intermingled with the Cucurito or Vadgihai, (85 to 106 English feet
high), adorns the cataracts of Atures and Maypures, and is occasionally
found also on the lonely banks of the Cassiquiare. The smooth slender
stems of the Jagua, rising to between 64 and 75 English feet,
appear above the dense mass of foliage of other kinds of trees from
amidst which they spring like raised colonnades, their airy summits
contrasting beautifully with the thickly-leaved species of Ceiba, and
with the forest of Laurineæ, Calophyllum, and different species of
Amyris which surround them. The leaves of the Jagua, which are few in
number (scarcely so many as seven or eight), are sixteen or seventeen
feet long, and rise almost vertically into the air; their extremities
are curled like plumes; the ultimate divisions or leaflets, having only
a thin grass-like parenchyma, flutter lightly and airily round the
slowly balancing central leaf-stalks. In all palms the inflorescence
springs from the trunk itself, and below the place where the leaves
originate; but the manner in which this takes place modifies the
physiognomic character. In a few species only (as the Corozo del
Sinu), the spathe (or sheath enclosing the flowers and fruits), rises
vertically, and the fruits stand erect, forming a kind of thyrsus, like
the fruits of the Bromelia: in most species of palms the spathes (which
are sometimes smooth and sometimes rough and armed with formidable
spines) are pendent; in a few species the male flowers are of a
dazzling whiteness, and in such cases the flower-covered spadix, when
fully developed, shines from afar. In most species of palms the male
flowers are yellowish, closely crowded, and appear almost withered when
they disengage themselves from the spathe.
“In Palms with pinnate foliage, the leaf-stalks either proceed (as in
the Cocoa-nut, the Date, and the Palma Real del Sinu) from the dry,
rough, woody part of the stem; or, as in the Palma Real de la Havana
(Oreodoxa regia) seen and admired by Columbus, there rises upon the
rough part of the stem a grass-green, smooth, thinner shaft, like a
column placed upon a column, and from this the leaf-stalks spring. In
fan-palms, “foliis palmatis,” the leafy crown (as in the Moriche
and the Palma sombrero de la Havana) often rests on a previous bed
of dry leaves, a circumstance which gives to the tree a sombre and
melancholy appearance. In some umbrella-palms the crown consists of
very few leaves, which rise upwards, carried on very slender petioles
or foot-stalks (as in Miraguama).
“The form and colour of the fruits of Palms also offer much more
variety than is commonly believed in Europe. Mauritia flexuosa bears
egg-shaped fruits, whose scaly, brown, and shining surface, gives them
something of the appearance of young fir-cones. What a difference
between the enormous triangular cocoa-nut, the soft fleshy berries
of the date, and the small hard fruits of the Corozo! But among the
fruits of palms none equal in beauty those of the Pirijao (Pihiguao of
S. Fernando de Atabapo and S. Balthasar); they are egg-shaped, mealy,
and usually without seeds, two or three inches thick, and of a golden
colour, which on one side is overspread with crimson; and these richly
coloured fruits, crowded together in a bunch, like grapes, are pendent
from the summits of majestic palm trees.” I have already spoken in the
first volume of the present work, p. 216, of these beautiful fruits, of
which there are seventy or eighty in a bunch, and which can be prepared
as food in a variety of ways, like plantains and potatoes.
In some species of Palms the flower sheath, or spathe surrounding the
spadix and the flowers, opens suddenly with an audible sound. Richard
Schomburgk (Reisen in Britisch Guiana, Th. i. S. 55) has like myself
observed this phenomenon in the flowering of the Oreodoxa oleracea.
This first opening of the flowers of Palms accompanied by sound recalls
the vernal Dithyrambus of Pindar, and the moment when, in Argive Nemea,
“the first opening shoot of the date-palm proclaims the arrival of
balmy spring.” (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 10; Eng. ed. p. 10.)
Three vegetable forms of peculiar beauty are proper to the tropical
zone in all parts of the globe; Palms, Plantains or Bananas, and
Arborescent Ferns. It is where heat and moisture are combined that
vegetation is most vigorous, and its forms most varied; and hence South
America excels the rest of the tropical world in the number and beauty
of her species of Palms. In Asia this form of vegetation is more rare,
perhaps because a considerable part of the Indian continent which was
situated immediately under the equinoctial line has been broken up and
covered by the sea in the course of former geological revolutions. We
know scarcely anything of the palm trees of Africa between the Bight
of Benin and the Coast of Ajan; and, generally speaking, we are only
acquainted, as has been already remarked, with a very small number of
species of Palms belonging to that quarter of the globe.
Palms afford, next to Coniferæ and species of Eucalyptus belonging
to the family of Myrtaceæ, examples of the greatest loftiness of
stature attained by any of the members of the vegetable kingdom. Of
the Cabbage Palm (Areca oleracea), stems have been seen from 150 to
160 French (160 to 170 English) feet high. (Aug. de Saint-Hilaire,
Morphologie végétale, 1840, p. 176.) The Wax-palm, our Ceroxylon
andicola, discovered by us on the Andes between Ibague and Carthago, on
the Montaña de Quindiu, attains the immense height of 160 to 180 French
(170 to 192 English) feet. I was able to measure with exactness the
prostrate trunks which had been cut down and were lying in the forest.
Next to the Wax-palm, Oreodoxa Sancona, which we found in flower near
Roldanilla in the Cauca Valley, and which affords a very hard and
excellent building wood, appeared to me to be the tallest of American
palms. The circumstance that notwithstanding the enormous quantity of
fruits produced by a single Palm tree, the number of individuals of
each species which are found in a wild state is not very considerable,
can only be explained by the frequently abortive development of the
fruits (and consequent absence of seeds), and by the voracity of their
numerous assailants, belonging to all classes of the animal world. Yet
although I have said that the wild individuals are not very numerous,
there are in the basin of the Orinoco entire tribes of men who live
for several months of the year on the fruits of palms. “In palmetis,
Pihiguao consitis, singuli trunci quotannis fere 400 fructus ferunt
pomiformes, tritumque est verbum inter Fratres S. Francisci, ad ripas
Orinoci et Gauiniæ degentes, mire pinguescere Indorum corpora, quoties
uberem Palmæ fructum fundant.” (Humboldt, de Distrib. geogr. Plant. p.
240.)
[16] p. 22.--“_Since the earliest infancy of human civilisation._”
In all tropical countries we find the cultivation of the Banana or
Plantain established from the earliest times with which tradition
or history make us acquainted. It is certain that in the course of
the last few centuries African slaves have brought new varieties to
America, but it is equally certain that Plantains were cultivated in
the new world before its discovery by Columbus. The Guaikeri Indians at
Cumana assured us that on the Coast of Paria, near the Golfo Triste,
when the fruits were allowed to remain on the tree till ripe, the
plantain sometimes produced seeds which would germinate; and in this
manner plantains are occasionally found growing wild in the recesses of
the forest, from ripe seeds conveyed thither by birds. Perfectly formed
seeds have also sometimes been found in plantain fruits at Bordones,
near Cumana. (Compare my Essai sur la Géographie des Plantes, p. 29;
and my Relat. hist. T. i. pp. 104 and 587, T. ii. pp. 355 and 367.)
I have already remarked elsewhere (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 191; English
edition, p. 156), that Onesicritus and the other companions of
Alexander, while they make no allusion to the tall arborescent ferns,
speak of the fan-leaved umbrella palm, and of the delicate and always
fresh verdure of the cultivated plantains or bananas. Among the
Sanscrit names given by Amarasinha for the plantain or banana (the
Musa of botanists) there are bhanu-phala (sun-fruit), varana-buscha,
and moko. Phala signifies fruit in general. Lassen explains the words
of Pliny (xii. 6), “arbori nomen palæ, pomo arienæ” thus: “The Roman
mistook the word pala, fruit, for the name of the tree; and varana
(in the mouth of a Greek ouarana) became transformed into ariena.
The Arabic mauza may have been formed from moko, and hence our Musa.
Bhanu-fruit is not far from banana-fruit.” (Compare Lassen, Indische
Alterthumskunde, Bd. i. S. 262, with my Essai politique sur la Nouvelle
Espagne, T. ii. p. 382, and Rel. hist. T. i. p. 491.)
[17] p. 22--“_The form of Malvaceæ._”
Larger malvaceous forms begin to appear as soon as we have crossed
the Alps; at Nice and in Dalmatia, Lavatera arborea; and in Liguria,
Lavatera olbia. The dimensions of the Baobab, monkey-bread tree, have
been mentioned above, (Vol. ii. p. 90.) To this form are attached
the also botanically allied families of the Byttneriaceæ (Sterculia,
Hermannia, and the large-leaved Theobroma Cacao, in which the flowers
spring from the bark both of the trunk and the roots); the Bombaceæ
(Adansonia, Helicteres, and Cheirostemon); and lastly the Tiliaceæ
(Sparmannia Africana.) I may name more particularly as superb
representatives of the Mallow-form, our Cavanillesia platanifolia,
of Turbaco near Carthagena in South America, and the celebrated
Ochroma-like Hand-tree, the Macpalxochiquahuitl of the Mexicans, (from
_macpalli_, the flat hand), Arbol de las Manitas of the Spaniards, our
Cheirostemon platanoides; in which the long curved anthers project
beyond the fine purple blossom, causing it to resemble a hand or claw.
Throughout the Mexican States this one highly ancient tree is the only
existing individual of this extraordinary race: it is supposed to be a
stranger, planted about five centuries ago by the kings of Toluca. I
found the height above the sea where the Arbol de las Manitas stands
to be 8280 French (8824 English) feet. Why is there only a single
individual, and from whence did the kings of Toluca procure either
the young tree or the seed? It seems no less difficult to account
for Montezuma not having possessed it in his botanical gardens of
Huaxtepec, Chapoltepec, and Iztapalapan, of which Hernandez, the
surgeon of Philip II., was still able to avail himself, and of which
some traces remain even to the present day; and it seems strange that
it should not have found a place among the representations of objects
of natural history which Nezahualcoyotl, king of Tezcuco, caused to
be drawn half a century before the arrival of the Spaniards. It is
asserted that the Hand-tree exists in a wild state in the forests
of Guatimala. (Humboldt and Bonpland, Plantes équinoxiales, T. i.
p. 82, pl. 24; Essai polit. sur la Nouv. Esp., T. i. p. 98.) At the
equator we have seen two Malvaceæ, Sida Phyllanthos (Cavan), and Sida
pichinchensis, ascend, on the mountain of Antisana and the Volcano
Rucu-Pichincha, to the great elevations of 12600 and 14136 French
(13430 and 15066 English) feet. (See our Plantes équin., T. ii. p. 113,
pl. 116.) Only the Saxifraga boussingaulti (Brongn.) reaches, on the
slope of the Chimborazo, an altitude six or seven hundred feet higher.
[18] p. 22.--“_The Mimosa form._”
The finely feathered or pinnated leaves of Mimosas, Acacias,
Schrankias, and species of Desmanthus, are most truly forms of tropical
vegetation. Yet there are some representations of this form beyond the
tropics; in the northern hemisphere in the Old Continent I can indeed
cite but one, and that only in Asia, and a low-growing shrub, the
Acacia Stephaniana, according to Kunth’s more recent investigations a
species of the genus Prosopis. It is a social plant, covering the arid
plains of the province of Shirwan, on the Kur (Cyrus), as far as the
ancient Araxes. Olivier also found it near Bagdad. It is the Acacia
foliis bipinnatis mentioned by Buxbaum, and extends as far north as 42°
of latitude. (Tableau des Provinces situées sur la Côte occidentale de
la Mer Caspienne, entre les fleuves Terek et Kour, 1798, pp. 58 and
120.) In Africa the Acacia gummifera of Willdenow advances as far as
Mogador, or to 32° north latitude.
On the New Continent, the banks of the Mississipi and the Tennessee, as
well as the savannahs of Illinois, are adorned with Acacia glandulosa
(Michaux), and A. brachyloba (Willd). Michaux found the Schrankia
uncinata extend northwards from Florida into Virginia, or to 37° N.
latitude. Gleditschia tricanthos is found, according to Barton, on
the east side of the Alleghany mountains, as far north as the 38th
parallel, and on the west side even as far as the 41st parallel.
Gleditschia monosperma ceases two degrees farther to the south. These
are the limits of the Mimosa form in the northern hemisphere. In the
southern hemisphere we find beyond the tropic of Capricorn simple
leaved Acacias as far as Van Diemen Island; and even the Acacia
cavenia, described by Claude Gay, grows in Chili between the 30th and
37th degrees of south latitude. (Molina, Storia Naturale del Chili,
1782, p. 174.) Chili has no true Mimosa, but it has three species of
Acacia. Even in the north part of Chili the Acacia cavenia only grows
to a height of twelve or thirteen feet; and in the south, near the
sea coast, it hardly rises a foot above the ground. In South America,
north of the equator, the most excitable Mimosas were (next to Mimosa
pudica), M. dormiens, M. somnians, and M. somniculosa. Theophrastus
(iv. 3) and Pliny (xii. 10) mention the irritability of the African
sensitive plant; but I find the first description of the South American
sensitive plants (Dormideras) in Herrera, Decad. II. lib. iii. cap.
4. The plant first attracted the attention of the Spaniards in 1518,
in the savannahs on the isthmus near Nombre de Dios: “parece como
cosa sensible;” and it was said that the leaves (“de echura de una
pluma de pajaros”) only contracted on being touched with the finger,
and not if touched with a piece of wood. In the small swamps which
surround the town of Mompox on the Magdalena, we discovered a beautiful
aquatic Mimosacea (Desmanthus lacustris). It is figured in our Plantes
équinoxiales, T. i. p. 55, pl. 16. In the Andes of Caxamarca we found
two Alpine Mimoseæ (Mimosa montana and Acacia revoluta), 8500 and 9000
French (about 9060 and 9590 English) feet above the surface of the
Pacific.
Hitherto no true Mimosa (in the sense established by Willdenow), or
even Inga, has been found in the temperate zone. Of all Acacias, the
Oriental Acacia julibrissin, which Forskål has confounded with Mimosa
arborea, is that which supports the greatest degree of cold. In the
botanic garden of Padua there is in the open air a tree of this species
with a stem of considerable thickness, although the mean temperature of
Padua is below 10.°5 Reaumur (55°.6 Fahr.)
[19] p. 23--“_Heaths._”
In these physiognomic considerations we by no means comprise under
the name of Heaths the whole of the natural family of Ericaceæ, which
on account of the similarity and analogy of the floral parts includes
Rhododendron, Befaria, Gaultheria, Escallonia, &c. We confine ourselves
to the highly accordant and characteristic form of the species of
Erica, including Calluna (Erica) Vulgaris, L., the common heather.
While, in Europe, Erica carnea, E. tetralix, E. cinerea, and Calluna
vulgaris, cover large tracts of ground from the plains of Germany,
France, and England to the extremity of Norway, South Africa offers the
most varied assemblage of species. Only one species which is indigenous
in the southern hemisphere at the Cape of Good Hope, Erica umbellata,
is found in the northern hemisphere, _i. e._ in the North of Africa,
in Spain, and Portugal. Erica vagans and E. arborea also belong to the
two opposite coasts of the Mediterranean: the first is found in North
Africa, near Marseilles, in Sicily, Dalmatia, and even in England; the
second in Spain, Italy, Istria, and in the Canaries. (Klotsch on the
Geographical Distribution of species of Erica with persistent corollas,
MSS.) The common heather, Calluna vulgaris, is a social plant covering
large tracts from the mouth of the Scheldt to the western declivity
of the Ural. Beyond the Ural, oaks and heaths cease together: both
are entirely wanting in the whole of Northern Asia, and throughout
Siberia to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Gmelin (Flora Sibirica,
T. iv. p. 129) and Pallas (Flora Rossica, T. i. Pars 2, p. 58) have
expressed their astonishment at this disappearance of the Calluna
vulgaris,--a disappearance which, on the eastern declivity of the Ural
Mountains, is even more sudden and decided than might be inferred
from the expressions of the last-named great naturalist. Pallas says
merely: “ultra Uralense jugum sensim deficit, vix in Isetensibus
campis rarissime apparet, et ulteriori Sibiriæ plane deest.” Chamisso,
Adolph Erman, and Heinrich Kittlitz, have found Andromedas indeed in
Kamtschatka, and on the North West coast of America, but no Calluna.
The accurate knowledge which we now possess of the mean temperature
of several parts of Northern Asia, as well as of the distribution of
the annual temperature into the different seasons of the year, affords
no sort of explanation of the cessation of heather to the east of the
Ural Mountains. Joseph Hooker, in a note to his Flora Antarctica,
has treated and contrasted with great sagacity and clearness two very
different phenomena which the distribution of plants presents to us:
on the one hand, “uniformity of surface accompanied by a similarity of
vegetation;” and on the other hand, “instances of a sudden change in
the vegetation unaccompanied by any diversity of geological or other
features.” (Joseph Hooker, Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of the Erebus
and Terror, 1844, p. 210.) Is there any species of Erica in Central
Asia? The plant spoken of by Saunders in Turner’s Travels to Thibet
(Phil. Trans. Vol. lxxix. p. 86), as having been found in the Highlands
of Nepaul (together with other European plants, Vaccinium myrtillus and
V. oxycoccus) and described by him as Erica vulgaris, is believed by
Robert Brown to have been an Andromeda, probably Andromeda fastigiata
of Wallich. No less striking is the absence of Calluna vulgaris, and
of all the species of Erica throughout all parts of the Continent of
America, while the Calluna is found in the Azores and in Iceland. It
has not hitherto been seen in Greenland, but was discovered a few years
ago in Newfoundland. The natural family of the Ericaceæ is also almost
entirely wanting in Australia, where it is replaced by Epacrideæ.
Linnæus described only 102 species of the genus Erica; according to
Klotzsch’s examination, this genus really contains, after a careful
exclusion of all mere varieties, 440 true species.
[20] p. 4.--“_The Cactus form._”
If we take the natural family of the Opuntiaceæ separated from the
Grossulariaceæ (the species of Ribes), and, viewed as it is by Kunth
(Handbuch der Botanik, S. 609), we may well regard it as belonging
exclusively to America. I am aware that Roxburgh, in the Flora Indica
(inedita), cites two species of Cactus as belonging to South Eastern
Asia;--Cactus indicus and C. chinensis. Both are widely disseminated,
and are found in a wild state (whether they were originally wild
or have become so), and are distinct from Cactus opuntia and C.
coccinellifer; but it is remarkable that the Indian plant (Cactus
indicus) has no ancient Sanscrit name. Cactus chinensis has been
introduced in St. Helena as a cultivated plant. Now that a more general
interest has at length been awakened on the subject of the original
distribution of plants, future investigation will dispel the doubts
which have been felt in several quarters respecting the existence of
true Asiatic Opuntiaceæ. In the animal kingdom particular forms are
found to occur singly. Tapirs were long regarded as a form exclusively
characteristic of the New Continent; and yet the American tapir has
been found as it were repeated in that of Malacca (Tapirus indicus,
Cuv.)
Although the species of Cactus belong, generally speaking, more
properly to the tropical regions, yet some are indigenous in
the temperate zone, as on the Missouri and in Louisiana, Cactus
missuriensis and C. vivipara; and Back saw with astonishment the
shores of Rainy Lake, in north lat. 48° 40´, covered with C. opuntia.
South of the equator the species of Cactus do not extend beyond the
Rio Itata, in lat. 36°, and the Rio Biobio, in lat. 37° 15´. In the
part of the Andes which is situated between the tropics, I have seen
species of Cactus (C. sepium, C. chlorocarpus, C. bonplandii) growing
on elevated plains nine or ten thousand (French) feet (about 9590 and
10660 English) above the level of the sea; but a still more alpine
character is shewn in latitudes belonging to the temperate zone, in
Chili, by the Opuntia ovallei, which has yellow flowers and a creeping
stem. The upper and lower limits beyond which this plant does not
extend have been accurately determined by barometric measurement by
the learned botanist Claude Gay: it has never been found lower than
6330 French (6746 English) feet, and it reaches and even passes the
limits of perpetual snow, having been found on uncovered masses of rock
rising from amongst the snows. The last small plants were collected
on spots situated 12820 French (13663 English) feet above the level
of the sea. (Claudio Gay, Flora Chilensis, 1848, p. 30.) Some species
of Echino-cactus are also true alpine plants in Chili. A counterpart
to the fine-haired Cactus senilis is found in the thick-wooled Cereus
lanatus, called by the natives Piscol, which has handsome red fruit. We
found it in Peru, near Guancabamba, when on our journey to the Amazons
river. The dimensions of the different kinds of Cactaceæ (a group on
which the Prince of Salm-Dyck has been the first to throw great light)
offer great variety and contrasts. Echinocactus wislizeni, which is
4 feet high and 7 feet in circumference (4 feet 3 inches and 7 feet
5 inches English), is still only the third in size, being surpassed
by E. ingens (Zucc.) and by E. platyceras (Lem.) (Wislizenus, Tour
to Northern Mexico, 1848, p. 97.) The Echinocactus stainesii reaches
from 2 to 2-1/2 feet diameter; E. visnago, from Mexico, upwards of 4
English feet high, is above 3 English feet diameter, and weighs from
700 to 2000 lbs.: while Cactus nanus, which we found near Sondorillo,
in the province of Jaen, is so small that, being only slightly rooted
in the sand, it gets between the toes of dogs. The Melocactuses, which
are full of juice in the dryest seasons like the Ravenala of Madagascar
(forest-leaf in the language of the country, from _rave_, _raven_,
a leaf, and _ala_, the Javanese _halas_, a forest), are vegetable
fountains; and the manner in which the horses and mules stamp them
open with their hoofs, at the risk of injury from the spines, has been
already mentioned (Vol. I p. 19). Since the last quarter of a century
Cactus opuntia has extended itself in a remarkable manner into Northern
Africa, Syria, Greece, and the whole of the South of Europe; even
penetrating, in Africa, from the coasts far into the interior of the
country, and associating itself with the indigenous plants.
When one has been accustomed to see Cactuses only in our hothouses, one
is astonished at the degree of density and hardness which the ligneous
fibres attain in old cactus stems. The Indians know that cactus wood
is incorruptible, and excellent for oars and for the thresholds of
doors. There is hardly anything in vegetable physiognomy which makes so
singular and ineffaceable an impression on a newly arrived person, as
the sight of an arid plain thickly covered, like those near Cumana,
New Barcelona, and Coro, and in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros,
with columnar and candelabra-like divided cactus stems.
[21] p. 24.--“_Orchideæ._”