 1842 more than 30,000,000 pounds weight of pepper were produced in
Sumatra alone. Some of the most excellent fruits are indigenous here
only, as the dourio, the ayer ayer, Loquat, the choapa of Molucca,
peculiar kinds of orange, lemon, and citron, with others known only by
name elsewhere. Those common to the continent of India are the jambrose,
rose-apple, jack, various species of bread-fruit, mango, mangosteen, and
the banana, which is luxuriant.
Here the nettle tribe assume the most pernicious character, and the
upas-tree of Java, one of the most deadly vegetable poisons; and even
the plants resembling our common nettle are so acrid that the sting of
one in Java occasions not only pain but illness, which lasts for days. A
nettle in the island of Timor, called by the natives the “Devil’s leaf,”
is so poisonous that it produces long illness and even death. The
chelik, a shrub growing in the dense forests, produces a poison even
more deadly than the upas. Some of the fig genus, which belongs also to
the natural order of nettles, have acrid juices. Trees of the cashew
tribe have a milky sap: the fine japan lacquer is made from the juice of
the Stagmaria verniciflua. Barringtonia and palms are very splendid
here, the latter generally of peculiar species and limited in their
distribution, as the Nipa. No country is richer in club-mosses and
orchideous plants, which overrun the trees in thousands in the deep dark
mountain-forests, choked by huge creeping plants, an undergrowth of
gigantic grasses, through which not a ray of light penetrates.
Sir Stamford Raffles describes the vegetation of Java as “fearful.” In
these forests the air is heavy, charged with dank and deadly vapours,
never agitated by a breath of wind; the soil, of the deepest black
vegetable mould, always moist and clammy, stimulated by the fervid heat
of a tropical sun, produces trees whose stems are of a spongy texture
from their rapid growth, loaded with parasites, particularly the
orchideous tribe, of which no less than 300 species are peculiar to that
island. Tree-ferns are in the proportion of one to twenty of the other
plants, and form a large portion of the vegetation of Java and all these
islands; and there are above 200 tropical species of club-mosses growing
to the length of 3 feet, whereas in cold countries they creep on the
ground.
The Rafflesias, of which there are four species, are the most singular
productions of this archipelago. The most extraordinary one is common to
Java and Sumatra, where it was discovered by Dr. Arnold, and therefore
is called Rafflesia Arnoldi. It is a parasitical plant, with buds the
size of an ordinary cabbage, and the flower, which smells of carrion, is
of a brick-red colour, 3-1/2 feet in diameter: that found by Mr. Arnold
weighed 15 pounds, and the cup in its centre could contain 12 pints of
liquid.
According to Sir Stamford Raffles there are six distinct climates in
Java, from the top of the mountains to the sea, each having an extensive
indigenous vegetation. No other country can show an equal abundance and
variety of native fruit and esculent vegetables. There are 100 varieties
of rice, and of fragrant flowers, shrubs, and ornamental trees the
number is infinite. Abundant as the Orchideæ are in Java, Ceylon, and
the Birmese empire, these countries possess very few that are common to
them all, so local is their distribution. Ferns are more plentiful in
this archipelago than elsewhere: tree-ferns are found chiefly between or
near the tropics, in airless damp places.
INDIAN FLORA.
The plains of Hindostan are so completely sheltered from the Siberian
blasts by the high table-lands of Tartary and the Himalaya mountains,
that the vegetation at the foot of that range already assumes a tropical
character. In the jungles and lower ridges of the fertile valley of
Nepal, and on the dark and airless recesses of the Silhet forests,
arborescent ferns and orchideous plants are found in profusion, scarcely
surpassed even in the islands of the Indian Archipelago—indeed the
marshy Tariyane is full of them. The lowest ranges of the Himalaya, the
pestilential swamp of the Tariyane, the alluvial ridges of the hills
that bound it on the south, and many parts of the plains of the Ganges,
are covered with primeval forests, which produce whole orders of large
timber-trees, frequently overrun with parasitical loranths.
The native fruits of India are many; the orange tribe is almost all of
Indian origin, though some of the species are now widely spread over the
warmer parts of the other continents and the more distant countries of
Asia. Two or three species are peculiar to Madagascar; one is found in
the forests of the Essequibo, and another in Brazil, which are the only
exceptions known. The Limonia laureola grows on the tops of the high
Asiatic mountains, which are covered with snow several months in the
year; and the wampee, a fruit much esteemed in China and the Indian
Archipelago, is produced by a species of this order. The vine grows wild
in the forests; plantain, banana, jambrose, guava, mango, mangosteen,
date, areca, palmyra, cocoa-nut, and gameto-palms are all Indian, also
the gourd family. The Scitamineæ, or ginger tribe, are so numerous, that
they form a distinguishing and beautiful feature of Indian botany: they
produce ginger, cardamoms, and turmeric. The flowers peculiar to India
are brilliant in colours, but generally without odour, except the rose
and some jessamines.
The greater part of the trees and plants mentioned belong also to
tropical India, where vegetation is still more luxuriant; a large
portion of that magnificent country, containing 1,000,000 square miles,
has been cultivated time immemorial, although vast tracts still remain
in a state of nature. Those extensive mountain-chains which traverse and
surround the Deccan are rich in primeval forests of stupendous growth
with dense underwood. The most remarkable of these trees are the Indian
cotton-tree and the Dombeya, which is of the same order; that which
produces the Trincomalee wood, used for building boats at Madras; the
red-wood tree, peculiar to the Coromandel coast, the satin-wood, the
superb Butea frondosa, the agallochum tribe, which yields the odorous
wood of aloes mentioned in Scripture, the Melaleuca leucadendron and the
Melaleuca cajepute, from which the oil is prepared. The dragon’s-blood
tree is a native of India, though not exclusively, as some of the best
specimens grow in Madagascar, where it is planted for hedges.
Sanders-wood and dragon’s-blood are obtained from the Pterocarpus
sandalinus and Draco; the sappan-tree gives a purple dye: these are all
of the leguminous or bean tribe, of which there are 452 Indian species:
ebony grows in these tropical regions, in Mauritius, and the south coast
of Africa.
Some of the fig tribe are among the most remarkable vegetable
productions of India for gigantic size and peculiarity of form, which
renders them valuable in a hot climate from the shade which their
broad-spreading tops afford. Some throw off shoots from their branches,
which take root on reaching the ground, and, after increasing in girth
with wonderful rapidity, produce branches which also descend to form new
roots, and this process is continued till a forest is formed round the
parent tree. Mr. Reinwardt saw in the island of Simao a large wood of
the Ficus Benjamina which sprang from one stem. The Ficus Indica, or
banyan-tree, is another instance of this wide-spreading growth; it is
found in the islands, but is in greatest perfection around the villages
in the Circar mountains: there is a tree of it on the banks of the
Nerbudda, in the province of Guzerat, with 350 main stems, occupying an
area of 2000 feet in circumference, independent of its branches, which
extend much farther. The camphor genus is mostly Indian, as well as many
more of the laurel tribe of great size. The banana is the most generally
useful tree in this country; its fruit is food, its leaves are applied
to many domestic purposes, and flax fit for making muslin is obtained
from its stem. Cotton is a hairy covering of the seeds of several
species of the mallow tribe which grow spontaneously in tropical Asia,
Africa, and America; it is, however, cultivated in many countries beyond
these limits. That grown in China and the United States of America is an
herbaceous annual from 18 inches to 2 feet high: there are also
cotton-trees, native and cultivated, in India, China, Africa, and
America. Herodotus mentions cotton garments 445 years before the
Christian era, and the Mexicans manufactured cotton cloth before the
discovery of America.
Palms, the most stately and graceful of the vegetable productions of
tropical regions, are abundant in India, in forests, in groups, and in
single trees. Some species grow at the limit of perpetual snow, some 900
feet above the sea, others in valleys and on the shores of the continent
and islands. They decrease in number and variety as the latitude
increases, and terminate at Nice, in 44° N. lat., their limit in the
great continent. The leaves of some are of gigantic size, and all are
beautiful, varying in height from the slender Calamus rotang, 130 feet
high, to the Chamærops humilis, not more than 15 or 20. Different
species yield wine, oil, wax, flour, sugar, thread, and rope; weapons
and utensils are made of their stems and leaves; they serve for the
construction of houses; the cocoa-nut palm gives food and drink; sago is
made from all except the Areca catechu, the fruit of which, the
betel-nut, is used by the natives for its intoxicating quality.
Though palms in general are very limited in their distribution, a few
species are very widely spread; for example, the cocoa-nut palm, which
grows spontaneously on the southern coasts of the Indo-Chinese peninsula
and the Sunda Islands, from whence it has been carried to all the
intertropical regions of the globe, where it has been extensively
cultivated from its usefulness. So luxuriant is its growth in Ceylon,
that in one year nearly 3,000,000 of nuts were exported; in parts of
that island, on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, and in some districts
in Bengal, the Borassus flabelliformis supplies its place.
The island of Ceylon, which may be regarded as the southernmost
extremity of the Indian peninsula, is very mountainous, and rivals the
islands of the Indian Archipelago in luxuriance of vegetable
productions, and, in some respects, bears a strong resemblance to them.
The laurel, the bark of which is cinnamon, is indigenous, and one of the
principal sources of the revenue of Ceylon. The taleput leaves of a
species of palm are of such enormous size, that they are applied to many
uses by the Cingalese; in ancient times strips of the leaf were written
upon with a sharp style, and served as books. The sandalwood of Ceylon
is of a different species from that of the South Sea islands, and its
perfume more esteemed. Indigo is indigenous, and so is the choya, whose
roots give a scarlet dye. The mountains produce a great variety of
beautiful woods used in cabinet-work. It is a remarkable circumstance in
the distribution of plants, that the orchideæ are very numerous in this
island.
ARABIAN VEGETATION.
The third division of the tropical flora of Asia is the Arabian, which
differs widely from the other two, and is chiefly marked by trees
yielding balsams. Oceans of barren sand extend to the south, from Syria
through the greater part of Arabia, varied only by occasional oases in
those spots where a spring of water has reached the surface; there the
prevalent vegetation consists of the grasses, Holcus and Panicum
dicotomum growing under the shade of the date-palm; mimosas and stunted
prickly bushes appear here and there in the sand. There is verdure on
the mountains, and along some of the coasts, especially in the province
of Yemen, which has a flora of its own. The Keura odorifera, a superb
tree, with agreeable perfume, eight species of figs, the three species
of Amyris—gileadensis, or balm of Gilead, opobalsamum also yielding
balsam, and the kataf, from which myrrh is supposed to come—are peculiar
to Arabia. Frankincense is said to be the produce of the Boswellia
serrata; and there are many species of Acacia, among others the Acacia
arabica, which produces gum arabic. The arak and tamarind trees connect
the botany of Arabia with that of the West Indies, while it is connected
with that of the Cape of Good Hope by Stapelias, mesembryanthemums, and
liliaceous flowers. The character of Arabian vegetation, like that of
other dry hot climates, consists in its odoriferous plants and flowers.
Arabia produces coffee, which, however, is not indigenous, but is
supposed to have come from the table-land of Ethiopia, and to have its
name from the province of Kaffa, where it forms dense forests. It was
introduced into Arabia in the end of the fifteenth century, and grows
luxuriantly in Arabia Felix, where the coffee is of the highest flavour.
Most of that now used is the progeny of plants raised from seed and
brought from Mocha to the Botanic Garden at Amsterdam in 1690, by Van
Hoorn, Governor of Batavia. A plant was sent to Louis XIV., in 1714, by
the magistrates of Amsterdam—it was from this plant that the first
coffee-plants were introduced in 1717 into the West India islands. A
year afterwards the Dutch introduced coffee-trees into Surinam, from
whence they spread rapidly over the warm parts of America and the West
India islands. Many thousands of people are now employed in its
cultivation there, in Demerara, Java, Manilla, the isle of Bourbon, and
other places. More than 3,000,000 pounds of coffee-beans are produced,
and 100,000 tons of shipping are annually employed in its transport
across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Coffee was not known till many
centuries after the introduction of sugar. The first coffee-house was
opened in London in 1652, and the first in France, at Marseilles, in
1671.