Part 47

The Magic Bark of the Cinchona Tree

The shadow of a pale Spanish lady, dead for almost three centuries, has returned to the dense rain forests of the western slopes of the Andes.

The shadow is that of the Countess of Chinchon, wife of the redoubtable Don Luiz Geronimo de Cabrera Bobadilla y Mendoza, colonial viceroy of Peru. She was dying of a strange disease in Lima in 1638. Her Jesuit confessor, the story goes, gave a medicine to her doctor made from the bark of a common Peruvian tree. It supposedly saved her life and two years later she returned to Spain, carrying with her some of the magic bark. Thus she gave to the world one of the supreme medicines of all times. A century later the Swedish botanist Linnaeus tried to pay a compliment to the long-dead beauty but misspelled her name—calling her tree “cinchona”. Out of it came quinine.

The Andean forests remained for 200 years the only source of the magic drug—quinine. The cinchona trees grew wild. They were stripped of bark recklessly and became very scarce. By 1850 the price of quinine was $50 an ounce and only the rich could afford to have malaria.

The British tried to transplant the tree in India and failed. Then Dutch botanists obtained some seed, planted it in the East Indies, and developed high-yielding species. Soon this region became the sole source of the world’s supply. The price dropped to 18 cents an ounce and the lands over which the long-dead Countess had ruled dropped out of the picture.

Now South American countries, notably Venezuela and Bolivia, are reclaiming the crop with improved varieties of the cinchona tree, equal to the best produced by the Dutch. They are regaining rapidly the dead lady’s gift.

Colombia’s Ant Tree

In the sparsely inhabited, tropical portion of eastern Colombia is an ant tree known as the barrasanta. It is a small, slender tree with showy, red flowers which grows 25 to 30 feet in height. Both trunk and branches are hollow and filled with masses of vicious, biting ants. As soon as the tree is disturbed the insects swarm upon the invader. As a result the tree is generally left alone both by Indians and white settlers. The ants are protected by the branches and in turn protect the host with their fighting prowess.

A curious shrub which grows out of enormous anthills found through the llanos region of western Colombia furnishes quite a different example of insect-plant association. The ants are “leaf cutters.” All other plant life avoids their immediate neighborhood. This particular shrub exudes a viscous, milky juice which traps any ants which try to climb toward its leaves. Hence the insects have learned to leave it alone and it enjoys the rich ant hill soil without competition from any other plants.

The Strange Behavior of Plants

The behavior characteristics of some American plants are strange indeed.

The compass plant, a bristly perennial of the aster family which grows in abundance over the prairies, is a living compass. It turns the edges of its leaves in a general north-south direction. Another American plant, the wild lettuce, does the same thing. The result is that when the intensity of sunlight is weakest in the morning and evening the flat surfaces of the leaves are in a position to receive the maximum available amount of light. At noon, when there is more light than the plant needs, only the edges of the leaves are turned towards the sun.

Then there is the English ivy which arranges its leaves in a mosaic pattern so that about the greatest possible area is exposed to the light. Other plants show equally precise adaptations to their light requirements.

It is all associated with the process of photosynthesis—i.e., the manufacture by the plant of carbohydrates out of carbon dioxide and water in the presence of light. The strength of light needed for this process varies somewhat with the particular plant and its conditions. The phenomenon is one of the most vital in creation, the transformation of the sun’s energy into the fuel of animal life. Without it life would be impossible.

Some plants work under high light intensities, such as those which must adapt themselves on the desert areas of the southwestern United States. Others thrive best in the subdued light of a dense forest. One curious little moss grows in caves where there is almost no light at all. It is equipped with a plate of cells forming a battery of lenses capable of focusing the scattered light on the bodies especially concerned in carbohydrate formation. These are the chloroplasts which contain the mysterious substance, chlorophyll, which acts as a catalyst for action of sunlight on carbon dioxide and water. The shape and arrangement of cells containing the chloroplasts are such that the amount of chlorophyll exposed to the sunlight can be varied.

A specially devised apparatus has been constructed in the Smithsonian laboratory for quantitative studies of the way plants absorb carbon dioxide under different lighting conditions. Not only is the process greatly effected by the intensity of the light, the experiments show, but the wave length also is of paramount importance. The experimental plants are grown with their roots in a nutrient solution and their tops extending into a double-walled glass tube. They are furnished light from surrounding lamps, so that the intensity and wave lengths of the light can be varied as desired. Through the tube, air containing different amounts of carbon dioxide can be passed. Thus every element of the process is under rigid control of the experimenters.

The experiment already has shown that the correct combination of wave lengths is of the utmost importance in making up synthetic light. Thus, regardless of the intensity, the ordinary electric light when used alone has been demonstrated to be a poor light source. Its maximum energy occurs in the infrared region, below the limit of visibility, while that of sunlight falls in the green-blue region. If tomato plants are grown under high powered Mazda lamps in the Smithsonian’s special growth chambers, especially when the humidity is high, their leaves turn pale and almost white. Chlorophyll disappears under these conditions.

Venezuela’s Nocturnal Orchid

A flower that opens only by moonlight is one of Venezuela’s plant curiosities. It is an ivory-white, velvety orchid which depends entirely on nocturnal butterflies to sip its nectar while pollenization takes place.

The plant is one of 800 species of Venezuelan orchids. Among these is probably the prettiest and rarest of the orchid family, the mother-of-pearl flower, which can sometimes be found in the deep jungles of the Gran Sabana area at altitudes of more than 3,000 feet.

Still another high mountain variety has square petals with fringed edges. Another, found in the jungles of the Upper Orinoco, has blossoms measuring up to 16 inches in diameter. A unique Venezuelan orchid grows only in water.

Throughout the world there are more than 20,000 species of orchids, the great majority of which are found only in mountainous regions of the tropics. A few, however, grow as far north as the Arctic Circle.

The Plant That Strikes Men Dumb

A plant cultivated in the gardens of the Venezuelan National University at Caracas might well be a boon to pestered husbands and harassed mothers.

It is described under the popular Spanish name of “planta del mudo.” It looks like sugarcane. According to the probably exaggerated claims, anybody who chews the stem is stricken dumb for at least 48 hours, presumably due to some paralyzing effect on some part of the vocal apparatus. It is not known whether anybody has tried to extract the marvelous talk-stopping principle.

American botanists are unable to identify the plant. They explain, however, that the northern portion of South America long has been known as the world’s greatest storehouse of plants with strange physiological effects. There is one, for example, alleged to grow hair on bald heads, another which makes everything look red.

Combat of Moth and Shrew

A strange fight between a grey shrew, smallest of North American mammals, and a black “witch moth” has been described by Laurence M. Huey of the San Diego Society of Natural History.