Part 3

—— 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

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. ]

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,—