[Illustration:
Ford & West lith. London.
]
PALM TREES OF THE AMAZON
AND THEIR USES.
BY
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE.
WITH FORTY-EIGHT PLATES.
LONDON:
JOHN VAN VOORST, 1 PATERNOSTER ROW.
1853.
PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND FRANCIS,
RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.
PREFACE.
The materials for this work were collected during my travels on the
Amazon and its tributaries from 1848 to 1852. Though principally
occupied with the varied and interesting animal productions of the
country, I yet found time to examine and admire the wonders of vegetable
life which everywhere abounded. In the vast forests of the Amazon
valley, tropical vegetation is to be seen in all its luxuriance. Huge
trees with buttressed stems, tangled climbers of fantastic forms, and
strange parasitical plants everywhere meet the admiring gaze of the
naturalist fresh from the meadows and heaths of Europe. Everywhere too
rise the graceful Palms, true denizens of the tropics, of which they are
the most striking and characteristic feature. In the districts which I
visited they were everywhere abundant, and I soon became interested in
them, from their great variety and beauty of form and the many uses to
which they are applied. I first endeavoured to familiarize myself with
the aspect of each species and to learn to know it by its native name;
but even this was not a very easy matter, for I was often unable to see
any difference between trees which the Indians assured me were quite
distinct, and had widely different properties and uses. More close
examination, however, convinced me that external characters did exist by
which every species could be separated from those most nearly allied to
it, and I was soon pleased to find that I could distinguish one palm
from another, though barely visible above the surrounding forest, almost
as certainly as the natives themselves. I then endeavoured to define the
peculiarities of form or structure which gave to each its individual
character, and made accurate sketches and descriptions to impress them
upon my memory. These peculiarities are often very slight, though
permanent:—in the roots, the extent to which they appear above the
ground;—in the stem, the thickness, which in each species varies within
very definite limits,—the swelling of the base, the middle or the
summit,—its generally erect or curving position,—the nature of the rings
with which it is marked,—the number, direction and form of the spines or
tubercles with which it is armed;—in the leaves, the erect or drooping
position, the size and form of the leaflets, the angles which they form
with the midrib, and the proportionate size of the terminal pair, are
all important characters. The fruit spike or spadix is either erect or
drooping, either simple, forked, or many-branched; and the fruits in
closely allied species vary in size, in shape, and in colour, as well as
in the bloom, down, hairs or tubercles with which they are clothed.
In this little work careful engravings from my original drawings are
given, with a general description of each species, and a history from
personal observation of the various uses to which it is applied, and of
any other interesting particulars connected with it. Several of the
species here figured are new, and among them is the Palm which produces
the “piassába,” the coarse fibrous material of which brooms for street
sweeping are now generally made.
For the determination of the genera and species, and for that part of
the Introduction relating to the botanical characters and geographical
distribution of Palms, I am indebted to the magnificent work of Dr.
Martius. To the botanist I trust my little book may be of some use, in
giving accurate figures of many entire plants, of which he is only
acquainted with small portions, and in supplying an account of the uses
to which they are applied in the distant regions where they grow. And to
the general reader I hope it may not be uninteresting, as exhibiting a
glimpse of a wild and rude people in the lowest state of civilization,
whose existence is intimately connected with the products of the
surrounding forests, among which the plants under consideration hold so
prominent a place; and of these it is hoped the accompanying Plates will
give a more accurate idea than the stereotyped figures which often
represent the “feathery palm trees” in our popular works.
Some of the fruits of which I had no drawings, have been figured from
specimens in the Museum at Kew collected by Mr. R. Spruce, who is still
investigating the Botany of the Amazon valley.
London, October 1853.
LIST OF PLATES.
Plate
Map showing the distribution of Palms in America (_Frontispiece_) 1
Fruits of Palms, containing,
1. Raphia tædigera.
2. Mauritia flexuosa.
3. Manicaria saccifera.
4. Lepidocaryum tenue (all of the natural size) 2
5. Astrocaryum tucuma.
6. Leopoldinia pulchra.
Fruits of Palms, containing,
1. Attalea spectabilis.
2. Maximiliana regia.
3. Spathe of Maximiliana regia (reduced) 3
4. Guilielma speciosa (all of the natural size).
Leopoldinia pulchra 4
—— major 5
—— piassába 6
Euterpe oleracea 7
—— catinga 8
Œnocarpus baccába 9
—— batawa (with fruit) 10
—— batawa (with arrow and quiver) 10,
11
Iriartea exorhiza 12
Roots of an Iriartea 13
Iriartea ventricosa (with a fruit) 14
—— setigera (with fruit and Gravatana) 15
Raphia tædigera 16
Mauritia flexuosa (with a leaf) 17
—— carana 18
—— aculeata 19
—— gracilis 20
—— pumila 21
Lepidocaryum tenue 22
Geonoma multiflora (with fruit) 23
—— paniculigera 24
—— rectifolia (with fruit) 25
Manicaria saccifera (with a spathe) 26
Desmoncus macroacanthus (with a fruit) 27
Bactris pectinata (with a fruit) 28
—— —— n.s. 29
—— elatior 30
—— —— n.s. (with a leaflet) 31
—— macrocarpa (with a fruit and leaflet) 32
—— tenuis (with spadix) 33
—— simplicifrons 34
—— integrifolia 35
Guilielma speciosa (with Uaupes Indian’s house) 36
Acrocomia lasiospatha (with fruit) 37
Astrocaryum murumurú (with fruit and part of leaf) 38
—— gynacanthum 39
—— vulgare 40
—— tucuma (with young plant) 41
—— jauari 42
—— aculeatum 43
—— acaule (with spadix and fruit) 44
—— humile (with fruit) 45
Attalea speciosa 46
Maximiliana regia 47
Cocos nucifera 48
[Illustration:
Pl. II. PALM FRUITS
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
1. Raphia tædigera.
2. Mauritia flexuosa.
3. Manicaria saccifera.
4. Lepidocaryum tenue.
5. Astrocaryum tucuma.
6. Leopoldinia pulchra.
]
[Illustration:
Pl. III. PALM FRUITS.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West. Imp.
1. Attalea spectabilis.
2. Maximiliana regia.
3. Spathe of Maregia.
4. Guilielma speciosa.
5. Iriartea exorhiza.
]
PALM TREES OF THE AMAZON
AND THEIR USES.
INTRODUCTION.
Palms are endogenous or ingrowing plants, belonging to the same great
division of the Vegetable Kingdom as the Grasses, Bamboos, Lilies and
Pineapples, and not to that which contains all our English forest trees.
They are perennial, not annual like most of the above-named plants, and
probably reach a great age. Their stems are simple or very rarely
forked, slender, erect, and cylindrical, not tapering as in most other
trees; they are hardest on the outside, and are marked more or less
distinctly with scars or rings, marking the situation of the fallen
leaves.
The leaves are generally terminal, forming a bunch or head at the summit
of the tree; they are of very large size, have long petioles or
footstalks, and are alternately placed on the stem. In shape they are
pinnate or flabellate, or rarely simple, sheathing at the base, without
stipules; and they have a plicate vernation, or are folded up lengthways
before they open. The margins of the sheathing bases of the leaf-stalks
are often fibrous, and give out a variety of singular processes.
The flowers are numerous, small, symmetrical, uncoloured, or obscurely
so, six-parted, and hermaphrodite or polygamous. They are produced in a
spadix from the axils of the leaves, and are generally enclosed in a
spathe or sheath. The ovary or seed-vessel is three-celled or
three-lobed, but the fruit is generally one-seeded from abortion, and
the seed is large and albuminous with a fibrous or fleshy covering.
Palms are almost exclusively tropical plants, very few species being
found in the temperate zone, and those only in the warmer parts of it,
while the nearer we approach the equator the more numerous they become
both in species and individuals. Dr. Martius, a Prussian botanist and
traveller in South America, has published a magnificent work in three
folio volumes, entirely devoted to the Botanical history of this family
of plants. He divides the portion of the earth which produces palms into
five regions, namely,—
The North Palm Zone, extending from the northern limit of Palms to the
tropic of Cancer.
The transition North Palm Zone, from the tropic of Cancer to 10° north
latitude.
The Chief Palm Zone, from 10° north to 10° south latitude.
The transition South Palm Zone, from 10° south latitude to the tropic of
Capricorn, and
The South Palm Zone, from the tropic of Capricorn to the southern limit
of the family.
The Northern limit of Palms is, in Europe 43° of latitude, in Asia 34°,
and in America 34°.
The Southern limit is 34° in Africa, 38° in New Zealand, and 36° in
South America.
To the north of the tropic of Cancer there are 43 species of Palms
known, and to the south of the tropic of Capricorn only 13, while as we
advance from either side towards the equator the number increases, until
in the Chief Zone, between 10° north and 10° south latitude, there are
more than 300 species (see Frontispiece Map).
In the Old World, the rich islands of the Eastern Archipelago produce
the greatest number of Palms; in the New, the great valleys of the
Amazon and Orinoco on the main land, are most prolific.
In proportion to its extent, America is the most productive palm
country; for while the Old World, including Europe, Asia, Africa, and
the Eastern Archipelago, with New Holland and all the Pacific Islands,
contain 307 species, the New World or America alone has 275 different
kinds.
In the Old World the islands produce more species than the continents,
the former containing 194, while the latter have only 113.
In the New World, however, the reverse is the case, the continent there
containing 234, while the islands possess only 42 kinds of Palms.
The total number of Palms at present known is less than 600. Dr. Martius
thinks that the probable number existing on the earth may be from 1000
to 1200; though, as similar calculations have hitherto almost invariably
been proved, as our knowledge increased, to be far below the truth, it
is not unlikely that a few years may render double this number a more
probable estimate.
Palms present to our view the most graceful and picturesque, as well as
some of the most majestic forms in the vegetable kingdom. Though many of
them have a sameness of aspect, yet there is a sufficient contrast and
variety of forms to render them interesting objects in the landscape.
The stems in some species do not appear above the ground, in others they
rise to the height of 200 feet; some resemble reeds and are no thicker
than a goose quill, others swell out to the bulk of a hogshead. There
are climbing palms too, which trail their long flexible stems over trees
and shrubs, or hang in tangled festoons between them.
The trunks of some are almost perfectly smooth, others rough with
concentric rings, or clothed with a woven or hairy fibrous covering,
which binds together the sheathing bases of the fallen leaves. Many are
thickly beset with cylindrical or flat spines, often 8 or 10 inches long
and as sharp as a needle; and the fallen leaves and stems of these offer
a serious obstacle to the traveller who attempts to penetrate the
tropical forests.
The leaves are large and often gigantic, surpassing those of any other
family of plants. In some species they are 50 feet long and 8 wide;
these are pinnate or composed of numerous long narrow leaflets placed at
right angles to the midrib, but in others the leaves are entire and
undivided, and yet are 30 feet or more in length and 4 or 5 in width.
But the most remarkable form of leaf is the fan-shaped, which
characterizes a considerable number of species, and gives them such a
completely different aspect, as to render it, to ordinary observers, the
most palpable feature dividing the whole family into two distinct
groups. The Palms having fan-shaped leaves are, however, comparatively
few, being only 91 out of 582 known species.
The flowers are small and inconspicuous, generally of a white, pale
yellow or green colour, but often produced in such dense masses as to
have a striking appearance. They sometimes emit a very powerful odour,
which attracts swarms of minute insects; and a newly-burst palm spathe
may often be discovered by the buzzing cloud of small flies and beetles
which hover over it.
The fruits are generally small, when compared with the size of the
trees; the common cocoa-nut being one of the largest in the whole
family. The kernel of many is too hard to be eaten, and the outer
covering is often fibrous or woody; but in others the seeds are covered
with a pulpy or farinaceous mass, which in most cases furnishes a
grateful and nutritious food.
The purposes to which the different parts of Palms are applied are very
various, the fruit, the leaves, and the stem all having many uses in the
different species. Some of them produce valuable articles of export to
our own and other countries, but they are of far more value to the
natives of the districts where they grow, in many cases furnishing the
most important necessaries for existence.
The Cocoa-nut is known to us only as an agreeable fruit, and its fibrous
husk supplies us with matting, coir ropes, and stuffing for mattresses;
but in its native countries it serves a hundred purposes; food and drink
and oil are obtained from its fruit, hats and baskets are made of its
fibre, huts are covered with its leaves, and its leaf-stalks are applied
to a variety of uses. To us the Date is but an agreeable fruit, but to
the Arab it is the very staff of life; men and camels almost live upon
it, and on the abundance of the date harvest depends the wealth and
almost the existence of many desert tribes. It is truly indigenous to
those inhospitable wastes of burning sand, which without it would be
uninhabitable by man.
A palm tree of Africa, the _Æleis guianensis_, gives us oil and candles.
It inhabits those parts of the country where the slave trade is carried
on, and it is thought by persons best acquainted with the subject that
the extension of the trade in palm oil will be the most effectual check
to that inhuman traffic; so that a palm tree may be the means of
spreading the blessings of civilization and humanity among the
persecuted negro race.
Sago is another product of a palm, which is of comparatively little
importance to us, but in the East supplies the daily food of thousands.
In many parts of the Indian Archipelago it forms almost the entire
subsistence of the people, taking the place of rice in Asia, corn in
Europe, and maize and mandiocca in America, and is worthy to be classed
with these the most precious gifts of nature to mankind. Unlike them,
however, it is neither seed nor root, but is the wood itself, the pithy
centre of the stem, requiring scarcely any preparation to fit it for
food; and it is so abundant that a single tree often yields six hundred
pounds weight.
The canes used for chair bottoms and various other purposes, are the
stems of species of _Calamus_, slender palms which abound in the East
Indian jungles, climbing over other trees and bushes by the help of the
long hooked spines with which their leaves are armed. They sometimes
reach the enormous length of 600 or even 1000 feet, and as four millions
of them are imported into this country annually, a great number of
persons must find employment in cutting them.
A variety of species, in all parts of the world, furnish a sugary sap
from their stems or unopened spathes, which when partly fermented is the
palm wine of Africa and the Toddy of the East Indies; and a similar
beverage is procured from the _Mauritia vinifera_ and other species in
South America. Indeed, at the mouth of the Orinoco dwell a nation of
Indians whose existence depends almost entirely on a species of Palm,
supposed to be the _Mauritia flexuosa_. They build their houses elevated
on its trunks, and live principally upon its fruit and sap, with fish
from the waters around them.
Among the most singular products of palm trees are the resins and wax
produced by some species. The fruits of a species of _Calamus_ of the
Eastern Archipelago are covered with a resinous substance of a red
colour, which, in common with a similar product from some other trees,
is the Dragon’s blood of commerce, and is used as a pigment, for
varnish, and in the manufacture of tooth powder. The _Ceroxylon
andicola_, a lofty palm growing in the Andes of Bogotá, produces a
resinous wax which is secreted in its stem and used by the inhabitants
of the country for making candles and for other purposes. Again, in some
of the northern provinces of Brazil is found a palm tree called
Carnaúba, the _Copernicia cerifera_, having the underside of its leaves
covered with white wax, which has no admixture of resin, but is as pure
as that procured from our hives.
The leaves of palms, however, are applied to the greatest variety of
uses; thatch for houses, umbrellas, hats, baskets and cordage in
countless varieties are made from them, and every tropical country
possesses some species adapted to these varied purposes, which in
temperate zones are generally supplied by a very different class of
plants. The Chip, or Brazilian-grass hats, so cheap in this country, are
made from the leaves of a palm tree which grows in Cuba, whence they are
imported for the purpose: the palm is the _Chamærops argentea_; and in
Sicily an allied species, the _Chamærops humilis_ (the only European
palm), is applied in a similar manner to form hats, baskets, and a
variety of useful articles.
The papyrus of the ancient Egyptians, and the metallic plates on which
other nations wrote, were not used in India, but their place was
supplied by the leaves of palms, on whose hard and glossy surface the
characters of the Pali and Sanscrit languages were inscribed with a
metallic point. The leaves of the _Corypha taliera_ are used for this
purpose, and when strung together, form the volumes of a Hindu library.
A favourite stimulant too of the Malays is furnished by a palm. The
fruit of the _Areca catechu_ is the betelnut, which they chew with lime,
and which is their substitute for the opium of the Chinese, the tobacco
of Europeans, and the coca of the South Americans.
One of the most recent introductions into our own domestic economy is
the fibre of a palm, the Piassaba, which is now generally used for
coarse brooms and brushes; and in the valley of the Amazon, of which it
is a native, the same material is manufactured into cables, which are
cheap and very durable in the water.
We have now glanced at a few of the most important uses to which Palms
are applied, but in order to be able to appreciate how much the native
tribes of the countries where they most abound are dependent on this
noble family of plants, and how they take part in some form or other in
almost every action of the Indian’s life, we must enter into his hut and
inquire into the origin and structure of the various articles we shall
see around us.
Suppose then we visit an Indian cottage on the banks of the Rio Negro, a
great tributary of the river Amazon in South America. The main supports
of the building are trunks of some forest tree of heavy and durable
wood, but the light rafters overhead are formed by the straight
cylindrical and uniform stems of the Jará palm. The roof is thatched
with large triangular leaves, neatly arranged in regular alternate rows,
and bound to the rafters with sipós or forest creepers; the leaves are
those of the Caraná palm. The door of the house is a framework of thin
hard strips of wood neatly thatched over; it is made of the split stems
of the Pashiúba palm. In one corner stands a heavy harpoon for catching
the cow-fish; it is formed of the black wood of the _Pashiúba
barriguda_. By its side is a blowpipe ten or twelve feet long, and a
little quiver full of small poisoned arrows hangs up near it; with these
the Indian procures birds for food, or for their gay feathers, or even
brings down the wild hog or the tapir, and it is from the stem and
spines of two species of Palms that they are made. His great
bassoon-like musical instruments are made of palm stems; the cloth in
which he wraps his most valued feather ornaments is a fibrous palm
spathe, and the rude chest in which he keeps his treasures is woven from
palm leaves. His hammock, his bow-string and his fishing-line are from
the fibres of leaves which he obtains from different palm trees,
according to the qualities he requires in them,—the hammock from the
Mirití, and the bow-string and fishing-line from the Tucúm. The comb
which he wears on his head is ingeniously constructed of the hard bark
of a palm, and he makes fish hooks of the spines, or uses them to
puncture on his skin the peculiar markings of his tribe. His children
are eating the agreeable red and yellow fruit of the Pupunha or peach
palm, and from that of the Assaí he has prepared a favourite drink,
which he offers you to taste. That carefully suspended gourd contains
oil, which he has extracted from the fruit of another species; and that
long elastic plaited cylinder used for squeezing dry the mandiocca pulp
to make his bread, is made of the bark of one of the singular climbing
palms, which alone can resist for a considerable time the action of the
poisonous juice. In each of these cases a species is selected better
adapted than the rest for the peculiar purpose to which it is applied,
and often having several different uses which no other plant can serve
as well, so that some little idea may be formed of how important to the
South American Indian must be these noble trees, which supply so many
daily wants, giving him his house, his food, and his weapons.
To the lover of nature Palms offer a constant source of interest,
reminding him that he is amidst the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics,
and offering to him the realization of whatever wild and beautiful ideas
he has from childhood associated with their name.
In the equatorial regions of South America they are seldom absent.
Either delicate species flourishing in the dense shade of the virgin
forest; or lofty and massive, standing erect on the river’s banks; or on
the hill side raising their leafy crowns on airy stems above the
surrounding trees, creating, as Humboldt styles it, “a forest above a
forest;” in every situation some are to be met with as representatives
of the magnificent and regal family to which they belong.
In the following pages the genera and species are arranged in the order
adopted by Dr. Martius in his elaborate work already alluded to.
NATURAL ORDER PALMACEÆ.
Genus LEOPOLDINIA, _Martius_.
This genus is characterized by having flowers containing stamens or
pistils only, intermingled on the same spadix, and by not having a
spathe. The male flowers have six stamens and no rudiments of a stigma.
The female flowers have three sessile stigmas and rudimentary stamens.
The spadix is much branched and decomposed.
The species are trees of a moderate size without any spines or
tubercles, but remarkable for the netted fibres which spring from the
margins of the sheathing petioles, and cover the stem half way down or
sometimes even to its base. The leaves are terminal and pinnate, the
leaflets spreading out regularly in one plane. There are often three or
four spadices on a tree, bearing abundance of small flowers, and ovate
compressed fruit, the outer covering of which is fleshy.
Four species are known, and they are all found in the same limited
district near the Rio Negro, some extending to the tributaries of the
Orinoco near its source, and one being found south of the Amazon nearly
opposite the mouth of the Rio Negro. All however grow on the banks or in
the immediate vicinity of black-ater streams, which occur more
extensively in South America than in any other part of the globe. Two
species are described by Martius, one of which is here figured with two
others, which are believed to be new. They are not found more than 1000
feet above the level of the sea.
[Illustration:
Pl. IV.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
LEOPOLDINIA PULCHRA. Ht. 12 Ft.
]
PLATE IV.
LEOPOLDINIA PULCHRA, _Martius_.
Jará, _Lingoa Geral_.
The Jará or Jará mirí (little Jará) is from ten to fifteen feet high.
The stem is cylindrical, erect, and about two inches in diameter. The
leaves are very regularly pinnate, about four feet long, with the
leaflets slightly drooping and the terminal pair small. The leaf-stalks
are slender and the sheathing bases are persistent, giving out from
their margins abundance of flat fibrous processes which are curiously
netted and interlaced together, clothing the stem with a firm covering
often down to the very base. At the lower part this gradually rots and
is rubbed away or falls off, leaving the stem bare. The flower-stalks or
spadices are numerous, and very large and much branched; and the fruits
are about an inch in diameter, oval and flattened, and of a pale
greenish yellow colour. The outer covering is firm and fleshy, and has a
very bitter taste.
This species is found on the banks of the Rio Negro and some of its
tributaries, from its mouth up to its source, and on the black-water
tributaries of the Orinoco. It never grows far from the water’s edge,
though generally out of reach of the floods in the wet season. It is not
known to occur beyond this very limited district.
The stem of this tree being very smooth and cylindrical, and of a
convenient length, it is much used for fencing round yards and gardens,
and in the city of Barra do Rio Negro is universally employed for such
purposes. The want of neatness out of doors, which is quite a
characteristic of the Portuguese and Indian settlers on the Amazon, is
always apparent in these fences. It is never thought worth while to cut
the poles all to one length, but they are set up just as they are
brought in from the forest; and the space between two handsome houses in
the city may often be seen filled up with a Jará railing of most
unpicturesque irregularity.
The bright green and glossy foliage of this tree also renders it
suitable for another purpose. On certain saints’ days, little altars and
green avenues are made before the principal houses in Barra, the Jará
palm being always used to construct them; and its graceful fronds
rustling in the evening breeze, fitfully reflecting the light of the wax
tapers which burn before the image of the saint, with the blazing
torches of the rustic procession, have a very pleasing effect.
The reticulate covering of the stem of this and the next species offers
a fine station for the epiphytal Orchideæ to attach themselves, and the
Jará palms are accordingly often adorned with their curious and
ornamental flowers.
Plate II. figure 6. represents a fruit of this species of the natural
size.
[Illustration:
Pl. V.
W. Fitch lith.
LEOPOLDINIA MAJOR. Ht. 25 Ft.
]
PLATE V.
LEOPOLDINIA MAJOR, n. sp.
Jará assú, _Lingoa Geral_.
The Jará assú or “greater Jará” closely resembles the last species, but
it is considerably larger. The stem is four inches in diameter and
reaches thirty feet in height. It is often much thicker at the bottom
than in the upper part, and has a greater proportion of the stem bare.
The leaves are very similar, but the spadices are larger, and the fruit
is also larger and much more abundant.
This tree occurs plentifully on the lakes and inlets of the upper Rio
Negro, but is not found at the mouth of the river like the last species.
It grows too at a lower level, being often found with a part of the stem
under water.
The Indians collect the fruit in large quantities, and by burning and
washing extract a floury substance, which they use as a substitute for
salt when they cannot procure that article. They assert positively that
the smaller species of Jará will not yield the same product; but perhaps
this may be only because the fruit is less abundant, and they do not
take the trouble to collect it.
Coarse Portugal salt is used in the Rio Negro, and among the Indians in
the upper part of the river serves as a circulating medium, about a
pound of it being reckoned equivalent to a day’s work. The supply
however is very uncertain, and there are many distant tribes which it
scarcely ever reaches; and it is among them that the substitute is
manufactured from the fruit of the Jará. It is doubtful, however,
whether it contains any true salt, for it is described as being more
bitter than saline in taste; yet with this alone to season their fish
and cassava the Indians enjoy almost perfect health. Perhaps, therefore,
mineral salt may not be such a necessary of life as we are accustomed to
consider it.
[Illustration:
Pl. VI.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
LEOPOLDINIA PIASSABA. Ht. 20 Ft.
]
PLATE VI.
LEOPOLDINIA PIASSABA, n. sp.
Piassába, _Lingoa Geral_. Chíquichíqui, _Barré_. [An Indian language
spoken on the Upper Rio Negro in Venezuela.]
This tree, the “Piassaba” of Brazil and the “Chíquichíqui” of Venezuela,
I have little hesitation in referring to the genus _Leopoldinia_, though
I have never seen it in flower or in fruit. The texture and form of the
leaves, the peculiar branching of the spadix, and the extraordinary
development of the fibres from the margins of the sheathing petioles,
show it to be very closely allied to the other species of this genus.
The stem is generally short, but reaches twenty to thirty feet in
height, and is much thicker than in either of the preceding species. The
leaves are very large and regularly pinnate, with the pinnæ gradually
smaller to the end, as in the two former species. The leaflets are
rigid, broadest in the middle, and gradually tapering to a fine point,
spreading out flat on each side of the midrib, but slightly drooping at
the tips. The petioles are slender and smooth. The spadix is large,
excessively branched and drooping, and there are often several on the
same tree. The marginal processes of the petioles are interlaced as in
the two former species, and are produced into long riband-like strips,
which afterwards split into fine fibres, and hang down five or six feet,
entirely concealing the stem, and giving the tree a most curious and
unique appearance. The leaves form an excellent thatch, and are almost
universally used in that portion of Venezuela situated on the upper Rio
Negro, and the adjacent tributaries of the Orinoco. The fruit is said to
resemble that of the Jará in colour, but it is globose and eatable,
being used principally to form a thick drink by washing off the outer
coating of pulp.
The fibrous or hairy covering of the stem is an extensive article of
commerce in the countries in which it grows. It seems to have been used
by the Brazilians from a very early period to form cables for the canoes
navigating the Amazon. It is well adapted for this purpose, as it is
light (the cables made of it not sinking in water) and very durable. It
twists readily and firmly into cordage from the fibres being
rough-edged, and as it is very abundant, and is procured and
manufactured by the Indians, piassaba ropes are much cheaper than any
other kind of cordage. The price in the city of Barra in June 1852, was
400 reis or 1_s._ for 32 lbs. of the fibre, and 800 reis or 2_s._ for
every inch in circumference of a cable sixty fathoms long, which is the
standard length they are all made to.
Before the independence of Brazil, the Portuguese government had a
factory at the mouth of the Paduarí, one of the tributaries of the Rio
Negro, for the purpose of making these cables for the use of the Pará
arsenal, and as a government monopoly. Till within these few years the
fibre was all manufactured into cordage on the spot, but it is now taken
down in long conical bundles for exportation from Pará to England, where
it is generally used for street sweeping and house brooms, and will
probably soon be applied to many other purposes. It is cut with knives
by men, women and children, from the upper part of the younger trees, so
as to secure the freshest fibres, the taller trees which have only the
old and half-rotten portion within reach, being left untouched. It is
said to grow again in five or six years, the fibres being produced at
the bases of the new leaves. The trees are much infested by venomous
snakes, a species of _Craspedocephalus_, and the Indians are not
unfrequently bitten by them when at work, and sometimes with fatal
consequences.
The distribution of this tree is very peculiar. It grows in swampy or
partially flooded lands on the banks of black-water rivers. It is first
found on the river Padauarí, a tributary of the Rio Negro on its
northern side, about 400 miles above Barra, but whose waters are not so
black as those of the Rio Negro. The Piassaba is found from near the
mouth to more than a hundred miles up, where it ceases. On the banks of
the Rio Negro itself not a tree is to be seen. The next river, the
Darahá, also contains some. The next two, the Maravihá and Cababurís,
are white-water rivers, and have no Piassaba. On the S. bank, though all
the rivers are black-water, there is no Piassaba till we reach the
Marié, not far below St. Gabriel. Here it is extensively cut for about a
hundred miles up, but there is still none immediately at the mouth or on
the banks of the Rio Negro. The next rivers, the Curicuríarí, the great
river Uaupés, and the Isánna, though all black-water, have none; while
further on, in the Xié, it again appears. On entering Venezuela it is
found near the banks of the Rio Negro, and is abundant all up to its
sources, and in the Témi and Atabápo, black-water tributaries of the
Orinoco. This seems to be its northern limit, and I cannot hear of its
again appearing in any part of the Amazon or Orinoco or their
tributaries. It is thus entirely restricted to a district about 300
miles from N. to S. and an equal distance from E. to W. I am enabled so
exactly to mark out its range, from having resided more than two years
in various parts of the Rio Negro, among people whose principal
occupation consisted in obtaining the fibrous covering of this tree, and
from whom no locality for it can have remained undiscovered, assisted as
they are by the Indians, whose home is the forest, and who are almost as
well acquainted with its trackless depths as we are with the well-beaten
roads of our own island.
The fibre imported into this country has been supposed to be produced
only by the _Attalea funifera_, a species not found in the Amazon
district. In the London Journal of Botany for 1849, Sir W. Hooker gave
some account of the material, and of the tree producing it; stating that
he had received the fruit of the tree with the fibre from a mercantile
house connected with Brazil, and that the fruit was that of the _Attalea
funifera_. This species is mentioned by Martius as furnishing a fibre
used for cordage and other purposes in Southern Brazil, and he states
that it is called “piaçaba”; so that the Indian name is applied to two
distinct trees producing a similar material in different localities; and
the two having been brought to England under the same name and from not
very distant ports of the same country, were naturally supposed to be
produced by the same tree. The greater part, if not all of the Piassaba
now imported, comes, however, from the Rio Negro, where several hundred
tons are cut annually and sent to Pará, from which place scarcely a
vessel sails for England without its forming a part of her cargo.
GENUS EUTERPE, _Gærtner_.
Male and female flowers intermingled on the same spadix, the former more
abundant in the upper part of the branches, the latter in the lower.
Spathe entire, membranaceous, fusiform and deciduous. Flowers with
bracts, male with six stamens and a rudimentary pistil, female with
three sessile stigmas. Spadix simply branched, spreading horizontally.
These are very elegant palms; their stems are lofty, slender, smooth and
faintly ringed. The leaves are terminal, pinnate, regular, and form a
graceful feathery plume. The bases of the petioles are sheathing for a
long distance down the stem, forming a thick column three or four feet
long, of a green or reddish colour. The spadices, three or four in
number, spring from beneath the leaves, and the spathes are very
deciduous, falling to the ground as soon as they open. The fruit is
small, globose, at first green, then violet or black, and consists of a
thin edible pulp covering the hard seed.
Twelve species are known, inhabiting the West Indies, Mexico and South
America, and there appear to be three species in the Amazon district,
two of which I have figured. Some prefer marshy grounds near the level
of the sea, others extend up the mountains to a height of 4000 feet.
[Illustration:
Pl. VII.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
EUTERPE OLERACEA. Ht. 60 Ft.
]
PLATE VII.
EUTERPE OLERACEA, _Martius_.
Assaí, _Lingoa Geral_.
The Assaí of Pará is a tall and slender tree, from sixty to eighty feet
high, and about four inches in diameter. The stem is very smooth, of a
pale colour, and generally waving, sometimes very much curved. The
leaves are of moderate size, of a pale bright green, regularly pinnate,
and with the leaflets much drooping. The column formed by the sheathing
bases of the leaves is of an olive colour. The flowers are small,
whitish, and very thickly set on the simply branched spadix. There are
generally two or three, and sometimes even five or six spadices, growing
out horizontally from a little below the leaf-column. The spathe is
smooth and membranous, and falls off as the spadix opens. The fruit when
ripe is about the size and colour of a sloe. It consists of a hard
albuminous seed, with a rather fibrous exterior, and a very thin
covering of a firm pulp or flesh.
This species is very abundant in the neighbourhood of Pará, and even in
the city itself. It grows in swamps flooded by the high tides,—never on
dry land. Its straight cylindrical stem is sometimes used for poles and
rafters; but the tree is generally considered too valuable to be cut
down for such purposes. A very favourite drink is made from the ripe
fruit, and daily vended in the streets of Pará. Indian and negro girls
may be constantly seen walking about with small earthen pots on their
heads, uttering at intervals a shrill cry of Assaí——í. If you call one
of these dusky maidens, she will set down her pot, and you will see it
filled with a thick creamy liquid, of a fine plum colour. A pennyworth
of this will fill a tumbler, and you may then add a little sugar to your
taste, and will find a peculiar nut-flavoured liquid, which you may not
perhaps think a great deal of at first; but, if you repeat your
experience a few times, you will inevitably become so fond of it as to
consider “Assaí” one of the greatest luxuries the place produces. It is
generally taken with farinha, the substitute for bread prepared from the
mandiocca root, and with or without sugar, according to the taste of the
consumer.
During our walks in the suburbs of Pará we had frequently opportunities
of seeing the preparation of this favourite beverage. Two or three large
bunches of fruit are brought in from the forest. The women of the house
seize upon them, shake and strip them into a large earthen vessel, and
pour on them warm water, not too hot to bear the hand in. The water soon
becomes tinged with purple, and in about an hour the outer pulp has
become soft enough to rub off. The water is now most of it poured away,
a little cold added, and a damsel, with no sleeves to turn up, plunges
both hands into the vessel, and rubs and kneads with great perseverance,
adding fresh water as it is required, till the whole of the purple
covering has been rubbed off and the greenish stones left bare. The
liquid is now poured through a wicker sieve into another vessel, and is
then ready for use. The smiling hostess will then fill a calabash, and
give you another with farinha to mix to your taste; and nothing will
delight her more than your emptying your rustic basin and asking her to
refill it.
The inhabitants of Pará are excessively attached to this beverage, and
many never pass a day of their lives without it. They are particularly
favoured too, in being able to get it at all seasons, for though in most
places the trees only bear for a few months once in the year, yet in the
neighbourhood of Pará there is so much variety of soil and aspect, that
within a day or two’s journey, there is always some ripe Assaí to supply
the market. Boys climb up the trees to get it, with a cord round the
ankles (as shown on the Plate), and with its own leaves make a neatly
interlaced basket to carry it home. From the great island of Marajó, its
igaripés[1] and marshes, from the rivers Guamá and Mojú, from the
thousand islands in the river, and from the vast palm swamps in the
depths of the forest, baskets of the fruit are brought every morning to
the city, where half the population look to the Assaí to supply a daily
meal, and hundreds are said to make it, with farinha, almost their main
subsistence.
Footnote 1:
A small stream, literally “path of the canoe.”
The trees of this genus also furnish another article of food. The
undeveloped leaves in the centre of the column form a white sweetish
mass, which when boiled somewhat resembles artichoke or parsnep, and is
a very good and wholesome vegetable. It may also be eaten raw, cut up
and dressed as a salad with oil and vinegar. As, however, to obtain it
the tree must be destroyed, it is not much used in Pará, except by
travellers in the forest who have no particular interest in the
preservation of the trees for fruit. The Cabbage Palm of the West Indies
is an allied species, and is used for food in the same manner.
Very fine specimens of this tree may be seen in the great Palm House at
Kew, where they grow almost as luxuriantly as in their native forests.
In the Plate, the unopened spathe, flower-spadix and fruit are
represented, as they are often found, together on the same tree.
EUTERPE ——?
On the banks of the Rio Negro there appears to be another species of
this genus, closely allied to the _Euterpe oleracea_, but the stem is
thicker and straighter, the whole tree larger, and the leaf-column
thicker, and of a clear green colour. It grows on the dry land of the
virgin forest, or sometimes within the limits of the winter’s
inundations. I unfortunately neglected to examine into its peculiar
characters, as until my return to Pará I had considered it identical
with the species so common there.
I was also informed that in the island of Marajó there is a species or
variety having white fruit, but I had no opportunity of examining it.
[Illustration:
Pl. VIII.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
EUTERPE CATINGA. Ht. 40 Ft.
]
PLATE VIII.
EUTERPE CATINGA, n. sp.
Assaí de catinga, _Lingoa Geral_.
This species differs from the last in its slenderer stem and less
drooping leaves and leaflets. It grows to forty or fifty feet high. The
spadices are fewer and much smaller. The fruit also is smaller, and has
more pulpy matter, so that a small quantity of it makes more of the
“vinho d’Assaí” (the Assaí wine) than the same quantity of fruit of the
larger kind. The column formed by the sheathing bases of the leaves is
smaller than in the last species, and always of a red colour. The roots
rise considerably above the ground, forming a distinct cone, which is
not the case in the _E. oleracea_. It inhabits the forests on a dry
sandy soil, of the Upper Rio Negro. These districts are called Catinga
forests by the natives, and have very peculiar vegetable productions,
differing almost entirely from those of the lofty virgin forest.
The preparation of the fruit of this species is sweeter and more finely
flavoured than that of any other, and is therefore much sought after,
but it takes the produce of four or five trees to yield as much as a
single spadix of the larger kind will often produce. I found the fruit
ripe in the month of April on the river Uaupés, a branch of the Rio
Negro above the Falls.
GENUS ŒNOCARPUS, _Martius_.
Male and female flowers on the same spadix, the former most abundant.
Spathe double, the interior complete, woody, and deciduous. Flowers
without distinct bracts; the male with six stamens and rudiments of a
pistil, the female with three sessile stigmas, but with no rudiment of
stamens.
These are tall majestic trees with large smooth stems, generally
distinctly ringed. The leaves are large, terminal, more or less
regularly pinnate, and have the bases expanded and clasping the stem,
but not forming a sheathing column as in the last genus. The spadices
spring from beneath the leaves and are simply branched; the branches are
very lax, hanging down vertically except when forced outwards by the
ripening fruit. The spathe is very large, fusiform and woody, and falls
off the moment the spadix escapes from it. The fruit is small, nearly
globular, and has an edible pulpy covering, like that of the genus
_Euterpe_.
Six species only are known, and all inhabit tropical America, where they
prefer dry, slightly elevated lands, none being known to extend more
than 1600 feet above the sea.
[Illustration:
Pl. IX.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
ŒNOCARPUS BACCABA Ht. 50 Ft.
]
PLATE IX.
ŒNOCARPUS BACCÁBA, _Martius_.
Baccába, _Lingoa Geral_.
This is a smooth thick-stemmed handsome tree, faintly ringed, and
reaching fifty or sixty feet in height. The leaves are large, terminal,
and pinnate. The leaflets are long; gradually pointed, and set at equal
distances along the midrib. When young, the leaves are flat, the
leaflets or pinnæ all standing out in the same plane; but in the
full-grown tree the leaflets are in groups of two or three standing out
at different angles from the general plane of the leaf, so as to give an
irregular mixed appearance to the leaf. The petioles are greatly dilated
at the base where they clasp the stem, and have a fibrous margin. The
leaves as they die fall clean off from the stem, no part of the base
remaining. The spathe is deciduous, being comparatively seldom visible.
The fruits are of a violet or black colour when ripe, but are covered
with a dense whitish bloom. They are prepared in the same way as the
Assaí, but the pulp is of a pinkish cream-colour instead of purple, and
the liquid is more oily, and of delicious flavour, somewhat resembling
filberts and cream. It is said, however, not to be so wholesome as the
Assaí, and in districts where intermittent fevers are prevalent, to
bring them on, and to be particularly hurtful to persons recovering from
that disease. A very beautiful oil is sometimes extracted from the pulp
by pressure; it is perfectly clear, liquid, and inodorous; and serves as
a substitute for olive oil, as well as being very good for lamps. The
leaves are sometimes used for thatching when none better can be
obtained; but owing to the irregularity of the pinnæ before mentioned,
they are not much used.
This species inhabits the dry virgin forests of the Rio Negro and Upper
Amazon. In the lower parts of that river and in the neighbourhood of
Pará it is replaced by another species, the _Œnocarpus distichus_.
The _Œ. baccába_ is growing at Kew.
One figure on the Plate shows the unopened spathe; the other has
spadices with flowers and fruit.
[Illustration:
Pl. XI.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
ŒNOCARPUS BATAWA. Ht. 50 Ft.
]
PLATES X. and XI.
ŒNOCARPUS BATAWÁ, _Martius_.
Patawá, _Lingoa Geral_.
This species can hardly be distinguished from the _Œnocarpus baccába_
when young. In the full-grown plant, however, the leaves preserve their
regularity, the leaflets spreading out regularly in one plane and having
a very beautiful appearance. The stem in old trees is fifty or sixty
feet high and quite smooth, but in those growing in the shade of the
forest, and in all young trees, the stem is completely hidden by the
persistent bases of the decayed and fallen leaves. I have figured a tree
in this state (Plate XI.).