Part 3

This species differs from the last in its slenderer stem and less drooping leaves and leaflets. It grows to forty or fifty feet high. The spadices are fewer and much smaller. The fruit also is smaller, and has more pulpy matter, so that a small quantity of it makes more of the “vinho d’Assaí” (the Assaí wine) than the same quantity of fruit of the larger kind. The column formed by the sheathing bases of the leaves is smaller than in the last species, and always of a red colour. The roots rise considerably above the ground, forming a distinct cone, which is not the case in the _E. oleracea_. It inhabits the forests on a dry sandy soil, of the Upper Rio Negro. These districts are called Catinga forests by the natives, and have very peculiar vegetable productions, differing almost entirely from those of the lofty virgin forest.

The preparation of the fruit of this species is sweeter and more finely flavoured than that of any other, and is therefore much sought after, but it takes the produce of four or five trees to yield as much as a single spadix of the larger kind will often produce. I found the fruit ripe in the month of April on the river Uaupés, a branch of the Rio Negro above the Falls.

GENUS ŒNOCARPUS, _Martius_.

Male and female flowers on the same spadix, the former most abundant. Spathe double, the interior complete, woody, and deciduous. Flowers without distinct bracts; the male with six stamens and rudiments of a pistil, the female with three sessile stigmas, but with no rudiment of stamens.

These are tall majestic trees with large smooth stems, generally distinctly ringed. The leaves are large, terminal, more or less regularly pinnate, and have the bases expanded and clasping the stem, but not forming a sheathing column as in the last genus. The spadices spring from beneath the leaves and are simply branched; the branches are very lax, hanging down vertically except when forced outwards by the ripening fruit. The spathe is very large, fusiform and woody, and falls off the moment the spadix escapes from it. The fruit is small, nearly globular, and has an edible pulpy covering, like that of the genus _Euterpe_.

Six species only are known, and all inhabit tropical America, where they prefer dry, slightly elevated lands, none being known to extend more than 1600 feet above the sea.

PLATE IX. ŒNOCARPUS BACCÁBA, _Martius_.

Baccába, _Lingoa Geral_.

This is a smooth thick-stemmed handsome tree, faintly ringed, and reaching fifty or sixty feet in height. The leaves are large, terminal, and pinnate. The leaflets are long; gradually pointed, and set at equal distances along the midrib. When young, the leaves are flat, the leaflets or pinnæ all standing out in the same plane; but in the full-grown tree the leaflets are in groups of two or three standing out at different angles from the general plane of the leaf, so as to give an irregular mixed appearance to the leaf. The petioles are greatly dilated at the base where they clasp the stem, and have a fibrous margin. The leaves as they die fall clean off from the stem, no part of the base remaining. The spathe is deciduous, being comparatively seldom visible. The fruits are of a violet or black colour when ripe, but are covered with a dense whitish bloom. They are prepared in the same way as the Assaí, but the pulp is of a pinkish cream-colour instead of purple, and the liquid is more oily, and of delicious flavour, somewhat resembling filberts and cream. It is said, however, not to be so wholesome as the Assaí, and in districts where intermittent fevers are prevalent, to bring them on, and to be particularly hurtful to persons recovering from that disease. A very beautiful oil is sometimes extracted from the pulp by pressure; it is perfectly clear, liquid, and inodorous; and serves as a substitute for olive oil, as well as being very good for lamps. The leaves are sometimes used for thatching when none better can be obtained; but owing to the irregularity of the pinnæ before mentioned, they are not much used.

This species inhabits the dry virgin forests of the Rio Negro and Upper Amazon. In the lower parts of that river and in the neighbourhood of Pará it is replaced by another species, the _Œnocarpus distichus_.

The _Œ. baccába_ is growing at Kew.

One figure on the Plate shows the unopened spathe; the other has spadices with flowers and fruit.

PLATES X. and XI. ŒNOCARPUS BATAWÁ, _Martius_.

Patawá, _Lingoa Geral_.

This species can hardly be distinguished from the _Œnocarpus baccába_ when young. In the full-grown plant, however, the leaves preserve their regularity, the leaflets spreading out regularly in one plane and having a very beautiful appearance. The stem in old trees is fifty or sixty feet high and quite smooth, but in those growing in the shade of the forest, and in all young trees, the stem is completely hidden by the persistent bases of the decayed and fallen leaves. I have figured a tree in this state (Plate XI.).

The sheathing bases of the petioles give out from their margins numerous long spinous processes of a very singular character. They are from eighteen inches to three feet long, of a black colour, flattish, and generally broken or fibrous at the point. They are much sought after by the Indians, who use them to make arrows for their “gravatánas” or blow-pipes. One of these arrows is here represented with the wicker quiver in which they are carried. They are about fifteen or eighteen inches long, sharply pointed at the end, which is covered with “curarí” poison for three or four inches down, and notched so as to break off in the wound. Near the bottom a little of the soft down of the silk-cotton-tree is twisted round into a smooth spindle-haped mass, and carefully secured with a fibre of a “_bromelia_.” The cotton just fits easily into the tube, offering a light resisting body for the breath to act upon.

The fruit of this species is very similar to that of the Baccába, and is said to be of even superior flavour.

The Patawá is found in the whole of the Amazon and Rio Negro in the virgin forest, though apparently nowhere very abundant. Specimens are now growing in the Palm House at Kew.

The fruit is represented on Pl. X. of the natural size.

ŒNOCARPUS MINOR, _Martius_. Baccába miri, _Lingoa Geral_.

This is a small species common on the upper Rio Negro. The stem is not half so thick as in the _Œ. baccába_, and the leaves are in proportion. The fruit is also very small, but is very fleshy and fine-flavoured, and ripens at a different time of year from the larger kind. It grows in the dry virgin forest. My drawing of this tree was unfortunately lost on my voyage home.

ŒNOCARPUS DISTICHUS, _Martius_.

Baccába, of Pará.

This is the species known as the Baccába at Pará, where the _Œ. baccába_ is not found. It is quite distinct from the allied species by the leaves being distichous, or arranged nearly in one plane on each side of the stem, which gives it a very peculiar aspect, unlike any other Palm.

On my return to Pará from the interior, I was suffering so much from ague, as to be unable to go in search of a specimen of this tree to figure as I had intended.

This, like all other species of the genus, grows in dry and rather elevated forest land.

Genus IRIARTEA, _Ruiz_ et _Pavon_.

Female flowers few, interspersed among the males, bracteate. Spathe membranous, incomplete. Male flowers with from twelve to fifty stamens and the rudiments of a pistil. Female flowers with three sessile stigmas.

These singular and beautiful Palms have lofty, smooth, cylindrical or ventricose stems, very faintly ringed. The roots grow more or less above ground. The leaves are terminal and pinnate, and the leaflets are somewhat triangular, notched, often twisted or curled, and have radiating nerves. The sheathing bases form a column as in _Euterpe_. The spadices grow from beneath the leaves and are simply branched and drooping. The spathes vary in number and size; they are membranous, and fall off before the fruit ripens. The fruit is oval, of moderate size, generally of a red or yellow colour, and the pulpy part is bitter and uneatable. The stems of this genus increase in thickness within certain limits, differing from most other palms, which, when the stem is once formed, only increase in height.

Nine species of this genus are known, all natives of South America. Four of them occur in the Amazon district, three in Bolivia, one in Venezuela, and one near Bogotá, reaching a height above the sea of 5000 to 8000 feet.

PLATE XII. IRIARTEA EXORHIZA, _Martius_.

Pashiúba, _Lingoa Geral_.

This curious and beautiful tree is common in the forests about Pará and on the banks of the Amazon. It reaches fifty or sixty feet in height, with the stem moderately thick and very smooth, there being scarcely any rings or scars left by the fallen leaves.

The leaves are large and pinnate, with the leaflets triangular and very deeply notched, standing out at different angles with the midrib. The leaves curve over gracefully, and the character and aspect of the foliage is very different from that of most other palms. The column formed by the sheathing leaf-stalks is swollen at the base and of a deep green colour.

The spadices are three or four in number, growing rather upwards from the stem below the leaf-column. They are small and simply branched, and bear small oval red fruits about the size of a damson, the outer pulp of which is bitter and only eaten by some birds.

But what most strikes attention in this tree, and renders it so peculiar, is, that the roots are almost entirely above ground. They spring out from the stem, each one at a higher point than the last, and extend diagonally downwards till they approach the ground, when they often divide into many rootlets, each of which secures itself in the soil. As fresh ones spring out from the stem, those below become rotten and die off; and it is not an uncommon thing to see a lofty tree supported entirely by three or four roots, so that a person may walk erect beneath them, or stand with a tree seventy feet high growing immediately over his head.

In the forests where these trees grow, numbers of young plants of every age may be seen, all miniature copies of their parents, except that they seldom possess more than three legs, which gives them a strange and almost ludicrous appearance.

The figure on the opposite page (Plate XIII.) represents accurately the roots of a tree which had been partly blown down in the forest of the Upper Rio Negro. My friend Mr. Spruce informs me that it is a distinct species from that found at Pará, though closely allied to it, and scarcely differing in the character of the roots.

The wood of these trees is very hard on the outside, but soft and pithy within. It splits easily and very straight, and is much used for forming the floors of canoes, the ceilings of houses, shelves, seats, and various other purposes. Perfectly straight laths are more readily made from it than from any other wood, and they are so hard and durable as to serve for fish-weirs, corals for turtles, and for harpoons. The air-roots are covered with tubercular prickles, and are used by some Indians to grate their mandiocca.

This species grows in swamps or marshy ground in the virgin forest, not in the tide-flooded lands on the river banks.

Young plants may be seen in the great Palm House at Kew.

A fruit is represented on Plate III. fig. 5. of the natural size.

PLATE XIV. IRIARTEA VENTRICOSA, _Martius_.

Pashiúba barriguda, _Brazil_.

This is the most majestic tree of the genus. The stem reaches eighty or a hundred feet in height, and besides being rather thicker in proportion than in the last species, offers a remarkable character in being constantly more or less swollen near the middle or towards the top. The trunk is generally cylindrical to a height of forty or fifty feet, where it swells out to double its former diameter or more for ten or fifteen feet further, when it again diminishes and becomes cylindrical for about twenty feet to the summit. It is only when the trees have reached their full height or nearly so that the swelling commences. In a forest where they abound many may be seen of a large size, but quite cylindrical from top to bottom, while others present every degree of swelling from a just perceptible thickening to a most extraordinary enlargement. The column of air-roots in this species is six or eight feet high, forming a compact conical mass, the separate roots being more slender than in the _Iriartea exorhiza_.

The leaves are very large, with the leaflets broadly triangular and much cut and waved, forming a very elegant and yet massive head of foliage. The leaf-olumn is very thick, much swollen at the base, and of a deep bluish green colour.

The unopened spathes are lunate in shape and curved downwards, and the spadices are small and simply branched.

The wood of this tree is very hard, heavy and black, and is used by the Indians for making harpoons and spears with which they hunt the cow-fish. The swollen part of the stem is sometimes cut down and made into a canoe, when one is required in a hurry; otherwise it is not made use of.

The tree grows on the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro, on hill sides and on the banks of brooks and springs; and the Indians say that wherever it abounds sarsaparilla will be found growing near.

A fruit is represented on the Plate of the natural size.

PLATE XV. IRIARTEA SETIGERA, _Martius_.

Pashiúba miri, _Lingoa Geral_.

This small species has the stem from fifteen to twenty feet high, and varying from the thickness of a finger to that of the wrist, which it never exceeds. The stem is smooth and cylindrical, but distinctly ringed. The roots appear only a few inches above the ground. The leaves are pinnate, the leaflets elongate, triangular and cut at the ends. The column is short and cylindrical, and both it and the petioles are covered with short hairs or down. The spadices have long stalks and grow from beneath or from among the leaves; they are rather large and are simply branched. The spathes form sheaths at the bases of the spadices, and are persistent. The fruit is oval, of an orange-red colour, and about the size of the “hip” or wild rose fruit.

These trees grow on the Upper Amazon and Rio Negro in the dry virgin forest, where they occur in small scattered groves.

This species is of great importance to the Indian of the Rio Negro. With its stem he constructs his “gravatána” or blowing tube, which, with the little arrows before described as made from the spines of the Patawá, forms a most valuable weapon, enabling him to bring down monkeys, parrots and curassow birds from their favourite stations on the summits of the loftiest trees of the forest.

When he wishes to make a “gravatána” he searches in the forest till he finds two straight and tall stems of the “Pashiúba miri” of such proportionate thicknesses that one could be contained within the other. When he returns home he takes a long slender rod which he has prepared on purpose, generally made of the hard and elastic wood of the “Pashiúba barriguda,” and with it pushes out the pith from both the stems, and then with a little bunch of the roots of a tree fern, cleans and polishes the inside till the bore becomes as hard and as smooth as polished ebony. He then carefully inserts the slenderer tube within the larger, placing it so that any curve in the one may counteract that in the other. Should it still be not quite correct, he binds it carefully to a post in his house till it is perfectly straight and dry. He then fits a mouth-piece of wood to the smaller end of the tube, so that the arrow may go out freely at the other; and when he wishes to finish his work neatly, winds spirally round it from end to end, the shining bark of a creeper. Near the lower extremity he forms a sight with the large curved cutting tooth of the Paca (_Cœlogenus paca_), which he fixes on with pitch, and the gravatána is then fit for use.

These tubes are never less than eight and are often ten or twelve feet long, and on looking through a good one, not the slightest irregularity can be detected from one end to the other. The bore is generally not large enough to admit the tip of the little finger, so that the breath more readily fills the whole tube and propels the arrow with great velocity. The vertical direction is that in which the surest aim can be taken, and for which the gravatána is best adapted. When birds are feeding at the top of a lofty tree where the result of a gun-shot would be doubtful, a skilful Indian will take his station beneath it, and with a puff from his powerful lungs, will send up his little poisoned arrows with unerring aim. The wounded birds sometimes turn giddy and drop in a few seconds, or fly away to a neighbouring tree and in a minute fall heavily to the ground, or try to pluck out the arrows with their beaks, which, however, invariably break in the wound. The hunter carefully marks the direction in which each one falls, and when his quiver is emptied of arrows or the tree of birds, walks round and gathers up the game. His weapon makes no noise, and he therefore often does more execution than the best European sportsman armed with his double-barrel Manton.

On Plate XV. fig. 1. is a fruit of the natural size; fig. 2. is the gravatána or Indian blowpipe.

Genus RAPHIA, _Commerson_.

Male and female flowers intermixed on the same spadix. No common spathe, but many small incomplete sheaths. Male flowers with from six to twelve stamens and no rudiments of a pistil. Female flowers with three sessile stigmas and barren stamens.

The stems are short, thick and ringed. The leaves are very large, regular and pinnate; the leaflets are linear and have spinulose midribs and edges. The bases of the petioles are sheathing, and persistent some way down the stem, and the margins are fibrous. The spadices grow from among the leaves, and are very large and much branched; and the fruit is oblong and covered with large imbricated scales.

There are three species of the genus known; one is a native of the west coast of Africa, another of Madagascar, while a third is found on the banks of the Lower Amazon.

PLATE XVI. RAPHIA TÆDIGERA, _Martius_.

Jupatí, _Lingoa Geral_.

This is one of the most striking of the many noble Palms which grow on the rich alluvium of the Amazon. Its comparatively short stem enables us fully to appreciate the enormous size of its leaves, which are at the same time equally remarkable for their elegant form. They rise nearly vertically from the stem and bend out on every side in graceful curves, forming a magnificent plume seventy feet in height and forty in diameter. I have cut down and measured leaves forty-eight and fifty feet long, but could never get at the largest. The leaflets spread out four feet on each side of the midrib. They are rather irregularly scattered and not very closely set; they droop at the tips and have weak spinules along the margins.

The stem does not generally exceed six or eight feet in height and is about a foot in diameter, clothed for some distance down with the persistent sheathing bases of the leaf-stalks and the numerous spinous processes which proceed from them. These spines are something like those of the “Patawá,” but not so thick and strong.

The spadices are very large, compoundly branched and drooping; they grow from among the leaves and have numerous bract-like sheaths in the place of spathes.

The flowers are of a greenish olive colour and densely crowded, and the fruit is large, oblong, and reticulated with large scales.

The petiole or leaf-stalk of this tree is most extensively useful. It is often twelve or fifteen feet long below the first leaflets, and four or five inches in diameter, perfectly straight and cylindrical. When dried, it almost equals the quill of a bird for strength and lightness, owing to its thin hard outer covering and soft internal pith. But it is too valuable to the Indian for him to use it entire. He splits off the smooth glossy rind in perfectly straight strips and makes baskets and window blinds. The remaining part is of a consistence between pith and wood, and is split up into laths about half an inch thick and serves for a variety of purposes. Window shutters, boxes, bird-cages, partitions and even entire houses are constructed of it. In the little village of Nazaré near Pará, many houses of this kind may be seen in which all the walls are of this material, supported by a few posts at the angles and fastened together with pegs and slender creepers (sipós).

The hand may be easily pushed through one of these walls, but as the inhabitants do not trouble themselves with the possession of any article worth stealing, they sleep as composedly as if stone walls and iron bolts shut them in with all the security of a more advanced civilization.

The same material is also used for stoppers for bottles, and we found it answer admirably for lining our insect boxes, holding the pins securely and being more uniform in its texture than cork.

This is the only American species of the genus, and it inhabits exclusively the tide-flooded lands of the Lower Amazon and Pará rivers, being quite unknown in the interior. When descending from the Rio Negro to Pará in the summer of 1852, I observed some of our Indians who had made the voyage before, pointing out this tree to their less travelled companions as one of the curiosities of the lower country not to be found in the “Sertaõ.”

It is probable that the leaf, though not entire, is the largest in the whole vegetable kingdom, some of them covering a surface of more than 200 square feet. In a few years we may be able to see them in the magnificent Palm House at Kew, where young plants are now growing.

Plate II. fig. 1, a fruit of _Raphia tædigera_ of the natural size.

Genus MAURITIA, _Linnæus_.

Male flowers on one tree, female or hermaphrodite flowers on another. The spathes are imperfect, bract-ike, tubular sheaths. The male flowers have six stamens. The female flowers have a three-lobed stigma and six imperfect stamens.

The stems are either tall, columnar and smooth, or more slender and armed with strong conical spines. The leaves are all fan-shaped or radiating from a centre. The spadix is very large and pinnately branched, and grows from among the leaves. The fruits are of moderate size, oval or globular, and covered with rather small imbricated scales pointing downwards.

Four species are described by Martius, three of which occur in the Amazon district, and four more were met with by me on the Rio Negro, so that the genus seems confined to the hottest parts of the American Continent from the level of the sea to an altitude of about 3000 feet.

PLATE XVII. MAURITIA FLEXUOSA, _Linnæus_.

Mirití, _Lingoa Geral_. Muríchi, _in Venezuela_. Itá? _Mouth of the Orinoco._