THE FLORA OF JAMAICA
Because Jamaica is famous for its woods and plants and scented blossoms,
one may be pardoned for roughly cataloguing a few of the three or four
thousand different species of flowering plants, ferns and forest trees.
Little is known of the lichens, mosses and fungi of the island. The
casual explorer will notice the beauty of the mosses, and he will
observe many varieties of the lichen, and there, unless he happens to be
an expert botanist, his interest in these smaller plants will end. But
with the flowering plants, the shrubs, and the gorgeous trees it is
different. No matter whether one is a botanist or a heathen, frequently
the wild luxuriance of a lovely bush forces us to ask its name. And the
name frequently cements one’s first affection for a wild plant’s
loveliness. The _Hibiscus_, the blue and white _lignum vitae_ flower,
the yellow _Kill Buckra weed_, the evening primrose and the passion
flower, the wild convolvulus, the iris and the orchid. All these are
fascinating names representing fascinating plants and blossoms. In
Jamaica, one drives through wild jungleland, and mistakes it for a
cultivated garden. Green bushes are spangled with flowers of flaming
scarlet; yellow bands of dense scrub are patched with fragrant blooms of
the most exquisite blue. The wild passion flower, gawdy yet dignified,
is to be seen everywhere, and in many places, especially on the lower
slopes of the blue mountains, we find a rich profusion of the mysterious
orchids--_Arpophyllum spicatum_, _Phaius grandifolius_, _Dendrophylax
funalis_, and a hundred other species. The forty varieties of the
convolvulus deserve a chapter to themselves. What could be more
beautiful than a field smothered by these graceful flowers, showing
every tint from scarlet to rose colour, violet, crimson, blue and
yellow? Then there are the poppies, the Mexican thistle and John Crow
bush; the buttercups, the wild pansies, sweet-william, the scented
furze, the acres of white clover and the dandelion. We could go through
a list of thousands. I think there is no bush, certainly there is no
acre of rural Jamaica, that does not contain its floral decorations, its
dozen brilliant blossoms.
Of the trees, the first that thrusts itself upon the notice of the
English traveller is the cocoanut palm, which Mark Twain or some one
else once described as an inverted feather dusting-brush. Besides the
cocoa palm there are a dozen other species--the groo groo, silver
thatch, mountain cabbage, oil palm, and the rest. In the Savannahs, near
the coast, we notice the French cotton-tree, and among the malarial
swamps the long-rooted mangrove--a tree which is a certain indication of
the unhealthiness of its neighbourhood. Inland, we
[Illustration: HUT ON A PLANTATION, JAMAICA]
find the _lignum vitae_, hod-wood, calabash, locust, raintree, the West
Indian birch, coccus-wood, the sidis-tree (called woman’s tongue), the
Spanish elm, mahogany, cedar, and the crooked divi-divi. These are
mostly timber trees. Among the fruits we find the mango, plum,
nazeberry, star-apple, the banana and the orange. These are but names,
and though I have not mentioned one tenth of the whole, I will spare you
the rest. Jamaica is the land of wood and water, of rich forests and
richer plains. You drive along a road which forms a natural arbour miles
long, decked at every yard with clusters of flowers, and scented with
all the sweetest perfumes of the universe. Then you break into flat
plain land, and the fields on either side are a blaze of coloured ground
plants; you find the mountain slope and drive along a narrow,
precipitous road, and look down from an eerie height on to a deep valley
clothed in greenery of the most luxuriant beauty. Fruit-trees are
everywhere, oranges green or gold, bananas green or yellow, brown
nazeberries, golden grape-fruit, custard apples, mangoes and plums. Then
you pass a plantation of pine-apples, and come to the coffee district.
It is the richest country in the world, par excellence--the flower and
fruit gardens of the West. If you burn a patch of jungle and leave a
charred acre of black earth, in two months you will return and find no
trace of your destruction. Mother Earth quickly clothes her nakedness in
this land of sunshine. If you plant a banana sprig and leave it alone
for eight or nine months, you then find a seven or eight foot tree, and
a heavy bunch of fruit ready for gathering. In West Africa they say
that if you plant a rotten stick, a barren tree will grow to the height
of twenty feet in twenty months, but if you plant a grain of corn
nothing will appear. They might with justice say in Jamaica, that the
grain of corn would produce a loaf, and the barren stick a lotus tree.
Not only does this wealth of vegetation give to the island a most
picturesque appearance, but also it constitutes a natural wealth which
hitherto has been hardly sampled. The fruit-trees are beginning to be
exploited, and already they support fleets of swift steamers between
Port Antonio and America, and between Kingston and Bristol, and bring
large profits to intelligent planters. But the exploitation of the
timber forest has scarcely begun.
The mahogany is exported in a small way, and valuable logwood finds its
way into the holds of ocean-going steamers. Satin-wood is exported in a
very small way, and there are large fortunes awaiting men who will
develop this trade. Bamboo is valuable, and one occasionally sees a
single negro despoiling a mighty clump of giant trees with a light hand
chopper, but the trade in Jamaican timber is in its infancy.
In the Kingston bazaars you can purchase walking-sticks for a shilling
which in England would cost six times that sum, and the Kingston
merchants make a profit on the transaction of more than five hundred per
cent. Mr. Frank Bullen, whom I met in one of the Kingston hotels, told
me that in the days when he was a seaman on a sailing ship, before he
took to the trade of writing books, he once carried a cargo of
walking-sticks from Kingston to England. I could not find any trace of
the industry in the island to-day. But it should be a most profitable
one. The Jamaican ebony or caccu-wood is one of the most beautiful woods
one can imagine--a dark-coloured, close-grained heavy stick, which,
common enough in Jamaica, is rare and valuable in England. And so it is
with many other species.
I have not mentioned the Jamaican ferns, yet the island contains almost
every species known to the collector, from the tiny, dainty maidenhair
to the giant tree-fern forty feet high. There is a deep ravine in the
island so crowded with the refreshing greenness of a thousand varieties
of the species of the cryptogram that the natives have named it Fern
Gully. Here, and in the shadow of the mountain peaks, the fern collector
can find every variety of his favoured plant. He can spend months in
gathering and cataloguing, but he can never exhaust the resources of the
island.
[Illustration: A JOCKEY AT CUMBERLAND PEN, JAMAICA]
A WEST INDIAN RACE-COURSE