Note 15 — PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS.

p. 20.—“Palms.”

It is remarkable that of this majestic form of plants,—(some of which rise to more than twice the height of the Royal Palace at Berlin, and to which the Indian Amarasinha gave the characteristic appellation of “Kings among the Grasses”),—up to the time of the death of Linnæus only 15 species were described. The Peruvian travellers Ruiz and Pavon added to these 8 more species. Bonpland and I, in passing over a more extensive range of country from 12° S. lat. to 21° N. lat., described 20 new species of palms, and distinguished as many more, but without being able to obtain complete specimens of their flowers. (Humboldt de distrib. geogr. Plantarum, p. 225-233.) At the present time, 44 years after my return from Mexico, there are from the Old and New World, including the East Indian species brought by Griffith, above 440 regularly described species. The Enumeratio Plantarum of my friend Kunth, published in 1841, had already 356 species.

A few, but only a few species of palms, are, like our Coniferæ, Quercineæ, and Betulineæ, social plants: such are the Mauritia flexuosa, and two species of Chamærops, one of which, the Chamærops humilis, occupies extensive tracts of ground near the Mouth of the Ebro and in Valencia; and the other, C. mocini, discovered by us on the Mexican shore of the Pacific and entirely without prickles, is also a social plant. While some kinds of palms, including Chamærops and Cocos, are littoral or shore-loving trees, there is in the tropics a peculiar group of mountain palms, which if I am not mistaken was entirely unknown previous to my South American travels. Almost all species of the family of palms grow on the plains or low grounds in a mean temperature of between 22° and 24° Reaumur (81°.5 and 86°, Fahr.); rarely ascending so high as 1900 English feet on the declivities of the Andes: but in the mountain palms to which I have alluded, the beautiful Wax-palm (Ceroxylon andicola), the Palmeto of Azufral at the Pass of Quindiu (Oreodoxa frigida), and the reed-like Kunthia montana (Caña de la Vibora) of Pasto, attain elevations between 6400 and 9600 English feet above the level of the sea, where the thermometer often sinks at night as low as 4°.8 and 6° of Reaumur (42°.8 and 45.°5, Fahr.), and the mean temperature scarcely amounts to 11° Reaumur, or 56°.8 Fahrenheit. These Alpine Palms grow among Nut trees, yew-leaved species of Podocarpus and Oaks (Quercus granatensis). I have determined by exact barometrical measurement the upper and lower limits of the range of the Wax-Palm. We first began to find it on the eastern declivity of Andes of Quindiu, at the height of 7440 (about 7930 English) feet above the level of the sea, and it extended upwards as far as the Garita del Paramo and los Volcancitos, or to 9100 (almost 9700 English) feet: several years after my departure from the country the distinguished botanist Don Jose Caldas, who had been long our companion amidst the mountains of New Granada, and who afterwards fell a victim to Spanish party hatred, found three species of palms growing in the Paramo de Guanacos very near the limits of perpetual snow; therefore probably at an elevation of more than 13000 (13855 English) feet. (Semanario de Santa Fé de Bogotá, 1809, No. 21, p, 163.) Even beyond the tropics, in the latitude of 28° North, the Chamærops martiana reaches on the sub-Himalayan mountains a height of 5000 English feet. (Wallich, Plantæ Asiaticæ, Vol. iii. Tab. 211.)

If we look for the extreme geographical limits of palms, (which are also the extreme climatic limits in all the species which inhabit localities but little raised above the level of the sea), we see some, as the date-palm, the Chamærops humilis, C. palmetto, and the Areca sapida of New Zealand, advance far into the temperate zones of either hemisphere, into regions where the mean temperature of the year hardly equals 11°.2 and 12°.5 Reaumur (57°.2, and 60°.2 Fahrenheit). If we form a series of cultivated plants or trees, placed in order of succession according to the degree of heat they require, and beginning with the maximum, we have Cacao, Indigo, Plantains, Coffee, Cotton, Date-palms, Orange and Lemon Trees, Olives, Sweet Chestnuts, and Vines. In Europe, date-palms (introduced, not indigenous) grow mingled with Chamærops humilis in the parallels of 43½° and 44°, as on the Genoese Rivera del Ponente, near Bordighera, between Monaco and San Stefano, where there is an assemblage of more than 4000 palm-stems; and in Dalmatia round Spalatro. It is remarkable that Chamærops humilis is abundant both at Nice and in Sardinia, and yet is not found in the island of Corsica which lies between those localities. In the New Continent, the Chamærops palmetto, which is sometimes above 40 English feet high, only advances as far North as 34° latitude, a difference sufficiently explained by the inflexions of the isothermal lines. In the Southern hemisphere, in New Holland, palms, of which there are very few, (six or seven species) only advance to 34° of latitude (see Robert Brown’s general remarks on the Botany of Terra Australis, p. 45); and in New Zealand, where Sir Joseph Banks first saw an Areca palm, they reach the 38th parallel. In Africa, which, quite contrary to the ancient and still widely prevailing belief, is poor in species of palms, only one palm, the Hyphæne coriacea, advances to Port Natal in 30° latitude. The continent of South America presents almost the same limits in respect to latitude. On the eastern side of the Andes, in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres and in the Cis-Plata province, palms extend, according to Auguste de St.-Hilaire, to 34° and 35° S. latitude. This is also the latitude to which on the western side of the Andes the Coco de Chile (our Jubæa spectabilis?), the only Chilian palm, extends, according to Claude Gay, being as far as the banks of the Rio Maule. (See also Darwin’s Journal, edition of 1845, p. 244 and 256).

I will here introduce some detached remarks which I wrote in March, 1801, on board the ship in which we were sailing from the palmy shores of the mouth of the Rio Sinu, west of Darien, to Cartagena de las Indias.

“We have now, in the course of the two years which we have spent in South America, seen 27 different species of palms. How many must Commerson, Thunberg, Banks, Solander, the two Forsters, Adanson, and Sonnerat, have observed in their distant voyages! Yet, at the present moment, when I write these lines, our systems of botany do not include more than from 14 to 18 systematically described species. In truth, the difficulty of procuring the flowers of palms is greater than can readily be imagined. We have felt it so much the more from having especially directed our attention to Palms, Grasses, Cyperaceæ, Juncaceæ, Cryptogamous Plants, and such other objects as have been least studied hitherto. Most species of palms flower only once a year, in the neighbourhood of the Equator in the months of January and February. But how often is it impossible for travellers to be precisely at that season in places where palms are principally found. In many species of palms the flowers last only so few days that one almost always arrives too late, and finds the fertilization completed and the male blossoms gone. Frequently only three or four species of palms are found in areas of 2000 square German geographical miles (3200 English geographical square miles). How is it possible during the short flowering season to visit the different places where palms abound: the Missions on the Rio Caroni, the Morichales at the mouth of the Orinoco, the valley of Caura and Erevato, the banks of the Atabapo and the Rio Negro, and the side of the Duida Mountain? Add to this the difficulty of reaching the flowers, when, in the dense forests, or on the swampy river banks, (as on the Temi and Tuamini), one sees them hanging from stems above 60 feet high, and armed with formidable spines. A traveller, when preparing to leave Europe on an expedition in which natural history is one of his leading objects, flatters himself with the thoughts of shears or curved blades fastened to long poles, with which he imagines he will be able to reach and cut down whatever he desires; he dreams, too, of native boys, who, with a cord fastened to their two feet, are to climb up the highest trees at his bidding. But, alas! very few of these fancies are ever realised; the great height of the blossoms renders the poles useless; and in the missions established on the banks of the rivers of Guiana, the traveller finds himself among Indians whose poverty, stoicism, and uncultivated state, renders them so rich, and so free from wants of every kind, that neither money nor other presents that can be made to them will induce them to turn three steps out of their path. This insurmountable apathy is the more provoking to a European, because he sees the same people climb with inconceivable agility wherever their own fancies lead them; for example, when they wish to catch a parrot, or an iguana, or a monkey, which having been wounded by their arrows saves himself from falling by holding on to the branches with his prehensile tail. Even at the Havannah we met with a similar disappointment. We were there in the month of January, and saw all the trees of the Palma Real (our Oreodoxa Regia), in the immediate vicinity of the city and on the public walks, adorned with snow-white blossoms. For several days we offered the negro boys whom we met in the streets of Regla and Guanavacoa two piastres for a single bunch of the blossoms which we wanted, but in vain! Between the tropics men are indisposed to laborious exertion, unless compelled by constraint or by extreme destitution. The botanists and artists of the Royal Spanish Commission for researches in Natural History, under the direction of Count Jaruco y Mopor (Estevez, Boldo, Guio, and Echeveria),—acknowledged to us that during several years they had not been able to obtain these flowers for examination. These difficulties sufficiently explain what would have been incomprehensible to me before my voyage, namely, that although during our two years’ stay up to the present time, we have, indeed, discovered more than 20 different species of palms, we have as yet been only able to describe systematically 12. How interesting a work might be produced by a traveller in South America who should occupy himself exclusively with the study of palms, and should make drawings of the spathe, spadix, inflorescence, and fruit, all of the size of nature!” (I wrote this many years before the Brazilian travels of Martius and Spix, and the admirable and excellent work of Martius on Palms.) “There is considerable uniformity in the shape of the leaves of palms; they are generally either pinnate (feathery, or divided like the plume of a feather);—or else palmate or palmo-digitate (of a fan-like form); the leaf-stalk (petiolus), is in some species without spines, in others sharply toothed (serrato-spinosus). The form of the leaf in Caryota urens and Martinezia caryotifolia, (which we saw on the banks of the Orinoco and Atabapo, and again in the Andes, at the pass of Quindiu, 3000 Fr. (3197 English) feet above the level of the sea), is exceptional and almost unique among palms, as is the form of the leaf of the Gingko among trees. The port and physiognomy of palms have a grandeur of character very difficult to convey by words. The stem, shaft, or caudex, is generally simple and undivided, but in extremely rare exceptions divides into branches in the manner of the Dracænas, as in Cucifera thebaica (the Doum-palm), and Hyphæne coriacea. It is sometimes disproportionately thick (as in Corozo del Sinu, our Alfonsia oleifera); sometimes feeble as a reed (as in Piritu, Kunthia montana, and the Mexican Corypha nana); sometimes swelling towards the base (as in Cocos); sometimes smooth, and sometimes scaly (Palma de covija o de sombrero, in the Llanos); sometimes armed with spines (as Corozo de Cumana and Macanilla de Caripe), the long spines being distributed with much regularity in concentric rings.

“Characteristic differences are also furnished in some species by roots which, springing from the stem at about a foot or a foot and a half above the ground, either raise the stem as it were upon a scaffolding, or surround it with thick buttresses. I have seen Viverras, and even very small monkeys, pass underneath this kind of scaffolding formed by the roots of the Caryota. Often the shaft or stem is swollen only in the middle, being more slender above and below, as in the Palma Real of the Island of Cuba. The leaves are sometimes of a dark and shining green (as in the Mauritia and the Cocoa nut palm); sometimes of a silvery white on the under side (as in the slender Fan-palm, Corypha miraguama, which we found in the Harbour of Trinidad de Cuba). Sometimes the middle of the fan or palmate leaf is ornamented with concentric yellowish or bluish stripes like a peacock’s tail; as in the thorny Mauritia which Bonpland discovered on the banks of the Rio Atabapo.

“The direction of the leaves is a character not less important than their form and colour. The leaflets (foliola), are sometimes arranged like the teeth of a comb, set on in the same plane, and close to each other, and having a very rigid parenchyma (as in Cocos, and in Phœnix the genus to which the Date belongs); whence the fine play of light from the sun-beams falling on the upper surface of the leaves (which is of a fresher verdure in Cocos, and of a more dead and ashy hue in the date palm); sometimes the leaves are flag-like, of a thinner and more flexible texture, and curl towards the extremities (as in Jagua, Palma Real del Sinu, Palma Real de Cuba, and Piritu dell’ Orinoco). The peculiarly majestic character of palms is given not only by their lofty stems, but also in a very high degree by the direction of their leaves. It is part of the beauty of any particular species of palms that its leaves should possess this aspiring character; and not only in youth, as is the case in the Date-palm, but also throughout the duration of the life of the tree. The more upright the direction of the leaves, or, in other words, the more acute the angles which they form with the upper part or continuation of the stem, the grander and more imposing is the general character and physiognomy of the tree. How different are the character and aspect given by the drooping leaves of the Palma de covija del Orinoco y de los Llanos de Calabozo (Corypha tectorum); the more nearly horizontal or at least less upright leaves of the Date and Cocoa-nut palms; and the aspiring heavenward pointing branches of the Jagua, the Cucurito, and the Pirijao!

“Nature has lavished every beauty of form on the Jagua palm, which, intermingled with the Cucurito or Vadgihai, (85 to 106 English feet high), adorns the cataracts of Atures and Maypures, and is occasionally found also on the lonely banks of the Cassiquiare. The smooth slender stems of the Jagua, rising to between 64 and 75 English feet, appear above the dense mass of foliage of other kinds of trees from amidst which they spring like raised colonnades, their airy summits contrasting beautifully with the thickly-leaved species of Ceiba, and with the forest of Laurineæ, Calophyllum, and different species of Amyris which surround them. The leaves of the Jagua, which are few in number (scarcely so many as seven or eight), are sixteen or seventeen feet long, and rise almost vertically into the air; their extremities are curled like plumes; the ultimate divisions or leaflets, having only a thin grass-like parenchyma, flutter lightly and airily round the slowly balancing central leaf-stalks. In all palms the inflorescence springs from the trunk itself, and below the place where the leaves originate; but the manner in which this takes place modifies the physiognomic character. In a few species only (as the Corozo del Sinu), the spathe (or sheath enclosing the flowers and fruits), rises vertically, and the fruits stand erect, forming a kind of thyrsus, like the fruits of the Bromelia: in most species of palms the spathes (which are sometimes smooth and sometimes rough and armed with formidable spines) are pendent; in a few species the male flowers are of a dazzling whiteness, and in such cases the flower-covered spadix, when fully developed, shines from afar. In most species of palms the male flowers are yellowish, closely crowded, and appear almost withered when they disengage themselves from the spathe.

“In Palms with pinnate foliage, the leaf-stalks either proceed (as in the Cocoa-nut, the Date, and the Palma Real del Sinu) from the dry, rough, woody part of the stem; or, as in the Palma Real de la Havana (Oreodoxa regia) seen and admired by Columbus, there rises upon the rough part of the stem a grass-green, smooth, thinner shaft, like a column placed upon a column, and from this the leaf-stalks spring. In fan-palms, “foliis palmatis,” the leafy crown (as in the Moriche and the Palma sombrero de la Havana) often rests on a previous bed of dry leaves, a circumstance which gives to the tree a sombre and melancholy appearance. In some umbrella-palms the crown consists of very few leaves, which rise upwards, carried on very slender petioles or foot-stalks (as in Miraguama).

“The form and colour of the fruits of Palms also offer much more variety than is commonly believed in Europe. Mauritia flexuosa bears egg-shaped fruits, whose scaly, brown, and shining surface, gives them something of the appearance of young fir-cones. What a difference between the enormous triangular cocoa-nut, the soft fleshy berries of the date, and the small hard fruits of the Corozo! But among the fruits of palms none equal in beauty those of the Pirijao (Pihiguao of S. Fernando de Atabapo and S. Balthasar); they are egg-shaped, mealy, and usually without seeds, two or three inches thick, and of a golden colour, which on one side is overspread with crimson; and these richly coloured fruits, crowded together in a bunch, like grapes, are pendent from the summits of majestic palm trees.” I have already spoken in the first volume of the present work, p. 216, of these beautiful fruits, of which there are seventy or eighty in a bunch, and which can be prepared as food in a variety of ways, like plantains and potatoes.

In some species of Palms the flower sheath, or spathe surrounding the spadix and the flowers, opens suddenly with an audible sound. Richard Schomburgk (Reisen in Britisch Guiana, Th. i. S. 55) has like myself observed this phenomenon in the flowering of the Oreodoxa oleracea. This first opening of the flowers of Palms accompanied by sound recalls the vernal Dithyrambus of Pindar, and the moment when, in Argive Nemea, “the first opening shoot of the date-palm proclaims the arrival of balmy spring.” (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 10; Eng. ed. p. 10.)

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 Coniferæ and species of Eucalyptus belonging to the family of Myrtaceæ, 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, Morphologie végétale, 1840, p. 176.) The Wax-palm, our Ceroxylon andicola, discovered by us on the Andes between Ibague and Carthago, on the Montaña 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 Wax-palm, 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 of palms. “In palmetis, Pihiguao consitis, singuli trunci quotannis fere 400 fructus ferunt pomiformes, tritumque est verbum inter Fratres S. Francisci, ad ripas Orinoci et Gauiniæ degentes, mire pinguescere Indorum corpora, quoties uberem Palmæ fructum fundant.” (Humboldt, de Distrib. geogr. Plant. p. 240.)