Palmetto

“ The palmetto blossom is not obtrusive. Its flower stalk springs from among the leaves and does not lift above them. The blooms are{148} tiny and yellowish white. I speak of the loquat as having the same odor, but Southern people always say it reminds them of the Madeira vine.
Following the odor of the palmetto blooms come two butterflies, both common to the North and the South, one a monarch, the other the tiger swallowtail, Papilio turnus. The turnus circles the pool and finally lights on the willow blooms across the stream. ”

“ These and other phenomena made her drop her paddle at intervals and clap her hands softly in an ecstasy beyond mere exclamation. How restfully green was the world; how limpid the water; how royally blue the heavens! Listening, she could hear the soft stirring of palmetto fronds in the forests; the celestial song of a little bird that sat on a sparkle-berry bush, its delicate long-curved bill tilted skyward. Then the deep note of splendour flashed across the scheme of sound and colour as a crimson cardinal alighted near her, crest erect. ”

“ Palmetto-hammocks, live-oak groves, cypress, pine, bay, and magnolia form an interchanging picture; vines hang festooned from tree to tree; wild flowers tempt the eye on the near banks; and one is constantly longing for the boat to delay here or there: but on goes her steady course, the pictured scene 258 around constantly changing. Every now and then the woods break away for a little space, and one sees orange and banana orchards, and houses evidently newly built. ”

“ These scaly trunks are often full of ferns, wild flowers, and vines, which hang in fantastic draperies down their sides, and form leafy and flowery pillars. The palmetto-hammocks, as they are called, are often miles in extent along the banks of the rivers. The tops of the palms rise up round in the distance as so many hay-cocks, and seeming to rise one above another far as the eye can reach. 254
We have never been so fortunate as to be able to explore one of these palmetto-groves. The boat sails with a provoking quickness by many a scene that one longs to dwell upon, study, and investigate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have come over it three times; and each time the varieties of shrubs and flowers, grasses and curious leaves, were a never-failing study and delight. Long reaches of green moist land form perfect flower-gardens, whose variety of bloom changes with every month. The woods hang full of beautiful climbing plants. The coral honeysuckle and the red bignonia were in season now. Through glimpses and openings here and there we could see into forests of wild orange-trees; and palmetto-palms raised their scaly trunks and gigantic green fans. ”

“ Meanwhile, we were leaving the millet-fields behind us—stubbles, an occasional stalk three feet high, no lying for birds—and were in a country of wild lavender and stunted bushes: these consisted chiefly of cistus or else palmetto, a little dwarf palm, the fruit of which is eaten by goats, and the root by natives as a vegetable, while its fibrous leaves make rope and baskets and a hundred things. A bleak undulating country, which ran up into rocky blue gorges and grey peaks on the right hand. ”

“ He is a beast that may be trusted to stand for any length of time without an attempt at motion. Catch him running away! So we leave Fly, and determine to explore the branch.
The short palmettoes here are grown to the height of fifteen feet. Their roots look like great scaly serpents, which, after knotting and convoluting a while, suddenly raise their crests high in air, and burst forth into a graceful crest of waving green fans. These waving clumps of fan-like leaves are the first and peculiar feature of the foliage. ”

“ The way from the beach back to the river was a very hard one, and a good deal longer than Adam had expected it to be.
For a time they walked over loose, soft sand, which was piled into little hills by the wind, then they came to a thick growth of palmetto-trees, the ground being covered with underbrush of the most disagreeable kind, consisting mainly of a low bush, called the “saw-palmetto,” which was made up of leaves three or four feet long, with sharp teeth at each edge. ”

“ THROUGH THE GRILLE
None of us had ever been so far south before and the palmetto trees were a great astonishment to us.
"They don't look natural to me, somehow," declared Dum, "but kind of manufactured. The trunks with that strange criss-cross effect might have been made by kindergarten children and as for the leaves—I don't believe they are real."
"It does seem ridiculous for people to have these great things twenty feet high, growing in their back yards when we nurse them with such care at home and are so proud if we can get one to grow three feet. ”

“ Failing, then, even the probability that Hubert ever saw the palmetto growing, we must credit Jan with the painting of this plant, which, like all the other exotics, must have been carefully studied from nature, for they are represented in most minute, careful, and conscientious manner, and are absolutely true to {37} life. ”

“ Marks quotes in his paper read at the Royal Society of Literature, June 24, 1903, Mr. Luffmann, Director of the School of Horticulture in Melbourne, says that the triangle formed by Seville, Cordova, and Osuna, is "a piece of country which is literally overrun by the plant," and that the root of the palmetto is commonly used in those parts as fuel. In Italy it is but of rare occurrence, though it grows in some of the islands of the Mediterranean; whilst in the parts of Spain and Portugal visited by Jan it is almost impossible for the visitor to avoid seeing it. ”

“ No sooner have the seeds of that plant become black, or fully ripe, than the Florida Jay 445 makes them almost its sole food for a time, and wherever a patch of these troublesome plants are to be seen, there also is the Jay to be met with. I have called the Palmetto a troublesome plant, because its long, narrow, and serrated leaves are so stiff, and grow so close together, that it is extremely difficult to walk among them, the more so that it usually grows in places where the foot is seldom put without immediately sinking in the mire to a depth of several inches. ”

“ Predominant among these, as elsewhere throughout a large part of the Mediterranean region, is the palmetto, or dwarf palm (Chamærops humilis) . Where unmolested by animals, and protected from the periodic fires that the native herdsmen renew for the sake of getting herbage for their cattle, it forms a thick trunk, ten or twelve feet in height, which probably takes a long time to attain its full size; but in the open places it is commonly stemless, and covers the ground with its radiating tufts of stiff fan-shaped leaves. Many plants of the lily tribe abound ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a matter of fact, Nature herself invented the folded fan, as she may be said to suggest every invention. The palmetto leaf in its undeveloped shape is pleated and packed as neatly and completely as any folding-fan ever made. ”

“ In the moist depressions, or valleys, near our encampment, we also found another variety of [166] palm, which often stands the traveler, under the tropics, in good stead, as a substitute for other and better vegetable food. I mean the Palmetto Royal, or Mountain Cabbage (Areca oleracea) , which has justly been called the “Queen of the Forest.” It grows to a great height, frequently no thicker than a man’s thigh, yet rising upward of a hundred and fifty feet in the air. No other tree in the world equals it in height or beauty. ”

“ The traveler who, for the first time, visits a southern latitude, has his attention most strongly arrested by the new and strange forms of vegetable life. I shall mention some of those which give the scenery of Florida its most peculiar features.
The most abundant is the saw palmetto, chamærops Adansonii. This vigorous plant is found in all parts of the peninsula, flourishing equally well in the pine barren and the hammock. It throws up its sharp-edged leaves some four or five feet in length, from a large, round root, which is, in fact, a trunk, extending along the surface of the ground. ”

“ Some of these trees and shrubs serve a utilitarian end in art and medicine. The live oak is famous in shipbuilding. The palmetto, or cabbage-palmetto, as it is called, resists destruction by worms, and is used for facing wharves. ”

“ Palmette, pal′met, n. an ornament, somewhat like a palm-leaf, cut or painted on mouldings, &c. [Fr.]
Palmetto, pal-met′ō, n. a name for several fan-palms, esp. the cabbage-palm of Florida, &c.: a hat made of palmetto-leaves. [Sp.,—L. palma.]
Palmigrade, pal′mi-grād, adj. noting animals that walk on the sole of the foot and not merely on the toes: plantigrade. [L. palma, palm, gradi, to walk.]
Palmiped, pal′mi-pēd, adj. web-footed.—n. a web-footed or swimming bird:—pl. Palmip′edes (-ēz) . [L. palma, palm of the hand, pes, pedis, the foot.] ”

“ The [42] most conspicuous shrubs are lentisk, oak scrub, Juniperus phœnicea, and several Cisti; but the palmetto successfully contends against its rivals, and in some places quite covers the soil. It disappears, however, before one reaches the middle height of the mountain, and the limit of its free growth, not taking account of a few scattered and stunted specimens, was found to be 1,227 feet (374 mètres) above the sea. The prevailing species, however, were small shrubby Leguminosæ. Of these the most trying to the temper of the botanist is Calycotome villosa. ”

“ Palms do not grow around Brooklyn, where I live; but the children of North Carolina, and further south, know their straight slim palmetto-tree, bearing a cluster of large frondlike leaves at the top, as we know a chestnut-tree. ”

“ No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto ”

“ They are evergreen, and in May are covered with great white blossoms, something like pond-lilies, and with very much the same odor. The trees at the North called magnolias give no idea whatever of what these are. They are giants among flowers; seem worthy to be trees of heaven.
Then there are all sorts of things to be got out of the woods. There are palmetto-leaves to be pressed and dried, and made into fans; there is the long wire-grass, which can be sewed into mats, baskets, and various little fancy articles, by busy fingers. ”

“ Palms are generally found only in small groups and plantations, but there are certain species of this family which are associated in extensive woods, and constitute, in some respects, one of the most charming descriptions of forest-scenery. The Dwarf Palms of the sub-tropical regions are chiefly assembled in masses, of which the Palmetto of Florida and the Chaemerops of the South of Europe are conspicuous examples. The true Palms are likewise sometimes associated in forests, though not generally of a social habit. ”

“ The palmettos seem to give up the struggle to main{248}tain a hold upon the slender soil as you swing in bird-like flight from islet to islet, and to be replaced in part anyway by the slender-stemmed silver palm, which looks a bit like a spindling scion of a noble race. The red wood of the royal poinciana trees is everywhere visible, and these in the blooming season make the favored spots a flame of crimson fire. Beneath is a wild tangle of shrubbery, whose components are hardly to be differentiated in passing. ”

“ Sudworth [113] enumerates the following as attaining to the dignity of trees in the United States:
Cabbage Palmetto (Sabal palmetto) . Silvertop Palmetto (Thrinax microcarpa) . Silktop Palmetto (Thrinax parviflora) . Mexican palmetto (Sabal mexicana) . Sargent Palm (Pseudophœnix sargentii) . Fanleaf Palm (Washingtonia filifera) . Royal Palm (Oredoya regia) .
[p186]
FOOTNOTES
[111] Coulter, "Plants," p. 241.
[112] "Marine Wood Borers," Snow Trans. Am. Soc. C. E., Vol. XL, pp. 195 and 204.
[113] "Check List," U. S. Forestry Bul. No. 17. ”

“ For beauty, however, it is almost unrivalled, being richly adorned by nature and lavishly beautified by the arts of man. The large cabbage palmettos that grow up wildly along its coquina banks were suffered to remain, and between them avenues were laid out and covered with shells, so that from the river there is a lovely prospect of gleaming walks ramifying a shore of brilliant green. ”

“ The straight-stemmed palmettos stood out with picturesque clearness against the great level fields, with their straight furrows running out of sight. Figures of men and women followed the furrow paths slowly; here were men and horses bending to the ploughshare, and there women and children sowed with steady hand the rich seed of their crops. ”

“ Notable among the useful forms are the date palm with its pulpy fruit, the cocoa-nut palm with its huge seeds *ull of edible endosperm, the sago palm whose pith yields the starchy sago and the ivory palm whose hard endosperm is the vegetable ivory. Palm honey, palm-wine and palm-oil are also well-known products. The leaves and stems of many of the species are used for making hats, baskets, fans About 60 species of hardy palms are grown in California. Of our few native palms the most common is the palmetto. Palms vary in height from three to 100 feet. ”