Note {3} — Chapter X

Note 3.—The tree here intended, and which gives the chief supply of toddy and sugar in the Malay Islands, is the Areng Saccharifera (from the Javanese name), called by the Malays Gomuti, and by the Portuguese Saguer. It has some resemblance to the date-palm, to which Polo compares it, but it is a much coarser and wilder-looking tree, with a general raggedness, “incompta et adspectu tristis,” as Rumphius describes it. It is notable for the number of plants that find a footing in the joints of its stem. On one tree in Java I have counted thirteen species of such parasites, nearly all ferns. The tree appears in the foreground of the cut at p. 273.