Part 23

The stems of these magnificent Palms are tall, erect and smooth. The leaves are very large and irregularly pinnate. The bases of the petioles are persistent, often covering the stem quite down to the ground. The spathe is woody, complete, longitudinally cut and beaked. The spadices grow from among the lower leaves and are simply branched, but very densely clustered with the fruit, which is ovate, and has a dry external covering.

Only three species of this genus are known, all very handsome plants. One is a native of the West India Islands, one of Brazil, and a third is common in the Amazon district.

Pl. XLVII.

W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.

MAXIMILIANA REGIA Ht. 80 Ft. ]

PLATE XLVII. MAXIMILIANA REGIA, Martius.

Inajá, Lingoa Geral.

This palm has a lofty massive stem, smooth and obscurely ringed. The leaves are very large, terminal and pinnate. The leaflets are arranged in groups of three, four or five, at intervals along the midrib, from which they stand out in different directions, and are very long and drooping. The bases of the petioles are persistent a short distance down the stem, and sometimes down to the ground, even when the trees are forty or fifty feet high.

The spadices are numerous, growing from the bases of the lower leaves. They are simply branched and very densely clustered. The spathes are large, spindle-shaped, ventricose and woody, with a long beak. The fruits are elongate and beaked, with a tough, brown, outer skin, beneath which is a layer of soft fleshy pulp of an agreeable subacid flavour, covering a hard stony seed.

The leaves of this tree are truly gigantic. I have measured specimens which have been cut by the Indians fifty feet long, and these did not contain the entire petiole, nor were they of the largest size. Owing, however, to the loose irregular distribution of the leaflets, they do not produce such an effect of great size as those of the Jupati, which are more regular. The great woody spathes are used by hunters to cook meat in, as with water in them they stand the fire well. They are also used as baskets for carrying earth, and sometimes for cradles. The fruits are often eaten by the Indians, and are particularly attractive to monkeys and to some fruit-eating birds.

This magnificent palm is abundant from Pará to the Upper Amazon and the sources of the Rio Negro. It grows only in the dry virgin forest.

Young trees are growing in the Palm House at Kew, and fruit clusters and spathes are preserved in the Museum.

Plate III. fig. 3. is a view of the spathe, and fig. 2. represents a fruit, the natural size.

Genus COCOS, Linnæus.

Female flowers less plentiful than the males, and situated below them in the same spadix. Spathe double, outer small, interior woody. Flowers with bracts. Male flowers with six stamens and a rudimentary pistil. Female flowers with three stigmas.

The stems of this genus are lofty, generally cylindrical and smooth. The leaves are large and regularly pinnate. The spadix is simply branched, and the fruit is ovate oblong, and with an outer fibrous covering.

Eighteen species of Cocos are known, seventeen being natives of South America, principally of Brazil, while one only, the well-known Cocoa-nut, is a native of the Old World, though it is now universally cultivated in every part of the tropics. Few species of the genus are found in the Amazon district. They appear to prefer drier and more elevated countries, some of them reaching an altitude of near 8000 feet above the sea.

Pl. XLVIII.

W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.

COCOS NUCIFERA. Ht. 60 Ft. ]

PLATE XLVIII. COCOS NUCIFERA, Linnæus.

Coqueiro, Portuguese. The Cocoa-nut.

The stem of this well-known palm is very smooth, seldom quite erect, and often much thicker at the bottom. The leaves are large, terminal and regularly pinnate. The leaflets are rigid, and spread out very flat on each side of the midrib. From the sheathing bases of the petioles grows a compact fibrous material resembling in texture the spathe of the Bussú.

The spadices are produced from among the leaves, and are large and simply branched. The fruits are very large, and have a dense fibrous external covering over the well-known cocoa-nut.

This tree is not a native of South America, but as it is generally cultivated in every part of the tropics, I have given a figure of it. Its peculiar characteristic is the rigidity of its leaves, which curve or droop very slightly, and the leaflets spread out with remarkable flatness and regularity. The stem also is rather massive in accordance with the immense weight of fruit which it produces, and the whole tree, though exceedingly handsome, has not that light and feathery appearance which it is often represented as possessing. It is not impossible, however, that it may have acquired by its naturalization in America an aspect differing somewhat from its characteristic features when growing on the sea-shore, on the coral islands of India and the Pacific.

There it is of the greatest utility to man. It supplies food and drink and oil. Its fibres are woven into cordage and matting, and it even furnishes animal as well as vegetable food, herds of swine being fed and fattened entirely on its fruit.

On the banks of the Amazon, on the contrary, we see at once that it is in a foreign land. It flourishes indeed with great luxuriance, but no part of it is applied to any useful purpose, the fruit only being consumed as an occasional luxury. In the towns and larger villages where the Portuguese have settled it has been planted, but among the Indians of the interior it is still quite unknown.

LIST OF THE PALMS DESCRIBED IN THIS WORK, WITH THEIR NATIVE NAMES AND USES.