OCR Text |
Show 320 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. Three vegetable forms of peculiar beauty are proper to the tropical zone in all parts of the globe; Palms, Plantains or Bananas, and Arborescent Ferns. It is where heat and moisture are combined that vegetation is most vigorous, and its forms most varied; and hence South America excels the rest of the tropical world in the number and beauty of her species of Palms. In Asia, this form of vegetation is more rare, perhaps because a considerable part of the Indian continent which was situated immediately under the equinoctial line has been broken up and covered by the sea in the course of former geological revolutions. We know scarcely anything of the palm trees of Africa between the Bight of Benin and the Coast of Ajan; and, generally speaking, we are only acquainted, as has been already remarked, with a very small number of species of Palms belonging to that quarter of the globe. Palms afford, next to Coniferre and species of Eucalyptus, belonging to the family of Myrtacere, examples of the greatest loftiness of stature attained by any of the members of the vegetable kingdom. Of the Cabbage Palm (Areca oleracea), stems have been seen from 150 to 160 French (160 to 170 English) feet high. (Aug. de Saint-Hilaire, Morphologic, vegetale, 1840, p. 176.) The Waxpalm, our Ceroxylon andicola, discovered by us on the Andes, between Ibague and Carthago, on the Montana de Quindiu, attains the immense height of 160 to 180 French (170 to 192 English) feet. I was able to measure with exactness the prostrate trunks which had been cut down and were lying in the forest. Next to the Waxpalm, Oreodoxa Sancona, which we found in flower near Roldanilla in the Cauca Valley, and which affords a very hard and excellent building wood, appeared to me to be the tallest of American palms. The circumstance that, notwithstanding the enormous quantity of fruits produced by a single Palm tree, the number of individuals of each species which are found in a wild state is not very considerable, can only be explained by the frequently abortive development of the fruits (and consequent absence of seeds), and by the voracity of their numerous assailants, belonging to all classes of the animal world. Yet, although I have said that the wild individuals are not very numerous, there are in the basin of the Orinoco entire tribes of men who live for several months of the year on the fruits |