Areca palm

“ As powerful spirits are to be invited to the house, the room where they are to appear is decked with a profusion of ornaments suited to such exalted guests. Great tassels of white shavings are hung upon the walls, a white cloth adorned with the blossoms of the areca palm hides the rafters, and these graceful inflorescences are spread out fanwise over the doors and among the shavings. In one corner a hollow cone of areca blossoms and shavings spread over a framework of rattan is suspended from a rafter; and a model of a ship or raft is placed just outside an open window. ”

“ But nature and man have combined to marry them to one another, and it is difficult to think of them separately.
In life the betel vine climbs up the stem of the areca palm, and in death the areca nut is rolled in a shroud of the betel leaf and the two are munched together. ”

“ The areca-palm requires a low moist situation, with rather a sandy soil, either under the bund of a tank, or in a position otherwise favourable for irrigation. The seeds are put into holes six feet apart, and the tree comes into bearing in about eight years. It yields fruit for fifty years, and, when in full bearing, produces 11⁄2 lbs. ”

“ The Areca Palm is known in Hindostan as Supyari, and in Japan as Jambi. The Hindus adorn their gods with these Nuts, and forbid respectable women to deck either their heads or bosoms with them. According to Indian tradition, Devadamani, subduer of the gods, once appeared at the court of King Vikramâditya, to play with him, clothed in a robe the colour of the sky, having in his hand and in his mouth an Areca Nut enveloped in a leaf of the Kalpa-tree. This probably explains the Indian custom of presenting an Areca Nut to guests, which is eaten with the leaf of the Betel. ”

“ These lands have been styled "the gardens of the sun"; "enormous forcing houses crammed with vegetation"; "great zoological gardens, full of rare and curious beasts". Here may be seen many species of palms: the gloriously beautiful Cyrtostachys palm of Java, with vividly red sheaths to the fronds and flower stalks, and bright yellow inflorescence changing to scarlet fruit; the creeping, climbing palms (the "rattan" or Calamus) ; stately Areca palms (which produce the betel nut, and the smaller species the "cabbage", so often described by travellers in Australia and the Pacific islands) ”

“ Areca, ar′ē-ka, n. a genus of palm, one species of which, the Betel-nut Palm, or Penang Palm (Areca catechu) , bears nuts with austere and astringent properties, which are chewed by the Malays with a little lime in a leaf of the betel-pepper, making the lips and spittle red. ”

“ Specimens of it have been found by measure to be about a hundred feet high, and the royal species of Havana rises to nearly one hundred and twenty feet. These plants are for the most part evergreen. They do not love climates of intermittent temperatures and abrupt changes, except in rare cases, of which the Areca palm of India (Areca catechu) affords an example. This species is extensively cultivated in the Indies, where the firm and astringent kernel of its nut (Fig. 7) is chewed with the betel-leaf by every native, as other people smoke or chew tobacco. ”

“ Ascending the hill slopes towards the source of the stream, numerous palms rise up on either side. The Caryota (“eala”) with its branches resembling the fronds of a huge adiantum, the handsome “kisu” (probably a species of Drymophloeus) and a tall areca known as the “poamau,” are those which frequently meet the eye. Interspersed among them we notice the lesser areca-palms and the fan-palm before alluded to. On the crest of the hill, at a height of some 200 or 300 feet above the sea, are found tall forest trees, some of them of gigantic size and attaining a height of 150 feet and upwards. ”

“ There are also two plants, which, although they cannot be included among the vegetable products suited for the sustenance of man, must nevertheless be taken into account as contributing in an important degree to the subsistence of the natives. These are the Areca palm, and the Betel shrub. ”

“ The areca tree is one of the palm tribe, with a tuft of leaves surmounting a stem as straight and beautifully shaped as the shaft of a Corinthian pillar. It requires a warm climate, and grows freely in the southern provinces of China, but is common in every part of India and the Oriental Islands. ”

“ Each of the transverse folds answers to a future leaflet. It is the development of the midrib in length that tears asunder the divisions of the lamina, and converts them into separate, and by-and-by remote, pinnæ.
It is manifest then that every leaflet on the midrib of a pinnate-leaved Palm is a record of past time, as real as the leaf-bases on the trunk, inasmuch as, in each case, there is ocular proof that the conditions of existence are different from what they have been. And yet in this case, the evidences are fallacious, since the Areca before us has even now been created. ”

“ In New Zealand a species of Areca was observed by Sir Joseph Banks, in about 38° S. lat, which is probably nearly the limit of Palms, in the southern hemisphere. In the northern hemisphere their extent is not materially different from this: in North America, indeed, they do not appear to grow beyond 36° lat.; but in Europe Chamærops humilis extends as far as the neighbourhood of Nice.
It is remarkable that no species of Palm has been found in South Africa, nor was any observed by Mr. Lechenault [86] , on the West coast of New Holland, even within the tropic. ”

“ Among them are talipots, palmyras, cocoanuts, the slender areca, the date palm, and the fan palm, already described, spreading out its broad leaves like a peacock's tail. This is often called the traveler's tree, because the trunk is never without a supply of pure water with which to quench his thirst. When pierced with a knife at the juncture of the stems, it yields copious draughts of water. Here one sees palms from Cuba, Guinea, China, Africa, and Brazil, each exhibiting some special characteristics of importance, and all thriving, together with clumps of climbing rattans. ”

“ Most of this forest rises out of a dense undergrowth, in which the creeping stems and prickly leaves of rattans were seen. These are various species of Calamus, a genus of palms that has small, reed-like, trailing stems, which are in strange contrast to the erect and rigid trunks of the cocoa-nut, the areca, the palmetto, and other palms. It seems paradoxical to call this a palm, and the high, rigid bamboo a species of grass. When they are growing, the stem is sheathed in the bases of so many leaves that it is half an inch in diameter. ”

“ Areca sp. . . vulgo “Poamau.” Growing up to eighty feet high.
Areca sp. . . vulgo “Au-Au.” Grows up to twelve feet high. Aerial roots rising from stem 11⁄2 feet above the ground.
Areca sp. . . vulgo “Olega.” The betel-nut palm of the Solomon Islands. Planted by the natives in the vicinity of their villages. Height up to thirty feet. ”

“ There is an Areca that forks near the base, and the date palm puts out shoots at or near the base of the trunk. ↑ Since observing this peculiarity of palm fronds, I have frequently seen something of the same kind in the great 'deadenings' of the South and South-west. Many species of trees arc readily recognized at a distance by the attitudes of the dead and broken limbs: the limbs of the black oak stand up nearly straight ”

“ In the jungle at Yen occurs a huge Palm evidently Caryota, foliis maximis supra decompositis; the diameter of the trunk is 11⁄2 to 2 feet. It is said to die after flowering: the natives use the central lax structures as food. The Yen Gam promises to send me specimens to-morrow. The Palms I have hitherto seen are Wallichia, one or two Calami: Wallichioidia trunco 5-10 pedali, and a Phænicoidea, but this I only saw at the foot of the mountains near Laee Panee, and the small Areca common about Negrogam. The name of the large Palm in Assamese is Bura Sawar. ”

“ According to Martius, the span of a palm’s life never exceeds that of a few generations of men. The areca catechu runs its course in forty or fifty years, the cocoa attains an age of one hundred or one hundred and twenty years at most, while the date palm, which probably lives the longest, usually rounds out its existence within the period of two centuries. ”

“ Though so widely cultivated, the palm is unknown in a truly indigenous state. The word is Malayāl. aḍakka [according to Bp. {35b}Caldwell, from adai 'close arrangement of the cluster,' kay, 'nut' N.E.D.] , and comes to us through the Port.
1510.—"When they eat the said leaves (betel) , they eat with them a certain fruit which is called coffolo, and the tree of the said coffolo is called Arecha."—Varthema, Hak. Soc., 144.
1516.—"There arrived there many zambucos [Sambook] ... with areca."—Barbosa, Hak. ”

“ Areka-nut must, therefore, be regarded as the principal article of trade, as it is to be purchased cheap, and of a quality as excellent as in any part of the Eastern islands, or Cochin China.
The Areka palm is the Areka catechu of botanists; it is a palm of elegant growth, rising with a very erect and small stem to the height of forty or even sixty feet, the summit terminating in a tuft of dark-green foliage; the circumference of the trunk is seldom more than one-and-a-half to two feet, when of early growth of dark-green, and when old of a dark-grey colour ”

“ We are constantly astonished at the variety of palms. A palm is such a rarity in our hot-houses, that we easily forget how numerous and varied they are in their native forests. We have the scarlet-oak, the white-oak, the scrub-oak, the chestnut-oak, the swamp-oak, and many others. And so in the tropical forest there is the cocoanut-palm, with its swollen, bulb-like stem when young, its tall, straight trunk when full grown, its cluster of heavy fruit, and its long, plume-like, drooping flower ”

“ It has scarlet unbellated flowers, with an involucre, has twenty-five stamens united into a tube, bearing the corolla with five petals; leaves roundish, cordate, accuminate, very large with persistent, ovate wavy stipules. The plant is of easy culture, and grows freely, wood very strong.
Areca, Cabbage-tree, ten species. They are a kind of palms, with large pinnated leaves, or properly fronds. In their indigenous state they are from six to forty feet high, but in the Hot-house they seldom exceed twenty feet. ”

“ The leaves are large and pinnate, the leaflets elongate and linear, and as well as the petioles very prickly. The spadices are simply branched, and the fruits are ovate or globose, with a fibrous or fleshy covering, sometimes eatable.
Sixteen species of these Palms are known, inhabiting Mexico, Brazil, and other parts of South America, but not extending higher up the mountains than 2000 feet above the sea. They have rather a repulsive aspect, from almost every part,—stem, leaves, fruit-stalk and spathe, being armed with acute spines in some cases a foot long. ”

“ In both genera the nuts are unsymmetrical, the side which has the largest foramen being distinctly larger than the others and in Curima the irregularly pitted sculpture is coarser.
ACROCOMIA Martius, Hist. Nat. Palm. 2: 66 A genus of palms distributed through tropical America from Mexico to Cuba and Paraguay. All the species are of stocky, compact growth, with a dense crown of numerous leaves. The trunk and the leaf-stalks are usually armed with strong, sharp spines, sometimes several inches long. ”

“ I never saw so many kinds of dwarf palms together as here; pretty miniature species; some not more than five feet high, and bearing little clusters of round fruit not larger than a good bunch of currants. A few of the forest trees had the size and strongly-branched figures of our oaks, and a similar bark. One noble palm grew here in great abundance, and gave a distinctive character to the district. This was the Œnocarpus distichus, one of the kinds called Bacába by the natives. It grows to a height of forty to fifty feet. ”

“ The royal palm, with its curling plumes, rearing its lofty head two hundred feet in the air, stands in rows on each side of the avenues that lead to the dwellings. Its leaves are used in thatching houses, its fruit in fattening hogs, and its stately trunk for troughs. By means of ropes these immense trees are climbed by the natives, with the celerity of monkeys. The acacia-tree also sheds its fragrance in the woods and cultured gardens. The virgin forests are teeming with such a superabundance of vegetation, it has no room for development. ”

“ In eastern Asia the Palms, like other tropical families, extend along the coast reaching Korea and the south of Japan. In America a few small genera occur in the southern United States and California; and in South America the southern limit is reached in the Chilean genus Jubaea (the Chile coco-nut) at 37° S. latitude. The great centres of distribution are tropical America and tropical Asia; tropical Africa contains only 11 genera, though some of the species, like the Doum palm {Hyphaene thebaica) and the Deleb or Palmyra palm {Borassus flabellifer) have a wide distribution. ”

“ Here, as in the land of the Aruacs, the moriche palm is not only a thing of beauty, but, for the Indians, a source of comfort and joy. This and other palms, notably a kind of date palm, and the Cumana, which bears a fruit similar to the wild olive, supply the Indians, during certain months of the year, with all the food they consume. Speaking of the palm, Padre Rivero declares it to be “the earthly paradise of the Guahibos and Chiricoas. It is their delight, their general larder, their all. It is the subject matter of their thoughts and conversations. ”