Palm grove

“ It is for the most part a hard sandy or gravelly plain, intersected by low rocky ranges, and either barren or productive only of some sapless shrubs and of a low thin grass. Occasionally, however, there are oases, where the fertility is considerable. Such an oasis is the region about Palmyra itself, which derived its name from the palm groves in the vicinity; here the soil is good, and a large tract is even now under cultivation. ”

“ The land at the head of the bay might be made a fruitful field if cultivated, as it is covered by rich loam, and water is so abundant below the surface that the Arabs have only to scrape holes a few inches deep in the gravel near the shore in order to give their camels drink. The palm grove here is the largest we had seen since leaving Egypt. Doubtless wheat, maize, olives, indigo, and cotton might be cultivated with success; yet nothing is grown but the palm, which requires little culture ”

“ The whole grove is still wrapped in its wintry sleep, and one can look through the naked branches of the fruit trees into its furthest reaches. Only the palm leaves overhead and the ground at one's feet are green; the middle spaces bleak and brown. But, do what he will, a man who has lived in the tropics becomes rather blasé in the matter of palms. Besides, there are no flints to be found here....
[ILLUSTRATION: Olives in the Oasis]
Yet such is the abundance of water that these Gafsa gardens have a character different from most African plantations. ”

“ Wherever a well has been sunk, a little garden has been made, fenced in with a wall, and planted with palms. There are perhaps a dozen of these outlying farms occupying two or three acres each. In one place there are four or five houses with their gardens together, which have the look of a village. The whole of the basin, except these oases, is dazzlingly white, showing the palm groves as black patches on its surface. ”

“ The different groups of the palm wood are interspersed with pieces of meadow land, watered by seven wells, and upon which are ten mean huts occupied by Arab herdsmen. The wood stretches for some distance over the broad surface of the Wadi, which, when swollen, frequently uproots many trees. In the entire Wadi there are some thirty fresh-water wells for the supply of the vegetable gardens, where onions, tomatoes, melons, etc., are grown. It contains, too, numerous young palm groves of recent plantation. Immediately beyond the point to which irrigation extends, the barren desert again commences. ”

“ Some are solitary and are rarely found forming groups with other trees of their species. Others, like the date palm, are quite gregarious and often form extensive clumps. Others still are said to be “social,” because they occupy extensive tracts almost to the entire exclusion of other kinds of trees. Various species of Mauritia, Attalea, Cocoa and Copernicia are social palms, and the palmares—palm groves—formed by them constitute the most attractive features of tropical landscapes. ”

“ Before us on the right lies, in the bosom of the hills, and amid the most beautiful grove of palms, a little farm, a Cuban farm, with palm-leaf-thatched roof, and our path leads through groups of cocoa-palms, laden with fruit. Now we descend a little hill, and now on the right of the descent, at a short distance from the path, we find the ruins of a stone wall and a well. All around grow, in picturesque confusion, cocoa-palms, mamay, and mango-trees, cypresses, ceibas, and many other species of trees. We advance down the little hill, and towards the farm ”

“ At sunset the scene is exquisite, the hills turn from pink to mauve, and from mauve to purple, and their peaks are sharply outlined against the gold and crimson sky; long violet shadows spread across the rosy-tinted sand-hills, and the palm groves seem to take on a more vivid shade of green. ”

“ But all had lapsed again into forest. A group of enormous Palmistes stands on a plateau, flat, and yet lofty and healthy. The soil is exceeding fertile. There are wells and brooks of pure water all around. The land slopes down for hundreds of feet in wooded gorges, full of cedar and other admirable timber, with Palmistes towering over them everywhere. Far away lies the lowland; and every breeze of heaven sweeps over the crests of the hills. So one peculiarly tall palm was chosen for a central landmark, an ornament to the town square such as no capital in Europe can boast. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then they bow like willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as if every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the royal crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid sun-flood breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like mountain water among boulders. ”

“ After a distance of fourteen or fifteen miles the land gradually becomes a little higher, and steep embankments of a brown or reddish clay rise to some ten or twenty feet above the water. The low palm thickets of the swampy region disappear, and a vegetation of splendid trees, mostly exogenous, overhung with blooming vines, takes their place. Flowery garlands, swung from branch to branch, hang over the stream, while now and then the slender shaft of one of the tallest species of the palm tribe wafts its little crown of feathery leaves high over the gorgeous masses of the heavier foliage. ”

“ Its age is incalculable, being a tree of very slow growth, and continually multiplying itself, so that it may be said to live forever. There is one remarkable avenue of Palmyra palms in these grounds, which we have never seen excelled in beauty of effect even in the plantation avenues of Cuba, where the family of the palm form the pride of the coffee planters. Here was also to be seen specimens of the sacred bo-tree and the camphor-tree of great size ”

“ Millennial oaks interknotted their roots below its surface, and vouchsafed protection to many a frailer growth of shrub or tree,—wild orange, water-willow, palmetto, locust, pomegranate, and many trailing tendrilled things, both green and gray. Then,—perhaps about half a century ago,—a few white fishermen cleared a place for themselves in this grove, and built a few palmetto cottages, with boat-houses and a wharf, facing the bayou. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of all the trees, beautiful either in form, height, or the splendid colour of their flowers, so profusely scattered over the face of nature in tropical climes, perhaps none has excited more interest, both for its elegant and majestic growth, as well as for its utility, than this palm, producing fruit, shade, utensils, and numerous other articles, to supply the wants of mankind. These palms impart a grandeur to the tropical landscape; their stems, towering to a great elevation, are crowned at the summit by elegant fronds of gigantic character ”

“ Their long, feathery leaves spreading out in great clumps from the buried stock, and waving with lithe motion before the strong sea-breeze of the Indies, are the very embodiment of those deceptive ideal tropics which, alas! are to be found in actual reality nowhere on earth save in the artificial palm-houses at Kew, and the Casino Gardens at too entrancing Monte Carlo.
For the first two or three years the young palms must be well watered, and the soil around them opened; after which the tall, graceful stem begins to rise rapidly into the open air. ”

“ Bamboo poles form the framework and support the projecting roof, which gives shade to the house. These huts lay hidden in a jungle formed of bamboo groves, whose straight spiky branches look like the fingers of an outstretched hand pointing downwards. Banana-trees there were, whose palm leaves, fringed and jagged, are only distinguished by this from the ordinary palm, and cocoa-nut groves. These had their golden halo of fruit under the shade of their fringing, feathery arms, and notches cut in their slender stems by the natives, who climb up by them to gather the fruit. ”

“ A Palm Forest in the Tropics.
Certain palms affect the open savanna, others seek the solitudes of the forest, while still others are most frequently found midway between these two—that is, on the belt of land that separates forest from plain. Some palms, like the cocoa, seem to require an atmosphere that is slightly saline, and thrive best near the ocean’s shore. Others apparently attain their greatest development in marshes and lowlands, while others again demand the arid plain or the lofty mountain plateau. ”

“ From the crowded lanes, with their busy markets and hybrid population, we drive through the long line of campongs bordering the palm-fringed coast. The bamboo walls of the fragile houses, standing on stilts or rocking on poles in the rippling sea, show a multitude of fantastic designs, the broad roofs of thatched grass or plaited palm-leaves extending in penthouse eaves above carven panels let into the gables. A riot of glorious vegetation frames and overshadows the clustering huts of deftly-woven cane. ”

“ It grows best in sunny open groves on ground covered with ferns, chokecherry, brier rose, rubus, mints, goldenrods, etc. Few, if any, of the famous oak groves of Europe, however extensive, surpass these in the size and strength and bright, airy beauty of the trees, the color and fragrance of the vegetation beneath them, the quality of the light that fills their leafy arches, and in the grandeur of the surrounding scenery. The finest grove in the park is in one of the little Yosemite valleys of the Tuolumne Cañon, a few miles above Hetch-Hetchy. ”

“ I had heard that such existed in South America, Africa, and in the Indian countries, and I had read some descriptions of them. But I now perceived that the most glowing description can impart but a very imperfect idea of the beautiful reality, for no work of Nature I have ever looked upon has given me more delight than this—the aspect of a palm-wood. There are many species of palms that do not grow in forests, but only as single individuals, or groups of two or three together, in the midst of other trees. ”

“ The only palm forest in Europe. It numbers more than 115000 trees, and is also a Moorish heritage. They caused the water to flow to this spot from a distance of 5 kilometres in order to create an oasis here in the desert—for the district is to-day little else. Palms must grow with their roots in the water and their crowns in the glaring sun. For years no rain has fallen on this spot. ”

“ Nowhere can one find a more beautiful scene of tropical vegetation in its full glory, and no artist ever mingled{303} colors that could convey an adequate idea of nature’s gorgeousness here.
The most beautiful thing in the tropics is a young palm-tree. The old ones are more graceful than any of our foliage plants, but they all show signs of decay. The young ones, so supple as to bend before the winds, are the ideal of grace and loveliness, as picturesque in repose as they are in motion. ”

“ Almost anything will grow in the desert, if it gets enough water. The growth of well-cared-for grass in Palm Springs amazes even the natives. If the earth is spaded and the seed planted on a Monday, the green shoots will be up on Wednesday, and on the next Monday, one week after the planting, the lawn will be thick and luxuriant and badly in need of mowing.
Clouds were hanging low over the city--or the "village," as habitues call it. I parked the car on the main street, near the famous Desert Inn, and we got out of the car. ”

“ In pictures of tropical scenery we see these trees standing on the banks of a stream, or in the vicinity of the sea, near some rude hut constructed of Bamboo and thatched with the broad leaves of the Fan Palm. In some warm countries Nature affords the inhabitants an almost gratuitous subsistence from the fruit of the different Palms,—a plantation of Dates and Cocoa-nuts supplying the principal wants of the owner and his family, during the life of the trees. ”

“ Every species of palm tree, every plant known in the tropics, finds here a home. On the south side it is bordered by the river, with terraces overlooking the desert wastes of the Sahara beyond; running streams of water intersect the garden and afford the means of the constant irrigation which is necessary. The borders and walks are wonderfully kept by an army of Arab gardeners, so vigilant in their attention that it is almost impossible for a falling leaf to reach the ground before it is caught and removed ”

“ Notwithstanding the large tracts of cultivated plantations and farms, which make this beautiful island a perfect garden, it has extensive forests of great beauty and value. The palm, whether found in clusters or alone, is always a magnificent tree, and is useful for a [Pg 62] variety of purposes—its trunk for building, its leaves for thatching, and several kinds of convenient manufactures, and its seeds for food. Mahogany abounds in some parts, and other kinds of hard wood suitable for ship building, a business which has been carried on very extensively in the island. ”