Palm frond

“ Each dwelling has its garden; each garden blazes with singular and lovely color; but everywhere and always tower the palms. There are colonnades of palms, clumps of palms, groves of palms—sago and cabbage and cocoa and fan palms. You can see that the palm is cherished here, is loved for its beauty, like a woman. Everywhere you find palms, in all stages of development, from the first sheaf of tender green plumes rising above the soil to the wonderful colossus that holds its head a hundred feet above the roofs ”

“ And beautiful is the palm-tree at this season,—its majestic stem rising to the height of eighty or a hundred feet, surmounted by the clusters of bright golden dates, and its broad canopy of fan-like leaves falling around like a circular plume. ”

“ IT IS NOTED FOR ITS PERENNIAL FRESHNESS
The palm tree is an evergreen. It always has a fresh, green crown on top, on the heavenly side. Some parts may wither; some leaves fade and fall in time, but up at the top is a never-fading, fresh, beautiful crown that basks in the open sunlight and is a beauty to behold. ”

“ In their rich soil, and in their perpetually genial climate, trees grow with great rapidity, and they have many noble ones both for size and foliage. The royal palm, with its tall straight columnar trunk of a whitish hue, only uplifts a Corinthian capital of leaves, and casts but a narrow shadow ”

“ One would never think these dainty ball-room palms were related in any way to the stately white columns-spiring high above them, for the full-grown palm is all stem and scarcely any top, in comparison, while the young palm, a mass of magnificent spreading fronds, rises from a short bulb-like trunk that suggests nothing less than further growth. ”

“ There are always, however, palm-trees in sight, massed in groves, standing in lines, or waving their single tufts in the blue. These are the date-palms, which have no branches on their long poles; each year the old stalks are cut off for fuel, and the trunk, a mass of twisted fibres, comes to have a rough bark, as if the tree had been shingled the wrong way. ”

“ Here and there, on the lip of little dainty bays that secretly lie along the coast, palm-trees flourish in the fertile soil, with the soft and sultry breath of African deserts blowing gently upon them from across the Mediterranean. Sometimes they stand alone in their grace, growing up erect and sudden from out the moist hot earth, with arched and slender branches that are set around their heads and that droop gently with the weight of tapering leaves. Sometimes they grow in knots along the shore, or in little plantations that stretch upward towards the hills. ”

“ At the top of this magnificent bole, long, curving branches sweep gracefully outward and downward, sometimes forming a palm-like crown, but far more nobly impressive than any palm crown I ever beheld. The needles are about three inches long, finely tempered and arranged in rather close tassels at the ends of slender branchlets that clothe the long, outsweeping limbs. How well they sing in the wind, and how strikingly harmonious an effect is made by the immense cylindrical cones that depend loosely from the ends of the main branches! ”

“ Palm mats make soft bedding for men, and safe cradles for infants; and I have seen labourers in rice grounds well sheltered from sun and heavy rain by a hood and cloak made of one leaf of a palm-tree. The fibres of many kinds of palm are woven into coarse cloth, and most of them furnish materials for strong and durable ropes.
“The juice that flows from the top of several palms, when a small cut has been made either in the bark or at the foot-stalk of a leaf, is as refreshing as Jane’s whey, when fresh; and after standing a few days a strong spirit is often distilled from it. ”

“ A tall and slender palm can be seen in its simple beauty alongside the white trunk of the embauba tree, with umbrella-shaped crown, covered and gracefully draped with vines and hanging plants, whose roots drop down until they reach the water, or join and twist themselves until they form a leaf-portière. And for thousands of square miles this ever changing display of floral splendour is repeated and repeated. And it would be a treat for an ornithologist to pass up the river. A hundred times a day flocks of small paroquets fly screaming over our heads and settle behind the trees. ”

“ As for the palms, I had no idea that so many varieties existed until I visited Buitenzorg—emperor palms, Areca palms, Banka palms, cocoanut palms, fan palms, cabbage palms, sago palms, date palms, feather palms, travelers' palms, oil palms, Chuson palms, climbing palms over a hundred feet long—palms without end, Amen. Small wonder that the palm is regarded with affection wherever it can be grown, for what other tree can furnish food, shelter, clothing, timber, fuel, building materials, fiber, paper, starch, sugar, oil, wax, dyes and wine? ”

“ Many millions of trees shade the Valley. Belle of them all is the Royal Poinciana, a gorgeous, flowering tree with deep red blossoms. More than fifteen varieties of palm trees thrive here, ranging from the three or four foot ornamental palmetto to the stately date and the majestic one hundred foot tall Royal Palms. To plant a palm is to insure a share in eternity, since palms are said to live forever. ”

“ When we think of its beauty, its perpendicular straightness, its perennial freshness, its sweet and abundant fruitfulness even in old age, its almost incomprehensible utility, its successful development where other trees fail, its natural propensity to ascend heavenward, its marvelous hardiness with its internal and upward growth, does it not stand to reason that the palm branch should be the most fitting type of Christian triumph and joyous victory? No other tree could be used so well to symbolize the victory of him who is fighting under the banner of King Emmanuel. ”

“ The date palm flourishes very generally on sandy soils in the hot countries of Asia and Africa. Not always, however, is the soil that supports it, barren as the one I have described. It is frequently found by streams, and as the tired traveller sees its foliage waving afar, he hastens towards it, hoping to find a stream of water. Sometimes its tall stem is surrounded by beautiful climbing plants, and the most brilliant flowers flourish beneath its shadow. ”

“ The palm always constitutes an important feature in the landscape, especially when it stands singly or scattered in small groups. It strikes me as being the noblest and most human-like of all trees. On our homeward drive from Guanabacoa, I observed, in the clear moonlight, two palm-trees standing solitary in a large field. ”

“ There are palm trees in groups and single palms, palms from every part of the globe where they grow—Australia, Africa, South America, the Azores, to mention but a few—and fine coco palms from Brazil, their giant columns surmounted by plumed crests of superb grace. The boscage of magnolias, and other flowering trees and shrubs discloses one beauty close upon the other as we wander through the leafy lanes and avenues. We come upon a pretty lake overhung by a weeping willow of wonderful growth. ”

“ It takes a little time for the temperate mind to accept the palm-tree as a common, natural, and inevitable object in every outlook and landscape; to realize that the joyous, living thing with restless, perpetually threshing foliage is the same correct, symmetrical, motionless feather-duster on end that one knows in the still life of hothouses and drawing-rooms at home ”

“ They are emphatically - 16 - northern shells, and get smaller in size and fewer in number as they proceed southward, till they disappear altogether. In like manner, the palm, on the other hand, is characteristically a tropical plant. It attains its fullest development in intertropical countries, getting stunted in its progress towards either pole, and ceasing to grow in the open air beyond the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude in the southern hemisphere, and the forty-fifth in the northern. ”

“ Solitary they stand upon the sand, or upon the level, fertile land in groups, with a grace and dignity that no tree surpasses. Very soon the eye beholds in their forms the original type of the columns which it will afterwards admire in the temples. Almost the first palm is architecturally suggestive, even in those western gardens—but to artists living among them and seeing only them! men's hands are not delicate in the early ages, and the fountain fairness of the palms is not very flowingly fashioned in the capitals; but in the flowery perfection of the Parthenon the palm triumphs. ”

“ 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 ”

“ When its early training is neglected, the palm-tree grows less gracefully; 781sometimes dividing at the root into several trunks, which grow without branches to various hights, and then spread out their leafy crests. The palm-tree looks most majestic and picturesque, when it stands alone upon some broad plain or gentle bluff, and when its leaves are gently stirred by the wind. ”

“ The palms are the most familiar of all tropical trees and a landscape hardly seems tropical without these graceful trees. It is doubtful if there is a single class of the tropical trees 95so essential to the native as the palms. Houses, timber, firewood, fodder, food and drink, needles and threads, wax and drugs are all obtained from palms of various species. The Royal palm is the most graceful and majestic of all, and there is no more imposing scene of arboreal beauty than the long avenues of these beautiful trees so common in the American tropics. ”

“ Now the puzzle was, how the palm got there. Naturally one would suppose that a seed of the palm had been deposited on the top of the banyan, and had there germinated and thrown out its fronds.
But how did the palm seed get to the top of the fig? Was it planted by the hand of man? or carried thither by a bird? It could not well have been by the latter mode—since the fruit of the palmyra is as large as a child’s head, and each one of the three seeds it contains as big as a goose’s egg!! No bird would be likely to carry about such a bulky thing as that. ”

“ At its full growth the date palm is a most beautiful object. Usually the feathered tops of the trees are the only foliage to relieve the harsh landscape. Like the bamboo, every part of the tree is used. ”

“ Some palms are gregarious, forming large woods, and naturally spreading over whole districts; as the dwarf palm does in the South of Europe. She says, that the different species are never much intermixed ”

“ Lumley, “that what you call palms are really branches of willow in flower, and that all willows bear their flowers, called catkins, before their leaves come out. I think you know, also, that real palms are trees which only grow in hot climates, whose large branch-like leaves grow like a crown, distinguishing them among trees, on the top of the stem, whether it be only one year old or a hundred. I think you can compare a palm-leaf to nothing so aptly as to the ostrich feathers which ladies wear in their head-dresses. ”

“ One presents all the grossness and belittling aspect of money-getting, the other the graces, liberality, and ennobling appearance of culture and refinement. Of all the trees in these attractive environs, the palm, in its great variety, challenges one's admiration most. We mention it frequently, for it was our constant delight. At every turn one comes upon it, in its several species,—the cocoa-palm, the palmetto, the cabbage, the assai-palm, the fanshaped-palm, and scores of other varieties. The hand and taste of woman are seen in these gardens of the environs. ”

“ Of course, too, there are many sorts of palms, more or less fine looking, since it is believed that there are at least one thousand species in existence. All are not equally beautiful to look upon, for some are stunted, others have crooked stems; still, others have short mis-shapen trunks; and not a few appear with their leaves on the surface of the ground, as if without stems altogether.
The sort of palm, however, that constituted the forest into which my companion and I had now penetrated, was one of the most magnificent of the whole tribe. ”

“ Palms have ridges running lengthwise of their leaves, as you may see by examining a palm leaf fan. One ridged leaf of the talipot palm, when well grown, it is said, will shelter forty persons. This sounds like a traveler’s story, but single leaves of this tree have been brought to this country, and one of them will completely cover the ceiling of a good-sized room. ”

“ One palm, an Astrocaryum, has spines six inches in length up its stem. These spines, black in colour, hard, unbreakable, fall in the bush and spike the foot of the unfortunate who may tread on them. On the palm-stem itself they will wound the unwary hand incautiously or involuntarily thrust in the thicket. Many of the climbing plants have thorns or hook-like prickles, and perhaps the worst are the many kinds of twining river-side palms, whose barbed leaves will tear both flesh and clothing. ”

“ Some palms have no flowers at all, while another known as the Talipot palm throws up a branching inflorescence to a height of thirty feet above the foliage, and it has been estimated that such an inflorescence has included as many as sixty millions of flowers. ”