Palmistry

“ 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. ”

“ I wonder that no one has ever discovered in the cocoa-palm a meet emblem of charity. Of all plants that grow, none asks so little, or gives so largely. It matters not how dry and barren is the shallow soil, or how briny the coral-sand, washed by every rising tide, the hardy palm strikes its roots among the fragments of coral, and, bending to the gale, weathers the wild storms, and yields its generous increase as abundantly as its more fortunate brethren in the rich soil of sheltered, well—watered valleys. The poorest islander on the loneliest atoll, possessed of a few cocoa-palms, can exist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You may observe that, whenever an artist wants to make a tropical picture, he puts a group of cocoa-nut palms in the foreground, as much as to say, "You see there's no deception; these are the genuine, unadulterated tropics." But as to painting the tropics without the palms, he might just as well think of painting the desert without the camels. At eight or ten years old the tree flowers, bearing blossoms of the ordinary palm-type, degraded likenesses of the lilies and yuccas, greenish and inconspicuous, but visited by insects for the sake of their pollen. ”

“ OF all the graceful, beautiful and bizarre plants that grow in the tropics none are more graceful and none give such character to tropical vegetation as do the palms. Varied in form and size, adapting themselves to a wide range of elevation, sweeping up from the sandy shores of the sea across marshes, flood-plains and well-watered forests, over barren and thirsty deserts to the subalpine slopes of lofty mountains, they are, above all plants, the ones that give character and picturesqueness to every tropical landscape. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Every vegetable and plant are so peculiarly significant of the low latitudes, that we must pause for a moment to notice them.
The tall, stately palm, the king of the tropical forest, with its tufted head, like a bunch of ostrich feathers, bending its majestic form here and there over the verdant and luxuriant undergrowth, the mahogany tree, the stout lignumvit‘, the banana, the fragrant and beautiful orange and lemon, and the long, impregnable hedge of the dagger aloe, all go to show us that we are in the sunny clime of the tropics. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ One does not behold the graceful waving of the cocoa palm, the broad and vivid green foliage of the plantain, nor the beautiful luxuriance of a tropical vegetation, which delight the vision of the wearied voyager on a first approach to a tropical region, where the soil teems with cultivation, or a profuse natural vegetation extending from the loftiest mountains even to the ocean’s brink. ”

“ When a coral reef has reached the surface, the formation of an island instantly begins; but it necessarily takes a long time ere this island becomes habitable by man. Among the first plants that raise their heads to the sea-breeze is the graceful cocoa-nut palm. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the Old World, the rich islands of the Eastern Archipelago produce the greatest number of Palms; in the New, the great valleys of the Amazon and Orinoco on the main land, are most prolific.
In proportion to its extent, America is the most productive palm country; for while the Old World, including Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Eastern Archipelago, with New Holland and all the Pacific Islands, contain 307 species, the New World or America alone has 275 different kinds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Palms, bananas, and arborescent ferns constitute three forms of especial beauty peculiar to every portion of the 304tropical zone; wherever heat and moisture co-operate, vegetation is most exuberant and vegetable forms present the greatest diversity. Hence South America is the most beautiful portion of the palm world. In Asia the palm form is rare, in consequence perhaps of a considerable part of the Indian continent beneath the equator having been destroyed and covered by the ocean in some earlier revolution of our planet. ”

“ Feet vie with fingers in marvellous capacity, and to see a native cocoanut gatherer run up the polished stem of a swaying palm, with greater ease and swiftness than anyone shows in mounting a ladder, transports thought to the distant past, when the ancestral stock, disembarking from the rude canoes at nightfall, sought an evening meal on the edge of the palm-forest, bowed beneath the weight of green and yellow nuts a hundred feet overhead. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let man be what he will, nature in the tropics is always grand. Palms were growing in the greatest luxuriance, of every known species, from the cabbage towering up into the sky to the fan-palm of the desert whose fronds are reservoirs of water.
Of exogenous trees the majority were leguminous in [Pg 149] some shape or other, forming flowers like a pea or vetch and hanging their seeds in pods; yet in shape and foliage they distanced far the most splendid ornaments of an English park. ”

“ After walking a mile we reached the outskirts of a vast forest, but not one of those forests of fungi which bordered Port Gräuben.
Here was the vegetation of the tertiary period in its fullest blaze of magnificence. Tall palms, belonging to species no longer living, splendid palmacites, firs, yews, cypress trees, thujas, representatives of the conifers, were linked together by a tangled network of long climbing plants. A soft carpet of moss and hepaticas luxuriously clothed the soil. ”