Nipa palm

“ The sago-palm has a creeping root-stem, like a nipa-palm, and Mr Hooker had told me that when it is nearly fifteen years old it sends up an immense terminal spike of flowers, after which it dies. It is not so tall as the cocoa-nut tree, but is thicker and larger. The mid-ribs of its immense leaves are twelve or fifteen feet long, and sometimes the lower part is as thick as a man’s leg. They are excessively light, consisting of a firm pith, covered with a hard rind. They are frequently used instead of bamboo; entire houses, indeed, are built of them. ”

“ Moro frankly said: “Yes, but as our house is so cheap, we can build a new one easily. However, in this warm climate we cook in a separate house, and we bathe out of doors. We do not smoke within our nipa houses; it is too dangerous.”
“Tell our friend from across the purple ocean how we use the bamboo and the nipa plants, for other purposes besides building,” remarked little Fil.
Moro continued: “From the sap of the nipa palm, we distill alcohol. From the hollow bamboo we make pipes for carrying water. We boil the tender new shoots of bamboo, and eat them like celery. ”

“ In the botanical garden, as elsewhere in the island, are to be found all varieties of the palm—the royal palm, than which there is no more ornamental tree, the cocoanut palm, with its myriad uses, the sugar palm, the sago palm, the oil palm, the betel-nut palm, which furnishes the Malay a substitute for chewing tobacco, the nipa palm, so helpful in building, the fan palm, etc., etc.
Nature has been prodigal in her gifts to the people of the tropics, and besides giving plant life in confusing abundance, her generosity is shown in a number of trees, each of which can be put to many uses. ”

“ It produces fruit after seven years’ growth. The nipa palm is almost, though not quite as useful. These spontaneous bounties of nature may not be the allies or promoters of civilization, but they are the compensations which make savage life tolerable and, if not of high enjoyment, not far from happy. ”

“ The Hindu boy led them a hundred yards down the road, then turned off onto a path. In a moment he pointed.
Ahead, alone in a clearing, was a typical nipa hut. It was built on stilts in the traditional Filipino way, and there was room underneath the supporting posts for a tall man to stand upright. The house itself was square, with walls of woven thatch made from the nipa palm. The roof was pyramidal, heavily thatched with layer after layer of straw. The floor was of split bamboo, a single layer of springy bamboo strips as wide as a man's thumb laid across a framing of whole bamboo supports. ”

“ It is not disagreeable after a little use, and I much prefer it to the common article brought from Siam, and generally sold in these countries. The natives of the north seldom use the imported salt, except for preserving fish; whereas, towards Sarawak, the Siamese is rapidly taking the place of that procured from the nipa palms.
The nipa palm is indeed a blessing to the natives; as we have seen, they make a salt from the ashes of the root; they extract a coarse sugar from the stem; they cover in their houses with the leaf ”

“ The fibre of the aloe, which the female weaves with the simplest of looms, gives her garments; the uprights and the floors and the substantial parts of his dwelling are made of the bamboo, which he finds in superfluous abundance; while the nipa palm provides roofs and sides to his hut. Wants he has few and he cares little for luxuries. His enjoyments are in religious processions, in music and dancing, in his gallo above all. He may take possession without rent of any quantity of land which he is willing to cultivate. There is a tendency, no doubt, to improvement. ”

“ The light of day is subdued into a depressing gloom by the foliage of the mangrove forest: the air, charged with the miasma of decaying vegetable life, is impregnated with a sour, unpleasant odour; and the silence that prevails is interrupted only by the fall of a branch, or by the startled cry of some wading-bird disturbed in its haunt. Nipa palms line the banks in places, and occasionally occupy the swamp for some distance on either side of the stream. ”

“ The colourless water in the fresh young nuts is peculiarly valuable and grateful as a beverage, preferable where drinking water is in any way questionable; cocoa-nut oil being, moreover, one of the most valuable of Eastern palm products. The fruit of the “pinang,” or betel-nut palm is as essential to the Malay races as tobacco to our own, and even the fruit of the nipa, or “thatch” palm may be eaten. The astringent [321] pulp which surrounds the seeds of several species of “rattan” palms is occasionally eaten for medicinal purposes. ”

“ They are roofed, however, as are the others, with the palm-leaves called nipa.” (Antonio de Morga, Sucesos.—Bl. and Rb., Vol. 16, pp. 117–118.)
34 “The edifices and houses of the natives of all these Filipinas Islands are built in a uniform manner, as are their settlements; for they always build them on the shores of the sea, between rivers and creeks. The natives generally gather in districts or settlements where they sow their rice, and possess their palm trees, nipa and banana groves, and other trees, and implements for their fishing and sailing.” ”

“ Arrack made from the sap of a palm tree, a manufacture by no means confined to the Philippines. The Portuguese, appropriating the word Nipa to this spirit, called the tree itself nipeira.
a.—
1611.—"Other wine is of another kind of palm which is called Nipa (growing in watery places) , and this is also extracted by distillation. It is very mild and sweet, and clear as pure water; and they say it is very wholesome. It is made in great quantities, with which ships are laden in Pegu and Tanasarim, Malaca, and the Philippines or Manila ”

“ The roof and sides of the house were of attap. This is made from the long, arrow-like leaves of the nipah palm. Unlike its brother palms—the cocoa, the sago, the gamooty, and the areca—the nipah is short, and more like a giant cactus in growth. Its leaves are stripped off by the natives, then bent over a bamboo rod and sewed together with fibres of the same palm. When dry they become glazed and waterproof. ”

“ The thick and many-tinted foliage of the mango—the tall bamboos shaking their feathery heads aloft—the cocoa-nut loftier still—the areca and the nipa palms—the plantains, whose huge green leaves give such richness to a tropical landscape—the bread-fruit, the papaya, and the bright-coloured wild-flowers, which stray at will over banks and branches—the river every now and then visible, with its canoes and cottages, and Indian men, women, and children scattered along its banks. ”

“ From the shifting shreds of sky the sun fell upon the sands in heavy gold spots. To the east, through the lithe, silver trunks, the vivid green of the rice fields flashed; to the west a tawny thread of beach banked up the rippling tide.
In the darkness of the recess a frail hut of nipa leaves and bamboo slowly shaped itself as I advanced, and suddenly a shrill voice, rasping as the violin note of the tyro, pierced the peace of the place. ”

“ 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 ”

“ As they are utterly ignorant of cultivation, they are entirely indebted for the very first necessaries of life to the provision which a bountiful nature has supplied to them, without the assistance of man's labour. Their chief articles of food are the cocoa-nut and the pandanus fruit. As with the natives of India, so among the natives of the Nicobar group, the cocoa-palm is applied to the most various purposes, although it would be difficult to make it fulfil all the ninety and nine useful purposes which the Hindoo proverb assigns to this noble individual of the royal race of palms. ”

“ The fruits of Nipa, which may be carried a considerable distance by ocean-currents without losing the power of germination, are constantly found with other vegetable drift on the beaches of tropical islands. ”

“ Away [372] from heat and sunshine, they are quite devoid of the luxuriance and stateliness that characterize them in the tropics. In Europe, for instance, there is but a single palm that is indigenous—the Chamærops humilis. The date palm was introduced from the East. In the tropics, however, about eleven hundred species of palms are known, and there is reason to believe that, when this part of the world shall have been thoroughly explored, many new species shall be discovered. ”

“ 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 strange, sombre palm, with its erect, uncompromising trunk, its long, straight, dark leaves, looking so doric, so rich in individuality, and then, nestled quite under its very shadow, you often see a clump of the slender willowy, delicate bamboo, its pale green leaves, so soft and fine and feathery. It is the vegetable masculine and feminine attraction. Or it is not unlikely that a stern warrior, and an ethereal post would be drawn together by the same contrasts. ”

“ There is an almost infinite variety of palms, the most useful of which is the oil-palm, whose nut supplies the dark-red palm oil, which has proved such a source of wealth in the Oil-river regions of the Niger country and on the west coast in general. The kernel of these nuts makes an oil-cake which is excellent for fattening and conditioning cattle. This palm towers in every forest grove and beautifies every island in the rivers. In many places it constitutes the entire forest, to the exclusion of trees of harder wood and sturdier growth. ”

“ The first species of palms that attracted the observation of Don Pablo and his party, was that known as the “patawa” palm. It belongs to the genus Œnocarpus. There are several species of this genus in South America, but none more beautiful than the “patawa.” It is a palm with a straight smooth stem, and pinnate leaves—the stem being sixty feet in height, and about a foot in diameter. The stem becomes smooth only in old trees. ”

“ There was the straight broad leaf of the palm, the jagged one of the banana, the cocoa-nut palm with its straggling arms and brown nuts, the feathery algeroba, and glossy-leaved mango and monkey pod, the dark-green koa, and very many others I had never heard of. And these formed the dark-green background for scarlet bunches of ohias, and the vivid crimson blossom of the hibiscus, for magnolias, and orange trees, and gardenias, heliotrope, roses, and honeysuckle, for thickets of mimosa, trailing passion-flowers and tropical parasites of all kinds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the sun rose and diffused its rays around, a great number of butterflies, beetles, and other insects passed away in enjoyment their short fleeting lives, and revelled upon the sweets the flowers contained. A lofty species of Pandanus, named by the Malays Ninpuan, was very abundant in moist situations; it rose with its long foliage bending at the extremities, and as the tree increased in elevation it bore a closer resemblance to the growth of the palm tree, and attained the height of forty and fifty feet. ”

“ 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. ”