Part 18

Marajá, Lingoa Geral.

This is a palm rather larger than most others of the genus, and inhabiting the flooded banks of the Amazon.

It produces large clusters of fruit resembling small black grapes, and having a thin pulp of an agreeable subacid flavour,—a peculiarity not found in the fruit of any other American palm that I am acquainted with. The places where it grows are often so deeply flooded that the fruit hangs close to the surface of the water, and can be plucked while passing in a canoe.

Dried specimens of the tree and fruit are in the Museum, and young plants are growing in the Palm House at Kew.

Pl. XXXV.

W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.

BACTRIS INTEGRIFOLIA. Ht. 9 Ft. ]

PLATE XXXV. BACTRIS INTEGRIFOLIA, n. sp.

Iú, Lingoa Geral.

This beautiful species has the stem hardly so thick as the little finger, and nine or ten feet high, smooth and distinctly jointed. The leaves are four or five in number, terminal, entire, three or four times as long as they are wide, and not very deeply bifid at the end. The petioles and their sheathing bases are thickly set with long, flat, black spines.

The spadices are very small, erect and two-branched, growing from among the persistent sheathing bases below the leaves. The spathes are small, erect and persistent, clothed with adpressed brown spines. The fruit is small and globular, and of a black colour.

This palm was found at S. Carlos on the Upper Rio Negro and on the “Estrada de Javita,” a road through the forest for ten miles, which connects the river-systems of the Rio Negro and Orinoco, and along which most of the traffic between Venezuela and Brazil passes. In both cases it grew in the shady virgin forest.

Genus GUILIELMA, Martius.

Male and female flowers mixed in the same spadix, bracteate. Spathe double; exterior bifid; interior complete, woody. Male flowers with six stamens and a rudimentary pistil. Female flowers with three sessile stigmas, but with no rudiments of stamens.

The stems are lofty, rather slender, and armed with dense black cylindrical spines disposed in regular rings. The leaves are terminal and pinnate, but in the young plants entire, and the petioles are very spiny. The spadices are simply branched, growing from beneath the leaves, and the fruits are large, ovate, fleshy or mealy and eatable.

Three species only of this genus are known, inhabiting the lower mountain ranges of Peru and New Granada. They are lofty and conspicuous Palms with a remarkably handsome crown of foliage. One species only is found in the Amazon district, in all parts of which it is commonly cultivated.

Pl. XXXVI.

W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.

GUILIELMA SPECIOSA. Ht. 60 Ft. ]

PLATE XXXVI. GUILIELMA SPECIOSA, Martius.

Pupúnha, Lingoa Geral. Pirijao, Indians of Venezuela, Humboldt. “The Peach Palm.”

This most picturesque and elegant palm has the stem slender, cylindrical, and thickly set with long needle-shaped spines disposed in rings or bands. It reaches sixty feet in height, and grows quite erect, though in exposed situations it becomes curved and waving. The leaves are very numerous, terminal, pinnate and drooping, forming a nearly spherical crown to the stem; and the leaflets growing out from the midrib in various directions, and being themselves curled or waved, give the whole mass of foliage a singularly plumy appearance. The young plants have the leaves entire like those of the Bussú, but as the age of the tree increases they break up into regular narrow leaflets.

The spadices grow from beneath the leaves, and are small, simply branched and drooping. The spathes are ventricose, woody and persistent, curving over the spadix.

The fruit is about the size of an apricot, of a triangular oval shape, and fine reddish-yellow colour. In most instances the seed is abortive, the whole fruit being a farinaceous mass. Occasionally, however, fruits are found containing the perfect stony seed, and they are then nearly double the usual size. This production of undeveloped fruits may be partly due to change of soil and climate, for the tree is not found wild in the Amazon district, but is invariably planted near the Indians’ houses. In their villages many hundreds of these trees may often be seen, adding to the beauty of the landscape, and supplying the inhabitants with an abundance of wholesome food. In fact it here takes the place of the cocoa-nut in the East, and is almost as much esteemed.

As the stems are so spiny, it is impossible to climb up them to procure the fruit in the ordinary way. The Indians therefore construct rough stages up the sides of the trees, or form rude ladders by securing cross pieces between two of them, by which they mount so high as to be able to pull down the bunches of fruit with hooked poles.

The fruits are eaten either boiled or roasted, when they somewhat resemble Spanish chestnuts, but have a peculiar oily flavour. They are also ground up into a kind of flour, and made into cakes which are roasted like cassava bread; or the meal is fermented in water and forms a subacid creamy liquid. Parrots, macaws and many other fruit-eating birds devour them, and tame monkeys eat them greedily, though the wild ones cannot climb the spiny stems to obtain them.

The wood of this tree when old and black is exceedingly hard, turning the edge of any ordinary axe. When descending the River Uaupes in April 1852, I had a number of parrots whose objections to any restraint upon their liberty caused me much trouble. Their first cage was of wicker, and in a couple of hours they had all set themselves at liberty. Then tough green wood was tried, but the same time only was required to gnaw that through. Thick bars of deal were bitten through in a single night, so I then tried the hard wood of the Pashiúba. This checked them for a short time, but in less than a week by continual gnawing they had chipped these away and again escaped. I now began to despair; no iron for bars was to be procured and my resources were exhausted, when one of my Indians recommended me to try Pupúnha, assuring me that if their beaks were of iron they could not bite that. A tree was accordingly cut down and bars made from it, and I had the satisfaction of seeing that their most persevering efforts now made little impression.

The very sharp needle-like spines of this tree are used by some tribes to puncture the skin, in order to produce the tattooed marks with which they decorate various parts of their bodies. Soot produced from burning pitch rubbed into the wounds is said to make the indelible bluish stain which these markings present.