wonder plants
TRANSCRIPT
WONDER PLANTS AND
PLANT WONDERS
A. Hyatt Verrill
With foreword by Rod Turner
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FOREWORD The first thing that grabbed me about this book was simply it’s
title. “Wonder Plants and Plant Wonders”. I had a little
knowledge about some strange plants, as gardening and nature is
my passion, but I soon found what little that was. Plants DRIVE
life on earth. What do I mean by this?
Well, the plant leaf is the only place on the entire planet where
truly new substance is created. This new stuff is made with the
energy of the SUN. With the exception of nuclear fission, all
other energy consumed on this planet comes from the energy of
the sun, and food for all animal life starts with the new substance
created by the plant.
So in my mind plants are pretty wonderful already. But the great
title got me in and what I found was that plants are even more
wonderful than I ever knew. The diversity of different plants on
this planet is nothing short of amazing.
What is even more amazing is what these plants do, how they
live, how they have made special niches for themselves. How
they depend on others and how others depend on them. How
some plants can even tell the difference between two humans and
react accordingly. The many and varied ways of ensuring their
survival, sometimes through some rather extreme behaviour,
really makes you wonder about that evolution theory!
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On the other side of the coin is how mankind has depended on
plants for the advancement of civilisation and obviously for food.
The myriad of amazing ways that man has found uses for these
plants products is a testament to the inventiveness of all
civilisations and their inventiveness to produce alcohol from just
about anything is also a rather common theme! What also really
got me was how the hell people found out how to prepare
poisonous plants to make them safe or even how to process them
into some of our most delicious and sought after delicacies. Sort
of like turning lead into gold really.
Now this tome was written quite a few years ago and some of the
amazing uses of some of our wonderful plants have fallen by the
wayside due to our petrochemical age, but when the oil runs
out……. you’ll know what to do. Anyway, we can thank the
existence of our oil deposits to, you guessed it, plant wonders of
the past.
After reading this book you are left with a great respect for plants
and the strange workings nature and I trust that you will be
empowered to try in your own small way to halt the sensless
destruction of the very life on earth that we depend on for our
own survival.
I hope you are also as gob smacked with this book as much as I
am.
Rod Turner
August 2005
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INTRODUCTION
PLANTS are the oldest form of life on our planet. Millions of
years before the first animal life appeared on earth or in the sea
there were plants of many forms, and ages before the great
dinosaurs existed, the mountains and plains, the valleys and the
swamps were hidden under a wealth of plant life. There were
great trees, giant ferns, tangled vines, immense flowers and
countless strange forms of plant life which vanished millions of
years ago, yet we may still see them to-day, for like the monsters
of the past many of the ancient plants were preserved in the form
of fossils.
Had there been no plants on our earth in those far distant times
there would have been no animals, for as every school-child
knows plants are essential to animal life. Not only do they give
off oxygen which animals breathe, and consume the poisonous
carbon dioxide gas which animals exhale and which is produced
by our coal, gas, and fuels, but they also provide food for in-
numerable creatures from insects to mankind. In fact, in some
ways, plants are the most important things on earth. And
although we may not realize it, there are plants everywhere.
There are plants on barren deserts and bare rocks; plants amid the
eternal snows and plants in steaming geysers and volcanic pools;
plants in the sea and plants in the air, and plants in our food. For
that matter there are plants in our own bodies, for
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INTRODUCTION many of the diseases of human beings are caused by plant
growths, and plants in yeast are what cause our bread to rise.
Our most important and valuable foods are made from
plants; plants furnish us with most of our clothing, our buildings,
our furniture, and our fuel. The gasoline we use in our
automobiles, the oil we use to lubricate them, and the oil we burn
in our furnaces, our locomotives, and our steamships; the coal we
use, our paper, and countless other necessities and luxuries are all
derived from plants.
We are so accustomed to plants that we seldom stop to
think what very remarkable things they are. We see a spreading
oak- or elm-tree and welcome its shade or admire its beauty, but
seldom do we marvel at its growth or think of the story the tree
could tell if it could only speak of the scenes it has witnessed, the
historical events that have transpired since it was a tiny seedling
struggling for life among the weeds. Yet many of our everyday
trees were good-sized saplings when Columbus sailed westward
from Spain in search of the New World, while the enormous trees
of California were venerable giants when Julius Caesar was
conquering the Gauls.
When we eat potatoes or corn or drink a cup of cocoa or nibble
a chocolate-candy how many of us realize that these familiar
foods have strange fascinating stories as romantic and interesting
as any tale of fiction? We may think that the life of plants is dull
and lacking in thrills, interest or adventure, but if the plants, even
in our gardens, could tell us their stories we would
INTRODUCTION
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find their lives are filled with most exciting adventures,
hairbreadth escapes, wars and battles, tragedies and drama,
accidents and disease, hunger and thirst, luxuries and privations,
almost everything that enters into the lives of human beings. And
we would learn that every plant is a hero, that in order to survive
it has battled and struggled against countless foes, against terrific
odds, and that for every plant that has been victorious thousands
of others have died.
We may think that plants are lacking in intelligence, that
they merely live or die, flower and fruit, in their allotted way. But
there we make a grave mistake. Practically all plants possess
certain senses: the sense of touch or feeling, the sense of hunger
and thirst, the sense of taste and often the senses of smell and
hearing. Indeed, some scientists believe that certain plants can
feel pain, that they can recognize certain persons, that they
appreciate kindness and care. And it is certain that some plants
possess intelligence and learn to profit by experience.
In fact, the story of plants is one of the most fascinating of
all tales and the best part of it is that the stories of no two plants
are the same. The tiny marine plant that makes the Red Sea red,
the plants that cause our bread to rise, the plants we cultivate for
our food, the plants we know as trees, the plants that cure our ills,
the plants that sting or poison us, the plants whose flowers give
us pleasure - all have their own stories and their own histories,
and many of these are strange almost beyond belief.
It would require many books -- or a book larger than the
largest dictionary-to tell the stories of all the
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INTRODUCTION plants or for that matter the stories of strange or remarkable
plants. But there are plants with such very strange habits or
which are so remarkable in other ways that they deserve a place
in the "Who's Who" of the plant world. In this book I have tried
to tell the stories of some of these strangest of strange plants as
well as the stories of other plants which are interesting and
remarkable for various reasons.
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CONTENTS
Page FOREWORD. . . . . . . . . ii INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . iv I. WHAT IS A PLANT? . . . . . 1
II. THE PLANT DEPARTMENT STORE . . 19
III. THE MOST USEFUL TREES . . . . 33
IV. TREES THAT GROW WHILE YOU WAIT 46
V. PLANTS THAT CURE AND KILL . . . 56
VI. PLANT GIANTS . . . . . . . . 71
VII. INTELLIGENT PLANTS . . . . . . 89
VIII. PLANTS THAT BUILD RAFTS . . . . 102
IX. STRANGE PARTNERS . . . . . . 114
X. PLANTS THAT SAIL SEAS . . . . . 180
Xl. PLANTS THAT WE EAT . . . . . . 110
XII. WONDER PLANTS THAT WE DRINK . 158
XIII. MAGIC PLANTS . . . . . . . . 179
XIV. PLANTS WITH STRANGE USES . . . . 192
XV. PLANT TRAVELERS . . . . . . 211
XVI. PLANT PUBLIC ENEMIES . . . . . 228
XVII. WONDER PLANTS OF COMMERCE AND
INDUSTRY . . . . . . . . 253
XVIII. THE FIRST of ALL CALENDARS . . . 271
XIX. THE MOST WONDERFUL PLANTS . . . 279
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
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Chapter I
WHAT IS A PLANT? Do you know a plant when you see it? That may sound like a
very foolish question, for most of us are quite sure we can easily
recognize a plant.
But can we?
How can we identify a plant? For that matter, what is a plant?
What are its earmarks, its characteristics which are infallible
proof that it is a plant and not an animal.
Why, that's easy, you may exclaim. In the first place, plants grew
in one spot, they are fixed and cannot move about at will,
whereas animals do move about and are not rooted to the ground.
In the second place, plants grow and spread by means of seeds,
roots, and shoots, whereas animals increase by means of eggs, or
young born alive. In the third place, plants have foliage and
flowers which sprout from roots or stems, whereas animals retain
their same forms and merely increase or expand in size. Finally,
plants obtain their food from chemicals in the soil and gases in
the air, whereas animals feed upon other animals or upon plants.
And, you may add, plants are provided with the substance known
m chlorophyll which makes them green and enables them to
absorb energy from the sun, whereas animals lack chlorophyll
but obtain energy from animal or plant food.
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All very well, but not one of these means of identifying plants is infallible. Many animals are as fixed or rooted as are plants, as for example the corals, gorgonias (sea-fans and searods) bryozoa, sponges, and others. And many plants possess the power of independent movement. The lizard tree (see Chapter VII), walking ferns, and many other plants travel far from the original plant, while there are plants such as the diatom
Diatom (greatly magnified)
and many bacteria which swim freely in the water or other liquids. Not all plants spread by means of seeds, roots, or shoots. Many forms of plant life increase by means of spores which are a form of egg, and there are animals such as the hydroids which propagate by shoots or buds. When it comes to a matter of foliage and flowers there are countless plants, such as the fungi or mushrooms, as well as cacti and other plants, which do not
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possess foliage, while the fungi and certain other plants do not
have flowers. On the other hand there are forms of animal life,
such as the hydroidea, which spread about by branches and
shoots and produce buds or flowers which become free animals.
As far as food is concerned, how about the carnivorous plants,
the plants that devour insects, the parasitic plants that secure
sustenance from other plants living or dead? And there are many
plants which feed upon living creatures. One such is a fungus that
infests the
Edible fungus on grub
grubs or larvae of a beetle in the Pacific Islands. These queer
rodlike vegetable growths that spring from the head of the grub
and devour its tissues are deemed a great delicacy by the natives.
And there are innumerable plants which feed upon our own
tissues and those of various other animals. Moles, many skin
diseases, the well-known athlete's foot, and many ulcers are the
result of tiny plants which infest our persons and may even cause
death. Then there are the legumes, the peas, beans, clovers, and
so on which depend upon other plants known as bacteria to
supply them with nitrates which the bacteria manufacture from
nitrogen obtained from the air, while their hosts repay them for
this service by providing carbon foods which the bacteria cannot
make for themselves. It is true that the majority of the larger,
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better known plants do contain chlorophyl, but many plants such
as fungi, bacteria, and the well-known Inthan pipe or beech drops
lack this substance. On the other hand there are animals which
are also provided with chlorophyl. The grasshoppers, katydids,
many larvae, the funny walking-sticks and the remarkable
walking leaves all contain chlorophyl, as do certain marine
animals. Even more strange is the fact that just as green
chlorophyl of plants becomes "ripe" and turns red or yellow in
autumn or on ripening fruits, so the insects provided with this
sun-energy-absorbing material "ripen" and become red or yellow
in autumn or under certain conditions.
Now then can we distinguish a plant from an animal? The answer
is that we can't, that is, not always. Even the most scientific of
scientists cannot say definitely whether certain forms of growth
belong in the vegetable or the animal kingdom.
Every one who has been in the woods must have noticed the
patches of moist slimy growths which occur on dead trees,
stamps, logs, decaying leaves, under stones, or on damp black
soil. Some of these are white, others greyish, while many are
most gorgeously colored with yellow, orange, or red; and they
vary in size from tiny specks to masses covering areas of a square
foot or more. Probably you have passed them by as some sort of
fungus and of little interest. But the slime-molds, as they are
called, are among the mast remarkable growths and are, perhaps,
the greatest of all puzzles in Nature, for they belong between the
plants and animals and scientists have never decided which they
are. Ordinarily the slime-molds are merely
masses of naked protoplasm called "plasmodium" and
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crawl or move about like giant amoeba but very often they may
come to a halt, cease traveling and produce very complex and
beautiful spore-cases very similar to those of some of the mosses.
Perhaps you may think that such slime-molds and the fungi are
the very lowest forms of plant life. But there you are wrong. If
the slime-molds are truly plants then they are high in the
Slime-molds (1/2)
plant world, for they embody many animal characteristics.
Just where the fungi or mushrooms belong is a mooted question,
for these strange plants, as well as the bacteria, are laws unto
themselves and follow none of the accepted rules of plant life as
a whole.
But aside from these outlaws of the plant world the lowest forms
of plants are the algae, or so-called seaweeds This popular name
is far from appropriate, for many algae are freshwater plants, and
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Various form of fungi (1/3)
there are various algae which thrive on land or elsewhere instead
of in water.
Among these are the tiny scarlet plants which live upon snow and
cause the "red snow" which often arouses fear of calamities
among ignorant or superstitious people. The color of the Red Sea
is also caused by algae. Other minute forms of these plants
produce the lovely blue and turquoise colors of tropical seas,
while another alga lives on the hair of sloths and protects the
creatures by its green color.
Few plants vary more greatly in form, size, and cater than do the
algae. Many are so minute that they are scarcely visible to the
naked eye, while others, such
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as the deep sea kelps, are gigantic with leaves one hundred and
fifty feet or more in length. Some are long, slender, rodlike;
others have broad leaves like lettuce or cabbage; some have
branches and foliage, others are as delicate as ferns, or are
mosslike. The rockweed, so common on our coasts, is provided
with countless air bladders which serve as floats to the
dense-growing masses, thus preventing them from becoming
matted together and insuring a circulation of clear water among
the plants, while the sargassum or gulfweed is buoyed up by
miniature pontoons, and drifts about on the surface of the sea.
Every color of the rainbow and countless shades and
combinations of color may be found on the algae or seaweeds.
Many are dull brown or olive, others are vivid scarlet or crimson;
some are bright green, other blue, yellow, or purple, while many,
such as the common dulse or Irish moss, gleam and scintillate
with iridescent metallic hues. And while most seaweeds have
roots and grow like normal everyday plants, there are forms
which swim about freely. Among these are the tiny but
indescribably beautiful diatoms which are provided with hard
flinty shells or coverings of marvellous design, often resembling
the finest of filigree work.
Next in order on the plants' family tree are the mosses. Most
mosses and lichens are so small that even if we admire their
velvety greenness or their soft grays and lavender tints we do not
appreciate their true beauty or their strange manner of growth. To
really know the mosses as they are we should be the size of ants
or flies. It would be a most fascinating experience to wander
about in a jungle of mosses higher than our
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heads, but we can obtain some idea of how they must appear to
tiny insects by examining them under a powerful lens or a
reading glass.
If you have never studied mosses in this way you will be
astonished to find what lovely things they are. No flower garden
ever showed wore delicate blossoms, richer foliage, or more
varied colors. Many are covered with beautiful flowers
resembling daisies, marigolds, dahlias or peonies of various hues.
Some send up slender stalks bearing gorgeous orange, yellow or
crimson "fruits." There are mosses which look like fields of
ripening wheat, others composed of miniature branching
evergreen trees, and still others that are tangled jungles, while
many are beds of delicate plumelike ferns. In addition to being
beautiful plants the mosses are very useful and beneficial. The
common swamp moss or sphagnum is a most useful moss.
Florists find it the best of all substances for packing plants and
flowers, for its spongelike structure retains dampness for a long
time. It is also very valuable material for dressing wounds, for
when dry it absorbs liquids with amazing rapidity, and during the
World War great quantities were employed by the surgeons and
many a man owes his life to the humble moss. Finally, this useful
moss provides heat and does the cooking for thousands of
persons, for the peat used as fuel in some lands is mainly
semi-fossilized sphagnum from ancient swamps and bogs.
Were it not for the mosses, most of our earth would be bare of all
plant and animal life, for animals cannot exist without plants and
the first plants to find roothold on barren spots are the mosses
and lichens.
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As these plants die their stems, roots, and leaves decay and form
"leaf mold" in which other higher forms of plants take root. Thus
the lowly mosses pave the way for the grasslands and shrubbery,
the forests, and the jungles. But even before the mosses appear
the lichens blaze the trail that plant life follows.
Although most persons confuse mosses and lichens, the two are
very different and are quite distinct. Useful and beautiful as are
the mosses with their five thousand and more species, the lichens
are of much greater interest to scientists, for they are not single
plants but combinations of two separate plants of different orders.
There are few if any stranger combinations in the entire plant
world than this, for every lichen consists of a fungus and an alga
living together on such intimate terms that they appear to be a
single plant.
The greater portion of the lichen consists of the fungus which
forms the "body" of the plant with countless, minute threads in
the meshes of which dwell the little algae. Strangely enough, the
fungoid plants which form lichens are almost never found
growing by themselves, while the algae are common when
growing free and quite independently. Perhaps you wonder how
these lichens spread if the fungus cannot live by itself. But old
Mother Nature has attended to this detail in most remarkable
manner. If you have ever examined lichen you may have noticed
the dusty appearance and "feel" of the strange dry plants. This is
caused by countless numbers of minute granules known as
"soredia" which are made up of a few cells of the alga
surrounded by the threads of the fungus host. Then when a
passing breeze wafts the dust away the
offspring of the two plants travel together to a new spot where
they continue to grow like Siamese twins.
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Just why two such widely different forms of plants should always
join forces to get on in life is not definitely known. But the
beneficial results of the arrangement are obvious. The fungus
cannot absorb energy from the sun, for it does not contain
chlorophyl which the algae does possess, while the algae living
upon the spongelike fungus is protected from drying up and
hence can survive and prosper where otherwise it could not exist.
The result is a mutual benefit association which can thrive where
neither plant could live alone, and where few if any other forms
of plant life could exist. The last of all plants to endure the bitter
cold of farthest north and farthest south are lichens. The last
vestiges of plant life on the highest mountains are the lichens. No
desert, no desolate rock, no cinder pile or lava flow from a
volcano is too bare or repellent for lichens to find a roothold. As
if by magic, as if materialized from thin air, the minute "dust" of
the plants finds lodgement and soon the lichens cover rocks or
sand and commence their task of reparation.
When the Island of Krakatoa in the East Indies was blasted to bits
by the terrific eruption of 1883, not a visible trace of plant or
animal life remained upon the stricken, devastated spot. But
presently dust from lichens somewhere reached the island. Soon
lichens spread over the bare forbidding lava and shattered rocks.
Little by little the strange combination plants formed minute
quantities of soil and mosses arrived. As a result, the island now
bears a growth of green
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jungle in which insects chirp and trill and birds twitter and sing.
Lichens are useful in other ways also. They provide us with dyes,
the most important of which is litmus, which is used on litmus
paper for determining whether a substance is acid or alkaline.
And, strange as it may seem, some of the lichens are edible.
The dry gray reindeer moss and Iceland moss that thrive on bare
rocks and ledges are lichens and appear about the least promising
of plants that one would choose for a meal. Yet reindeer moss if
properly cooked is palatable and nutritious.
If you have examined mosses closely or have studied them under
a lens you will have noticed how fernlike many of them appear.
And no wonder, for mosses are the ancestors of the ferns. Ages
and ages ago, before any form of animal life existed on earth, the
mosses grew to gigantic size and could we have seen them we
would at once have called them ferns. Some continued to go
onward and upward to finally become true ferns, while others
were content to remain small and obscure mosses.
Even to-day it is sometimes very difficult to feel certain whether
a plant is a fern or a moss, particularly in the tropical jungles.
Here one sees palm-trees covered with rich green moss, each
plumelike leaf several inches in length, and giving the effect of
green feather mantles wrapped about the trees. But have a care if
you attempt to secure a specimen or examine it closely, for the
palm is armed with countless encircling bands of close-set
six-inch poisonous spikes hidden beneath the attractive
innocent-appearing giant moss. Beside a
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rotting fallen monarch of the forest is a mass of maidenhair ferns
higher than ones head, and with each fragile, delicate leaf-stem
armed with needle pointed spines. Upon another log we see a
great patch of yellow gleaming in the shadowy light like a sheet
of beaten gold. But if we break off a bit of the gorgeous lichen
our nostrils will he assailed by the stench of putrid flesh. Then
we catch a glimpse of another lichen -a cup-shaped growth of
bluish-gray and soft fawn upon the rind of an upturned tree. As
we approach it closely we halt and stare. A portion of the lichen
has come suddenly to life, and from a snakelike head bright eyes
are gazing at us and we discover that we are looking at a
sun-bittern upon her nest. A beautiful thing it is, like the nest of a
gigantic humming-bird and, like the home of the hummingbird,
covered with lichens which are so similar to the bird's plumage in
colors and markings that it is almost impossible to determine how
much is bittern and how much is nest.
Near at hand is a group of great hairy, brown trunks and glancing
upward we find that, instead of being palms as we supposed, they
are titanic ferns, tree-ferns with lacelike fronds thirty feet in
length.
We notice another tree whose trunk is half hidden under a growth
of green, and we step closer to examine the strange moss, only to
find that it is a dense growth of tiny ferns with fronds scarcely an
inch in length. Our feet sink knee-deep in a miniature jungle of
clubmoss and we pass through a dim aisle where enormous ferns
form a green archway overhead. But instead of the ferns seeming
gigantic and the mosses appearing as if viewed through a
microscope, we feel as if we had
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been suddenly transformed to tiny pygmies, insect like beings in
a normal-sized forest.
At every step we make some novel and astonishing discovery,
and find some incredibly strange or bizarre form of plant life. We
brush against a tuft of grass and find its slender green blades cut
through our garments and slash our flesh like a keen-edged razor.
Pluck a magnificent orchid and instantly the flower will be cast
aside as myriads of ants are conjured from leaves and stem and
bury their burning jaws in fingers and hands. A six-inch shaft of
silvery gray sapling is in the path and with keen-edged machete a
blow is aimed at the obstacle. The steel blade shears through it as
if it were composed of wax and crimson blood pours from the
severed trunk. A little farther on an even slenderer sapling bars
the way, and again the useful machete comes into play. But this
time the steel makes no more impression upon the little shaft than
if it were a bar of iron. If we should light a camp-fire we would
find that certain sticks flared up as if soaked in gasoline, while
others placed amid the flames, remained untouched by the fire,
barely scorched, as fire-proof as though composed of concrete.
We might come upon the dead and decaying body of some
creature with ghostly- looking, livid growths sprouting from the
rotting carcass and spreading finger like branches oozing viscid
slime. We would be sure to find wild plantains with rigid stalks
of orange and crimson flowers like shafts of living flame, and if
we examined these we would discover that each cuplike blossom
was a miniature charnel house, a recess containing liquid filled
with the dead bodies of innumerable insects. We would see
plants
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which at first sight we mistook for gorgeous butterflies, fuzzy
bees or huge caterpillars, and we would find insects so perfectly
disguised as leaves, twigs and flowers that unless we should
attempt to pluck them we would never suspect they were living
creatures.
But strange plants and their ways are not confined to the jungles
of the tropics. Many of our commonest and most familiar plants
have strange and remarkable traits which few suspect. We all
know that the sunflowers turn their faces towards the sun, that the
"four O'clock" flowers do not open until afternoon, that the
morning-glories bloom and fade before the day is many hours
old, that the evening primroses and the cereus cactus blossom
only at night. But how many know that the clover, the beans and
peas and other plants of their family, fold their leaves and "go to
sleep" when the sun sets and darkness falls? Even this is not so
strange as the habit of many trees, such for example of the
eucalyptus, which turn their leaves edgewise to the sun if there is
too much light. On the other hand, if trees require more sunshine
they will turn and twist and bend trunks and branches to avoid
the shade of leaves above, and many scientists claim that the
forms of leaves are dependent upon the amount of light required.
But to return to the question of "What is a plant?" If the
slime-molds prove a puzzle to scientists there are other forms of
life which might well prove a far greater puzzle to persons other
than scientists.
These are the hydroids, which live in the sea and in fresh water
where any one not a scientist would mistake them for seaweeds
or algae and would consider them true
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plants. No one could be blamed for doing so, for their delicate
slender stalks sprouting from crevices or rocks, from dead
sea-shells, from the sandy bottom, from piles of wharves or
elsewhere are covered with delicate branches and clusters of buds
and flowers.
Many are very beautiful, being scarlet, yellow, purple, or green,
and some species bear numbers of white flowers with red centers
looking like tiny daisies. No one not in the know would ever
suspect that these pretty sea growths had any connection with the
jellyfishes swimming aimlessly about, yet the hydroids are the
jellyfishes' parents.
No wonder you are surprised, for few of Nature's marvels are
more wonderful and amazing than the life history of the
jellyfish-hydroids. The swimming jellyfish lays eggs and these,
instead of hatching into other jellyfish, find lodgement on the
bottom of the sea or on some favorable spot and, taking root,
sprout like seeds of plants, and produce hydroids. As these
hollow stemmed growths increase in size, buds appear upon the
stems and branches. But although they have the appearance of
plant buds and open and unfold flowerlike petals, yet the
hydroids' blossoms are really living creatures. Each is composed
of thirteen layers, and presently, as the lowest layer develops and
expands, the upper portion breaks away and, lo and behold! it
goes swimming off a true jellyfish. One after another thirteen
phantasmal, transparent, free-swimming animals are born from
the hydroid flower. But that is not all, for while some of the
jellyfishes' eggs sprout and grow into plant like hydroids, which
in turn bud and blossom into jellyfish, there are other eggs which
never produce
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Hydroid and jellyfish (X 3)
hydroids but swim about and hatch directly into jellyfish like
their parents.
That a plantlike hydroid should blossom into jellyfishes is as
amazing as it would be if some shrub or vine should bud and
blossom into butterflies.
But in the case of the hydroids there is no question that they are
animals and not plants. Perhaps, far back in the dim and distant
past, millions of years ago, the hydroids' ancestors were true
plants, for scientists tell us that certain plants developed into
animals. And it seems quite fitting that we should find these
strange creatures still dwelling in the sea, for the sea was the
cradle of life, and all living things, both animals and plants, came
from ancestors who dwelt in the sea.
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Chapter II
THE PLANT DEPARTMENT STORE We all know that plants provide us with many of our everyday
needs, our luxuries, and our necessities. The cotton and flax
plants furnish us with cloth, we eat many kinds of vegetables at
our meals and drink tea, coffee, or cocoa. If we smoke we use the
leaves of the tobacco plant and the rice or wheat plants supply the
paper for the cigarette, while trees furnish the wood for the pipe.
Most of our furniture is made of wood and plants are used for the
cane or fiber seats to our chairs, the kapok that fills some of our
cushions, pillows, and mattresses. Plants give us the rugs and
carpets on our floors, the draperies and curtains of our windows
and doors. We ride in automobiles with tires made from plants
and motors driven and lubricated by fuel and oil that have come
from plants. If we are ill the chances are that we will take
medicines derived from plants. If the weather is hot and we eat an
ice-cream cone the flavors we enjoy are those of plants, and in
winter time we heat our homes with coal or oil which ancient
plants have given us. We read newspapers, magazines, and books
printed on the prepared fibers of plants and in a thousand and one
other ways we call upon plants in order to live and to be
comfortable.
But most of these things bear little resemblance to the original
plants which have gone through long processes
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of preparation and manufacture in order to adapt them to our
needs. Just think what a saving it would be and how convenient if
we could go out in the woods or into our gardens and pick our
garments from one plant, our cigarettes from another, our foods
from others, and the toys for the children from still other plants.
That sounds ridiculous and impossible, yet it is quite possible, for
there are plants and trees which supply all these articles and more
ready made. In fact, if they were all found in the same locality
they would form a real plant department store where one could
find almost anything needed to enable one to live quite
comfortably.
If you should be thirsty while in a tropical forest and no drinking
water was near you could slake your thirst at a plant
drinking-fountain. One of these is the travelers' palm of
Madagascar which has been introduced to many tropical lands.
This tree is not really a palm but is closely related to the banana
tree. The trunk resembles that of the banana, but the leaves are
borne at the tips of long stiff stems that grow alternately from
either side of the trunk and form a broad, flat, fan-shaped crown
The base of each leaf-stem is enlarged and forms a sort of closed
trough and always contains a quart or more of clear sweet water.
All that one has to do in order to secure a drink is to make an
incision at the base of a leaf-stem. But even if you were in some
spot where there were none of these strange trees you would not
have to go thirsty. In the tropical jungles the trees are everywhere
hung and draped with vines known as lianas, of all sizes, some as
fine as threads, others larger than the biggest of ships' cables.
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Many of these are very useful plants and are true ready-made
cords and ropes and are used as fish-lines, ropes and twine by the
natives. They are as strong or stronger than real ropes and have
the advantage that they do not stretch, do not shrink when wet
and am not injured by remaining for a long time in water. Other
(about 20 feet high)
lianas when dried are known as rattan and are widely used for
making furniture, seats of chairs, and other purposes. Some
contain deadly poisons, others have great medicinal value. But
there are a number of the lianas which are true vegetable
drinking-fountains. If you examine the end of a piece of rattan
you will see a number of tiny holes or pores. These are really
small
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tubes extending the entire length of the vine and serve as pipes or
veins through which the sap flows when the vine is alive. If you
cut off a living liana a steady stream of liquid will run or drip
from these tubes. Usually the fluid is white or yellowish and
quickly hardens or coagulates to form a coating or scab across
the injured end---exactly as the blood of a human being or an
animal heals a cut in the flesh. Very often the sap is bitter or sour
or peppery, but many kinds of lianas have sap which is as clear,
as cool, and as refreshing as the purest spring water. But if you
should wish to take a drink from these plant-faucets be sure to cut
the vine in two places and use the section you cut off for your
drinking cup, for otherwise you will secure only a few drops of
water before the sap ceases to flow. Of course, a three or four
foot section of the vine will not contain a great deal of water, but
the supply is unlimited and the thirsty traveller can cut as many
pieces as he pleases.
If you prefer milk to water it is there in the forest ready and
waiting in the cow-tree. Don't expect to find a tree that looks like
a cow, for strange as it is the cow- tree isn't as strange as all that.
In fact it isn't at all strange in appearance, and looks much like an
ordinary rubber tree. But unlike the "milk" of the rubber tree, the
white juice that issues from a cut in the cow-tree is sweet and
really delicious and tastes much like real milk. It must be used
right away, however, fresh from the plant-cow as we might say,
for like the sap of the rubber tree it coagulates and becomes
gummy and sticky very soon after it is exposed to the air.
Perhaps, as you have been moving about, you may
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have torn your clothes. If so you may be able to find a needle and
thread growing on a plant ready to use. The thread and needle
plants are agaves or, as we usually call them, century-plants.
Each of the thick stiff leaves of these plants has a very hard sharp
spine at the tip. Cut off a leaf near the base, pound away the pulp
by beating it between two stones or pieces of wood, and you will
find the sharp spine needle attached to a number of long fine
threads as strong as linen.
To the Mexican and Central American Indians these
thread-and-needle-plants ate as useful as the reindeer to the
Laplander. The juice when fresh is a delicious beverage known as
pulque, and when fermented it becomes the fiery intoxicating
mescal. The roots are edible and when dried and ground make a
coarse but nutritious flour, the leaves are used for thatching the
Indians' houses, for making mats and other furnishings for the
Indians' homes, the fibers are used as twine, thread, and rope and
are woven on looms to form a fine, strong cloth which may be
sewed into garments by means of the thread and needles from the
plant's leaves. If your garments are so badly torn or worn that you
require new clothing the plant department store can supply your
wants. All you need do is find a lace-bark tree or "seda virgen" as
the Spanish-speaking people call it. This is one of strangest and
most interesting of trees, for the pith of the smaller branches
when unrolled appears like broad sheets of beautiful white lace,
while that of the larger limbs and the trunk is tough, strong,
finely woven cloth. In lands where this tree grows the
ready-made cloth and lace are used for a multitude of purposes.
The girls and women use the finer sheets of
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lace for shawls, mantillas, and other articles of apparel. The
heavier clothlike sheets are used for clothing, mats, carpets, bags,
draperies, and is so strong and fibrous that it is twisted and
braided into whips, ropes, cables, and harness. The finest
portions make splendid surgical bandages, being soft and
absorbent, and until unrolled is always in a gem-proof package.
It is also made into fans and other utensils. When dyed in
ornamental designs it is very beautiful, resembling the tapa cloth
of the South Seas. It is so abundant and so easily gathered and
prepared that the natives who wear lace-bark garments seldom
bother to wash their clothes, but as soon as they are soiled cast
them aside and visit the plant-department-store clothing counter
and get a new outfit for nothing.
Even serviceable hats may be secured all ready to wear from
trees. But you will have to climb or cut down a cocoanut tree
(cocoa-palm) to secure one---or hire a native to get it for you, for
the ready-made hat is the soft brown, loosely woven covering of
the young flower buds of palm-trees. They are about two feet in
length, cylindrical in shape, with a pointed tip, and when
removed from the trees are only two or three inches in diameter,
but they may be stretched to a surprising extent and slipped over
one's head to form a cap something like those on pictured pirates.
It is much easier to obtain shoes than hats from the strange
plants. Tree-ferns are always abundant in tropical forests and are
real shoe-trees. The trunks of
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these giant ferns are very tough and hard and are covered with an
interwoven mass of fibers in place of the usual bark. By cutting
off a slice of the trunk with the fiber bands in place, one secures a
very serviceable pair of sandals. All that one has to do is to trim
the pieces to the size of one's foot, separate the fibers and cut
away those not needed. Then, by thrusting one's toes under the
fibers at one end of the piece of treefern trunk and tying those at
the other extremity about one's ankles, one is shod with light
durable shoes that will outwear shoes of leather.
If medicine is needed there is the plant drag counter with
any number of remedies-quinine, calisaya, ipecacuanha, cascara,
palmetto berries, and many others.
If you wish a torch to light your way at night the gomier or
gum-ellemi tree will supply great gobs of partly dry gum which,
tied in a dry plantain or palm leaf, will burn with a brilliant white
flame in the rainiest or windiest weather and will give off clouds
of dark colored smoke with the odor of incense. In fact most of
the incense used in churches consists of this gum with
sandalwood and other materials added.
The gum of the gomier tree makes an excellent adhesive
and when smeared on sticks serves as birdlime with which the
natives capture many live birds, but the gum of the sapodilla or
chicle tree is much better. This is the basis of our chewing-gum
and was used as such by the ancient Mayas and Aztecs countless
centuries before a white man ever thought of chewing-gum.
If instead of a torch we wished a candle, there are plants where
our want can be filled. These are the waxpalms, and so rich in oil
are the fruits of some of these
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that a wick inserted in the greasy fruit will burn with a clear
bright flame for several hours. Another palm known as the piva
would supply us with butter merely by boiling the fruit and
skimming off the fat that rises to the surface, while the flower
buds of the same tree would serve as a ready-to-eat breakfast
cereal.
For a fine and tasty salad there is nothing to equal the crisp white
heart of a cabbage-palm and by stripping the bark from the etah
palm and suspending it between two trees we would have a
ready-made luxurious hammock in which to loll.
Most persons enjoy an after-dinner smoke and feel quite
miserable when they find themselves in a jungle far from
civilization with no tobacco or cigarettes. But it isn't necessary
for a smoker to go without cigarettes in the South American
jungles, for all of the makings are there to be had for the trouble
of taking. Just ask the Indians and you'll be surprised. Slipping
into the forest an Indian will presently reappear and hand you
half a dozen or more cigarettes ready-made. Moreover, they will
have a much better flavor than many a factory-made cigarette
though they are not put up in cellophane-wrapped packages or
advertised over the radio. Where does the Indian get them? From
the cigarette tree, of course. To be sure the Indian doesn't know it
by that name but calls it "Tuk-eya-heya" which amounts to the
same thing for in his language that means the "tree that is good to
smoke." Neither does he pick the cigarettes neatly rolled and
ready to light from the branches of the tree, but scrapes away the
outer bark, peels off thin papery sheets of the inner bark, and
shredding the intervening fiber for filler
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rolls it in the natural wrapper which he secures in place by a
winding of threadlike aerial roots from the same tree.
If one wishes a shelter to keep off the rain or the sun there are the
broad six-foot leaves of the scarlet flowered wild plantains which
only need to be laid like shingles on a framework of bamboos or
light poles; or the leaves of fan-palms which are equally good for
Wild plantain (1/5)
the purpose. If we are caught in a shower or even in a torrential
tropical downpour and there are banana or plantain-trees near we
can quickly secure an umbrella that will serve much better than
any manufactured umbrella we could purchase in a real
department store. Many of the leaves are eight or ten feet in
length and two feet in width, and if we secure a new leaf, untorn
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by the wind, it is all we need, for by holding this on the end of a
sharpened stick or the point of a machete the green roof with its
eaves projecting beyond our shoulders will keep us dry in the
heaviest downpour.
Sometimes when traveling in the jungles one comes to a stream
too wide or deep to ford, or the traveler may wish to navigate one
of the jungle rivers. Without a boat or canoe or even a raft how
can he manage it? Just leave that to the Indians. In almost no
time they will cut and wedge a big cylinder of bark from a
purple-heart tree. Then with lianas or bush ropes they will wrap
and lash each end of the bark cylinder until smaller than the rest
of the piece. Cutting a few strong sticks they will force them
between the sides of the bark and presto! they have a light,
buoyant canoe known as a "woodskin." But they need paddles
with which to propel the craft, and paddles don't grow on trees.
Oh, yes they do---in the South American jungles -for the trunk of
the paddle tree grows outward in the form of numerous hips or
flanges a foot or more in width and barely an inch in thickness. It
doesn't take long for an Indian with a machete to cut off a portion
of one of these flanges and hew it into form and thus provide
himself with a perfectly good paddle. And if he needs a spear the
Indian secures the strong, straight light midrib of a palm leaf, fits
a razor-edged piece of bamboo to one end and has a most deadly
and efficient weapon. If by chance he should lose or break his
powerful six-foot bow he can quickly secure a substitute in this
great plant department store. Splitting a stem of bamboo
lengthwise, he turns the two pieces end for end,
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shaves them to a taper each side of the center, lashes and binds
them together with wrappings of strips of fibrous bark or split
rattan and has a bow that will serve his purpose. But he needs a
string for it and this he secures from a clump of pita hemp or
arrow grass, the tall straight stems of which make excellent
arrows, while the long fibers in the leaves when twisted together
are stronger than the famous Manilla hemp.
Perhaps you think that by now we have exhausted the
possibilities of the plant storehouse. Do you wish a shave? If so
there are razors growing on plants all ready to use. These are the
seeds of a species of climbing grass and if you are not very
careful you will cut your fingers badly, for each seed is provided
with two tiny blades as keen as any steel razor blade. By grasping
a seed by the "beard"- which is much like that of wheat- and
drawing it across your skin, the tiny blades will shave off the
hairs as well as any razor ever made. But they lose their edges
quickly and a number of seeds must be used in order to secure a
clean shave. Of course they do pull some if they are used dry, but
that isn't necessary even if you have no shaving or other soap.
Just pick a handful of the yellow tendrils and the green leaves of
the soap-vine and moisten them and rub them on your face and
you'll have a lather as good as any one could wish. If there are no
soap-vines with their buff and black flowers perhaps there will he
a soap-berry bash or a soap-bark tree which will do just as well,
and if there are any Spanish bayonet or yucca plants near, their
roots rubbed with water will furnish excellent soap.
You can even obtain a ready-made brush and comb
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if you wish. The leaf stem of a palmetto with the end pounded
and frayed will make a fine stiff hair-brush, and the stem of a
grugru-palm with the leaflets cut off an inch from the stem will
prove a very good comb.
If you require a bowl in which to wash your hands or a dish for
your food or a drinking vessel there are the hard-shelled fruits of
the calabash tree needing only to be emptied of their contents.
In fact there is almost no end to the needful things
Cannonball tree of the West Indies (1/16)
ready to use with little or no preparation. For that matter, you
may be speechless with astonishment to come upon cannonballs
growing on trees. To be sure I cannot imagine any one having
any use for cannon balls when in the jungle, but there they are if
any one wants them. As rusty as if made of iron long exposed to
the weather, as round and almost as hard and heavy as the
genuine article, they lie piled about the foot of
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a large tree. If we examine them more closely we will find that
they are the fruits of the tree and are borne on short stems
sprouting directly from the bark of the trunk and branches. Some
are fully grown and have ripened and fallen to the earth while
others of all sizes are still attached to their stalks among the
rather handsome purple-red flowers of the tree.
Finally there are the toys that grow on trees. When a youngster in
the tropics wants to fly a kite he doesn't go to the nearest toy
store and buy one, neither does he tinker with paper and paste
and slender sticks and concoct a home-made affair that may or
may not fly. In the first place there may not be a store of any sort
within miles, in the second place he has no money with which to
buy a kite even if there were a store, in the third place he
possesses neither paper nor paste, and in the fourth place he
knows where kites grow on trees. So he searches about until he
finds a kite-tree with great broad oval leaves eighteen or twenty
inches in length and seven or eight inches wide with stout strong
midribs. A small liana no larger than trout-line provide the string,
and a few minutes later the brown skinned youngster has his leaf
kite soaring far up in the sky among dozens of other leaf kites of
the other youngsters.
A toy boat made from
a palm bud (1/8)
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And when he tires of kite flying and he and his playmates decide
to have a toy-boat regatta they pick their boats off trees.
Climbing like so many brown monkeys up the cocoanut palms
they secure the hard woody spathes or coverings to the buds.
With strong roots or pieces of liana string they sew the open ends
of the spathes together, force little sticks between the sides and
have perfect miniatures of their fathers' dug-out canoes. A bit of
bark or wood cut to shape forms a rudder, a sliver of bamboo and
one of the kite-tree leaves make mast and sail, and launching
their plant-borne boats the boys laugh and squeal with delight in
the little craft, catching the trade wind, go sailing swiftly out to
sea. What if they are lost? They cost nothing and there are plenty
more to he had for the taking and scores of the strange little boats
go voyaging into the unknown before the boys tire of their fun.
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Chapter III
THE MOST USEFUL TREES
WHAT trees are the most useful to man? Pines, oaks, fruit trees?
No, none of these familiar trees are so useful to mankind as are
the palms. Practically every need of man can be obtained from
the palm-trees. They supply food, drink, clothing, fuel, timber,
thatch, nets, twine, cordage, oil, butter, vinegar, liquors, utensils,
dishes, boats, fans, hats, shoes, combs, brushes, medicines, light,
carpets, sails, bedding, sugar, syrup, dyes, and many other things
besides. And no other group of trees can supply such a wide
variety of articles useful to human beings.
Symbols of perpetual summer, soft skies and balmy trade-winds,
the palms are the most familiar of all tropical trees. Indeed a
landscape does not appear tropical without these graceful plumed
trees. As a rule the palms we see so frequently in photographs
and other pictures of tropical lands are the cocoanut and the royal
palms, but these are only two species of the group which
numbers many hundreds of species, each of which is the source
of some useful or valuable product. Even the lowly saw-palmetto
of our southern states is a useful tree. The young leaf bud is
edible and delicious and is known as palm cabbage, the fiber of
the tree is made into brooms, brushes, cordage, and other articles,
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the leaves are used for thatching buildings, and the roots are the
source of a valuable medicine.
The best known and probably the most useful and valuable
of all the palm trees is the cocoanut palm. It is a striking and
typical feature of every tropical shore and village throughout the
world. Its original home is unknown, for cocoanuts enclosed
within their tough, buoyant water-proof husks will float for
months upon the surface of the sea and when cast ashore by the
waves will sprout and grow, and thus have spread far and wide.
Some scientists claim it originated in the East ladies, others say
Africa, while many claim that the cocoanut palm is an American
plant.
The tree is perfectly designed to spread from land to land for it
will thrive luxuriantly on sandy beaches where its ropelike roots
are washed by the waves and its stiff, feathery leaves are thrashed
and torn by every breeze. Even when the shores are lashed by
hurricanes the majority of cocoanut palms survive, for old
Mother Nature has fitted these trees to withstand these terrific
devastating winds. The leaves are so formed that they offer little
resistance to a gale, the fronds streaming out and the separate
leaflets folding lengthwise when struck by the blast, while the
tough, flexible, fibrous trunk will bend and give without
breaking. And when the gale increases and the hurricane howls
and roars at one hundred miles an hour or more, and great trees
are snapped off like match-sticks, and housetops are carried
bodily away and locomotives are toppled from the rails and stone
buildings are mashed to bits, the short ropelike roots of the
cocoanuts give way and the palm, still intact, falls to the earth.
But the fact that
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it has bean uprooted and lies prostrate doesn't trouble the
cocoanut palm in the least. Incredibly soon the roots have
regained a hold in the sand, the upper portion of the stem turns
upward, and the palm starts growing again, its truck flat upon the
beach and its crown of feathery leaves waving triumphantly
above it.
There is a Hindu saying that "he who sees a straight
cocoanut palm will go direct to heaven." No doubt he would, for
a straight cocoanut palm-tree would be about the greatest of
botanical rarities, a real freak. In fact it is doubtful if a really
straight cocoanut palm exists anywhere on earth or ever did exist,
for the cocoanut is a strict observer of the old adage: "as the twig
is bent the tree is inclined." From the time the palm sprouts from
the nut it struggles to lead an upright life while the wind strives
with might and main to bend it to its will. The result is that the
trees become bent and twisted into most strange and often
astonishing shapes.
Perhaps you may have wondered why the end of the dried
cocoanuts have the three smooth roundish spots that form the
"monkey face" on the surface of the nut. But if you should see a
cocoanut sprouting you would understand their purpose, for the
nut germinates while resting upon the surface of the ground, the
roots pushing out through two of the "eyes" and the bud breaking
through the other. When the leaves first expand they are whole
and spear-shaped, but in a few hours slits appear along the sides
of the leaves and the intervening materials become leaflets.
Once the plant has obtained a good start it grows very rapidly and
begins to blossom when from three to
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ten years old. After that it bears continuously, year in and year
out, regardless of seasons, for eighty to one hundred years.
Although the dried nuts are the most familiar product of this
palm, yet these are but one of many of the products of the tree
and by no means the most important one. Perhaps the most
important of cocoanut products is copra, the dried meat of the
nut. This is the principal and in many places the only article of
commerce of many of the South Sea and Pacific Islands. It is
from copra, and to less extent the fresh meat, that cocoanut oil is
obtained. When fresh the oil is sweet and has a pleasant odor and
is widely used for cooking purposes. But it soon becomes rancid
and its principal value is for making soap. Soap made from
cocoanut oil will form a lather with salt water and is used
extensively on board ships. Butter also is made from cocoanut oil
and when properly prepared it is superior to ordinary butter made
from milk. Persons whose health will not permit them to use
animal butter find cocoanut butter a perfect substitute, while
fresh milk of the nuts is widely used in place of cows' milk for
making icecream, puddings, and other sweets. In the lands where
the cocoanuts grow the milk of the dried nuts is never used as a
beverage, the juice or milk of the green or "jelly" nuts being used
to drink.
A green cocoanut contains more than twice as much milk as a
dried or ripe nut and is totally different in flavor. Instead of being
sickish or insipid and "dead" it is clear, cool, and refreshing with
a peculiar and delightful tang to it. The meat of the dried
cocoanuts as sold in our markets is thick, tough, and indigestible,
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but the meat of the green cocoanut is a soft, thick, creamy jelly
which may be scraped from the shell with a spoon.
The sap of the tree itself is another useful product of the
cocoa-palm. Boiled down when freshly drawn it is used like
syrup or molasses, and if allowed to ferment it serves as well as
yeast in making bread. If fermentation is continued to a certain
stage and it is then distilled the product is the fiery intoxicating
liquor of the Orient known as arrack. Alcohol is also an
important product of the sap and in the Philippines alone over
thirty million gallons of sap are collected each year. Each gallon
of sap contains a pound of sugar, yet very little sugar is made
from the palm sap.
Wherever the cocoanut palms grow the natives find some useful
purpose for every portion of the tree. The leaves are plaited
together to form a tight rain-proof thatch for the houses. Dried
and stripped they are woven into matting, rugs, curtains, and
even sails for boats. The rough fibrous husks covering the nuts
are retted in water and are the material from which our door-mats
are made, while quantities of the husk fibers are twisted into the
famous coir rope. The trunks of the trees make excellent timbers
for buildings and are used as posts and fences. The wood, which
is not true wood but is composed of pithy material filled with
hard homy fibers, is used for a great variety of purposes. As I
have already mentioned in Chapter II the netlike covering of the
bud makes a nice cap, while the, spathes are used for toy canoes
by the native boys. The hard shells of the nuts are made into
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cups, dippers, jars, saucers, vases, spoons and other utensils,
while the stiff
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sharp ribs of the leaflets serve as pins, forks, combs, toothpicks,
and are even used as needles.
No person who ever visits the tropics can fail to admire the royal
palms. They are the most stately, majestic and beautiful of all
palm-trees, as well as the largest. Unlike the cocoanut palms with
their twisted crooked trunks, the trunks of the royal palms are as
straight and symmetrical as though turned from granite upon a
giant lathe. Although there are many species of these palms all
are similar in appearance, all are beautiful and they are as useful
as they are attractive. From the crater of the crowns of royal
palms the best of all the palm cabbage is obtained. In the West
Indies this is called "mountain cabbage." Every cabbage taken
spells the doom of a magnificent palm-tree, for the choice white
vegetable is the very heart of the tree, the immature leaves, and
removing it kills the tree. Hundreds of the pitiful dead trunks of
lordly palm-trees dot the hillsides in the Antilles, and so many
trees have been destroyed for the sake of the cabbages that in
Cuba and other islands there are strict laws prohibiting any one
from taking palm cabbage.
As timber and lumber the trunk of the royal palm is far superior
to that of the cocoanut palm, and in the Dominican Republic and
some other islands, there are scores of houses built entirely from
products supplied by the royal palms. The timbers and rafters are
of royal palm wood, the walls are made of the hard durable shell
or bark of the palm buds, the roofs are thatched with palm leaves,
the owners sleep on mats woven from leaves of the palm, and
they eat the royal palm berries made into delicious preserves or
pickled like olives.
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Another useful palm which is related to the royal palms is the
grugru or maho palm, abundant in the forests of the West Indies.
Several species bear edible nuts, their buds provide excellent
"cabbage" and the big fat white grubs or larvae of giant beetles
which live in the decaying heart of the trees are considered great
dainties by the natives. For that matter, I am very fond of these
"grugru worms" myself. They are cooked by spitting them on a
sliver of bamboo or palm leaf and toasting them over a fire. They
swell up and pop open like roasted chestnuts which they
resemble in flavor.
Other species of these palms have edible nutritious fruits and
many are exceedingly useful because of their tough and durable
wood and for their leaves. From the leaves of these palms the
Carib Indians weave their wonderful waterproof baskets. They
are used by the natives for making fish traps, for making sieves,
for thatching houses, for matting, and for many other purposes.
Still another valuable and useful palm is the pejibaye or
peach-palm of Mexico and Central America, for this palm-tree
not only supplies useful wood and leaves, but in addition bears
most delicious fruits. These are about the size of a crab-apple,
rich orange or scarlet in color, and grow in immense clusters
weighing as much as fifty pounds each. They contain more food
value than the banana and in the cultivated variety are usually
seedless. Although they may be eaten raw they are usually
cooked like squash, and are also used in making jams, jellies,
conserves, and the like, while many are fermented and are made
into a splendid rich wine.
Another very useful American palm is the barrel
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palm of Cuba and other West Indian islands. This palm has a
remarkable swollen trunk and by digging out the soft pith and
fitting ends to a section of the trunk a one-piece, strong, and
serviceable barrel is made.
Of all the fruit-bearing palms the most valuable and
Barrel palm Cuba
(about 20 feet high)
important is the date-palm. Although not a native of America it
has been introduced, and in Arizona and California it is the most
valuable of all fruit trees, the date ranches of Arizona yielding the
greatest profit per acre of any land in the world.
Still, dry, ragged, and far from handsome, the date palm is
perhaps the least attractive of all palms, but when loaded with its
enormous clusters of bright yellow
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or orange fruits it presents a most unusual and remarkable sight,
Nearly every one is familiar with vegetable ivory, but not every
one knows that the hard ivory like material is the nut of a South
American palm-tree. There are several species of the ivory-nut
palms but all are known as "tagua" in the countries when they
grow. The seeds or nuts are more or less triangular in form, about
twice the size of a big Brazil-nut, and are borne in hard thin outer
shells. When young they are filled with a white milk, like that of
the cocoanut, but as the nuts ripen this congeals and hardens to
form a finegrained albuminous substance which for many
purposes answers all the requirements of genuine ivory.
All of the useful palms I have mentioned have long plume like
leaves, but there are many useful palm-trees belonging to the
fan-palm group. These are stout, usually bushy, palms with
broad, fan-shaped leaves which in many places are transformed
into a great variety of useful and important articles such as hats,
baskets, trays, saddle-bags, panniers, and the familiar palm-leaf
fans sold in our shops. Objects made from the leaves of
fan-palms are strong, light and very durable and will withstand
very rough usage. In the island of Haiti or more properly
Hispaniola, the palm-leaf bags which are called "macutos" are in
use as market bags, coffee-sacks, cacao-bags and even
pocket-books. There is scarcely a school-child on the island who
does not carry his or her books and pencils in a bright-colored
handsomely woven macuto. Many of the products of tropical
lands come to us in macuto bags and the strong sacks in which
dates are shipped to us from
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Africa and Asia are made from the leaves of a fan palm,
Still another class of very useful and valuable palm is the
wax-palm group of Brazil and the lower slopes of the Andes.
These trees have the trunks, and often times the leaves also,
coated with a secretion which is two-thirds resin and one-third
wax. This is a very important article of commerce, for when
melted and combined with a small amount of fat the palm wax
forms a perfect substitute for tallow or paraffin and is extensively
used in making candles and for other purposes.
One remarkable feature of the palms is the fact that many species
are peculiar to one country or even to a small area or to one tiny
island.
Among such isolated species of palms is the twin cocoanut palm
of the Celebes Islands. For many years the strange double nuts
were found floating upon the surface of the sea, but as no one had
ever seen them growing on a tree on land, and as they were such
weird strange things, they were believed to be the fruits of some
submarine plant. But when the Celebes were at last visited and
explored the remarkable nuts were found growing on palm-trees
which were about as strange in appearance as are the nuts
themselves. Unlike other palms which usually have tall or fairly
tall trunks and bear fruit at the top just beneath the leaves, the
twin-cocoanut palm has practically no trunk at all. The long
feathery fronds sprout directly from the surface of the earth and
the clusters of gigantic twin nuts actually rest upon the ground.
These were only a few of the palms of which more
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than one thousand species are known, but among them all none is
more curious or remarkable than the giant talipot palm. Imposing
and handsome in appearance, with a stout rough trunk supporting
a huge head of great fan-shaped leaves the talipot form a striking
Talipot palm in flower (about 40 feet high)
feature of the landscape. But its real claim to distinction is its
amazing habit of growth and flowering which is not only unique
but is one of the unsolved puzzles of Nature and which, to our
minds, seems such a waste of time and material.
Being a slow-growing tree the talipot palm requires
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from thirty to thirty-five years to reach its full size, by which
time its trunk is forty or fifty feet in height and its glossy green
leaves are eight to ten feet in length by twelve to fourteen feet in
width.
During all these years no sign of bud or blossom has appeared,
which is in striking contrast to other palms that usually begin to
bloom when quite young and continue to flower and fruit
constantly as long as they live.
But at last, when at the end of thirty years or more the mighty
talipot has reached maturity, a huge fleshy, naked stalk or spathe,
looking like a gigantic stalk of asparagus, shoots upward from
the center of the crown of great leaves.
This remarkable bud makes up in its speed for the slow growth of
the palm itself and in a few days towers high above the leaves
and sends forth many fleshy branches, until at last it becomes
transformed into an enormous vegetable candelabra rising more
than twenty-five feet above the leafy crown of the tree. Then,
eight weeks after the great bud has first appeared, it bursts into
bloom. Like golden-yellow tassels the flowers drape the
spreading branches until they cover the enormous candelabra-like
structure with a solid mass of gold. Sweet and exquisitely
scented, they attract scores of butterflies, and brilliant
humming-birds hover by hundreds about the vast floral display.
As soon as the flowers appear the leaves of the palm begin to wilt
and droop, the lower leaves turn to a dreary faded brown and
hang weakly down beside the trunk, as if weary with their long
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efforts to produce the triumphant floral column rising so
majestically
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above them. One by one the great leaves droop and die yet still
hold tenaciously to the parent stem, until the only sign of vitality
is that towering mass of golden bloom against the blue sky. But
as the last of the huge leaves turn brown the flowers too begin to
fade. Every passing breeze scatters the petals and stamens far and
wide while purple and green seeds take their places and birds and
insects desert the talipot feast for newer and more abundant
riches.
For six months this slow death continues with little change other
than the ever-increasing number of seeds. Then, when the last
seeds have ripened, the enormous flower stalk bends gradually to
one side, sways ominously and precariously in the wind and
finally crashes down amid the dead leaves. There it hangs, like a
broken spar, beside the sturdy trunk which has so bravely
weathered the storms of thirty years in order to produce the
flower which has brought about its death. Truly this is a plant
that commits suicide.
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Chapter IV
TREES THAT GROW WHILE YOU WAIT
EVERY one knows the banana but very few know that the plant
which supplies us with the luscious fruits is one of the strangest
and most interesting of strange plants and serves many a purpose
other than providing edible and nutritious fruit. In fact it is one of
the most useful of all plants. The fibers of its stalks and leaves
are used for twine and rope, the well known Manilla hemp, as we
have said, being obtained from a species of banana plant, while
its leaves are used as wrappings for bundles, for packing fragile
goods, for thatching roofs of houses and other buildings, and
even for umbrellas. In the tropics where banana trees grow, a
native need never be drenched by a sudden shower. All he has to
do is to cut a fresh banana leaf and hold it over his head and,
Presto! he is protected from the rain by a broad green roof
extending to below his shoulders.
From the fruit-which is used as a vegetable when green, eaten
raw when ripe, or dried like figs---a vast number of useful
products are obtained. Among these are sugar, starch, dyes,
tannin, vinegar, syrup, and alcohol, as well as a very fine white
flour, which is particularly valuable for invalids or persons who
cannot eat ordinary white flour. Although in the North only the
yellow and red bananas are seen, yet there are more
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than eight hundred varieties grown, and among these are fruits of
every imaginable form and color, no, not quite every color, for I
do not think there is any blue banana. But there are pale pink,
purple, green, orange, scarlet, crimson, buff, cream, colored
bananas; bananas that are streaked with mauve and green,
bananas that are covered with leopardlike spots of red end
yellow, green and black, orange and brown, and there are others
beautifully variegated and marbled with contrasting colors. Some
are tiny fruits barely three inches in length with skins as thin as
paper and with sweet sugary flesh, others are giant fruits more
than a font long and so lacking in flavor when ripe that they are
used only when cooked as a vegetable. Some are short and
almost melon-shaped, some are straight, some are curved in
crescent form and others are long and slender, but all are alike in
their manner of growth. All grew in bunches, each fruit turned
upward, and when its single bunch of fruits has matured the
parent tree dies.
When we see bunches of bananas hanging in our stores they are
always upside down and are suspended by the end of the stalk
where the bud and flowers are borne. If bunches of bananas were
hung right side up, as they grow on the tree, the individual fruits
would break off as they ripened, which is just what Mother
Nature intended they should do, for while cultivated bananas are
usually seedless and very rarely show more than traces of
infertile seeds, the original wild bananas contained large seeds.
We often hear people say how delicious a banana must be when
picked ripe from the tree and not infrequently they express
wonder that
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with modern refrigeration and transportation bunches of bananas
are still picked and shipped when green instead of when ripe. But
it is not a question of transportation or refrigeration which
prevents this being done, for even in the lands where the bananas
grow it is necessary to pick or rather cut the bunches when green,
for if allowed to remain on the trees the fruits ripen and fall off
one at a time or are eaten by birds, rats, bats, and other creatures
as fast as they mature.
I have often wondered what becomes of the millions upon
millions of bunches of bananas which are brought into the United
States every week. More than sixty million bunches of the fruit
are imported each year and each of these bunches contains nearly
one hundred separate bananas. If every man, woman, and child in
the United States should eat half a dozen bananas every week
they could scarcely keep up with the flood of fruit pouring into
our great ports from tropical lands. Yet bananas, popular as they
are, are not eaten at every meal every day by every person able to
digest solid food, so what does become of so many bananas? No
one seems to be able to answer that question and neither can any
one solve the mystery of the banana's past history. The plant has
been cultivated for so many thousands of years in so many
different countries by so many races that it abounds in all tropical
lands and no botanist, no scientist, can name the native land of
the banana or say who were the first people to make use of its
fruit.
By far the most remarkable feature of the banana is its rapid
growth. For its size it is the most speedy of all known plants, for
within a few months the tender
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green shoot pushing through the earth will develop into a big tree
fifteen or twenty feet in height, with a trunk a foot in diameter at
the base, with a crown of immense banner-like leaves and a huge
bunch of fruit weighing a hundred pounds and more. Indeed so
rapidly does the plant grow that under favorable conditions one
may actually see it grow. I do not mean that you can sit down and
watch a banana plant shoot upward like Jack's famous beanstalk,
and blossom and bear fruit while you wait. On the contrary, if
you wish to see a banana tree grow you will have to cut down a
good sized tree.
Unlike most trees which send out new branches from the bark or
roots-when the main trunk has been cut off, the banana tree sends
up a new shoot from the center of the severed trunk and this
develops so swiftly that it may be seen to grow. A banana stalk
which has just been severed, twenty minutes later was showing
the new shoot beginning to appear in the center of the old trunk.
In a few hours, the new shoot is nearly two feet in height while in
a short time later it has raced upward for several feet and had
spread four leaves. A month later the new tree was as large and
as flourishing as before it had been cut down and three months
later it produced a fine bunch of fruit.
The secret of this almost magical growth lies in the fact that the
stalk of the banana tree is not a true trunk but is composed of
undeveloped leaves rolled tightly together to form a compact,
strong and apparently solid stalk, but which in reality is
constantly moving
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upward and outward as new leaf material is formed in the center.
If you roll up a sheet of paper and push on one end the pressure
will cause the other end to move forward by unrolling spirally.
The banana trunk grows in exactly this manner and when the
stalk is severed the central portion, continuing its unrolling
process, swiftly rises above the surface of the cut.
Even if the banana tree should be awarded first prize for rapid
growth it is not nearly so tenacious of life as many other plants
and even trees.
In the North the problem is to keep trees from dying, but in many
tropical lands the problem is to keep trees from living. Very often
one finds that what appears to be a hedge of trees was once a
fence, the posts of which have taken root and sent forth branches
and have become flourishing trees. In many localities, especially
in Central America, one of the greatest difficulties in maintaining
telephone lines is to prevent the poles from sprouting. Constant
vigilance is necessary in order to keep the lines from being
grounded or short circuited by the branches and foliage
springing from the bare poles, and many men are kept busy
watching the lines and cutting away the shoots as fast as they
sprout from the poles.
Even railway ties will take root and grow and only by treating the
wood with some chemical can this be prevented. On one occasion
while in Costa Rica I was traveling through a dense unbroken
jungle when I stubbed my toe and tripped over some object
concealed among the fallen leaves and undergrowth. Upon
investigating I1 discovered it was an old rusted and corroded
switch lever. Wondering how it happened to be in such
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a strange place I searched about and to my surprise discovered
that I was on an abandoned railway track. But had it not beem for
the switch which had tripped me and a few of the steel rails still
remaining no one would ever have suspected it, for the wooden
ties had sprouted and grown into good-sized trees.
Although plants that refuse to die are far more numerous and are
more tenacious of life in tropical than in temperate lands, yet
some of the northern plants are just as tenacious of life as those
of the tropics.
Many of the willows are truly marvelous in this respect and
almost any twig or withe even when peeled, will sprout and grow
if planted in moist soil.
We are all familiar with the weeping willows so common in this
country and in England, yet all the weeping willows of Great
Britain and America owe their existence to a fragment of a basket
used as a container of figs sent from Smyrna to England. The
basket of fruit was given to Lady Suffolk. Alexander Pope, the
famous poet, was present when the gift arrived and drawing out
one of the withes of which the basket was made he remarked,
"Perhaps this will produce something that we have not in
England" The withe was planted in the bank of the Thames at
Pope's villa in Twickenham where it sprouted and grew into a
fine weeping willow tree.
Years later a young British officer who was about to leave with
his troops for the American colonies, plucked a twig of the Pope
willow to carry with him across the Atlantic. Having no doubt as
to the outcome of the Revolutionary War, he planned to settle
down in the
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new land at the close of hostilities. Throughout the campaign he
carried the willow wand with him, carefully wrapped in oiled
silk, and at the end of the war he presented the twig, which he
had hoped to plant on his own estate, to John Parker Custis, son
of Mrs. Washington. Planted on the Custis estate of Abingdon in
Virginia the withe from the tree by the Thames took
Rose of Jericho Left: When growing Right: When dry and dormant
root and thrived and became the ancestor of all weeping willows
in the United States.
Telegraph poles and railway ties that sprout and withes filched
from willow baskets that grow into trees are not so remarkable as
the queer resurrection plants of the desert lands of our west, and
of Arabia. The western plant is related to the club-mosses or
princess pines; while the resurrection plant of Arabia and
Palestine, which is also known as Rose of Jericho and
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Mary's Hand, is a member of the parsley or turnip family. But
both are equally strange in their ability to come to life after long
periods of remaining dormant. Possessing no true roots these
queer plants live on the most arid and waterless deserts where
their fernlike bronze-green or purplish leaves spread out in
rosette form at night or when there is any moisture in the air. But
during the beat of the day or when dry parching winds sweep
across the deserts the plants roll up into balls and are blown
about, often rolling for many miles before coming again to rest.
When taken from their native homes these plants may be kept for
years, dry, lifeless appearing spheres of dull straw-color. But if
placed in water, or moistened, they at once commence to unroll
and to expand, their faded leaves acquire a tint of green and
purple and in a short time they spread out into handsome rosettes
of ferny leaves.
Many other desert plants possess the ability to remain in a state
of suspended animation for long periods of time. A number of
species of cacti will readily take root and grow after having been
kept dry and apparently dead for many months. In the Andes of
Peru there is a strange cactus which grows abundantly on the
barest rockiest slopes where there is scarcely a trace of soil.
During the winter season, when the air is damp and misty, the
plants are green and fleshy and are covered with handsome
yellow blossoms, but during the summer season, when the air is
as dry and hot as though from some mighty furnace, the plants
shrivel and shrink and become black, withered, and fleshless. But
if gathered in this condition and placed in slightly damp sand in a
moist atmosphere the repulsive-looking black
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and lifeless things soon show signs of resurrection. The shrunken
withered skins swell, and buds of green appear upon them. In a
few weeks the black remains have been absorbed by the new
growth and fleshy green cacti have taken their places.
But we need not seek upon the arid deserts, the bleak Andean
heights, or in the tropical jungles for strange plants that grow
while you wait and seem never to die,
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for some of our own native plants are just as strange and
remarkable in these respects.
The wild portulaca or bitter-root, which is the state flower of
Montana, is one of these. Aside from being the state flower the
bitter-root is a staple food-plant of the Indians. Although the raw
root is very bitter and has a disagreeable odor when being boiled,
yet when cooked it loses both its bitterness and its odor and is
very nutritious. But the most remarkable feature of the bitter-root
is its resistance to conditions which would kill almost any other
plant. It is strange indeed that a hewn timber will still survive and
sprout, it is equally remarkable that a willow withe from a basket
will take root and become a tree, and it is astonishing that a plant
may be stored away in a dry spot for years and yet still spring
into life at the first touch of water. But that any Plant will survive
such treatment and in addition may be boiled and yet live is truly
amazing. Yet the bitter-root has been known to do this, for a root
of the plant which had been immersed in boiling water and was
then dried and preserved as a specimen in a botanical collection
for over a year not only sprang into life but grew and actually
flowered.
Chapter V
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PLANTS THAT CURE AND KILL
ONE of the strangest things about plants is that so many of them
possess medicinal properties. There is an old saying to the effect
that for every ill there is a plant to cure it. This is almost literally
true, and in the early days of our country the colonists depended
almost entirely upon the plant medicines to heal wounds and
sores and to relieve sickness. Modern doctors and others may
laugh at the old "herbs and simples,'' but we must remember that
a very large proportion of our standard, most highly valued
medicines are plant medicines. Moreover, the greater number of
medicinal plants in use are natives of America and were not
known to white men until after the discovery of the New World,
although they had been in use by the Indians for countless
centuries.
Ipecacuanha, sarsaparilla, sassafrass, wintergreen, boneset,
striped maple, liverwort, feverfew, arrowroot, palmetto, papain,
calisaya, goldthread, viburnum, catnip, peppermint, pye-weed,
jimson-weed, witchhazel, yarrow, wild cherry, slippery-elm,
sweet-flag, dittany, yerba-santa, grindelia, greasewood,
dogwood, couch-grass, mullein, lobelia, cascara-sakrada and
many other medicinal plants and plant products were used by the
Indians, and are still considered standard rem-
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edies. And what would the world do without cocaine and
quinine?
Of all medicines perhaps quinine is the most important. Tens of
thousands, in fact millions of people owe their lives to the
cinchona tree whose bark is the source of quinine and was used
by the South American Indians for thousands of years before the
Spaniards conquered Peru.
To the Indians of Peru, the tree and its medicinal bark was known
as "quina" but the name cinchona was bestowed upon the tree by
Linnaeus, the famous naturalist who, strangely enough, made the
mistake of transposing the letter "h," thus giving the tree a name
he had not intended.
It was in 1638 that the wife of Don Luis Mendoza, Viceroy of
Peru, was stricken with malaria, and despite every effort of the
Spanish physicians she became steadily worse until her death
seemed certain. Then, as a last resort, the despairing Viceroy and
the doctors listened to the pleas of the Indians and administered a
bitter decoction made from the bark of a forest tree. The effect
was almost magical. The fever was broken, the patient rapidly
improved and very soon was completely cured.
Realizing what a boon to humanity the magic bark would prove,
the Viceroy's wife carried a large quantity of the "Peruvian bark"
to Spain when she returned to her native land. Very quickly the
fame of the marvelous fever cure spread throughout the civilized
world and the bark, previously known only to the Indians,
became an important article of export from Peru.
Yet it was not until one hundred years after the
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Viceroy's wife had been saved from death by its use that the
quina tree was described and christened with a scientific Latin
name by Linnaeus. Knowing the story of the Viceroy Mendoza's
wife, who was the Countess of Chincon, the great naturalist
decided to name the tree in her boner, but instead of calling it
chincona he misnamed it cinchona and such it has remained.
Even Linnaeus did not know that there were a number of species
of the tree, all of which have medicinal bark, although the yellow
cinchona or calisaya produces the best quinine. All are natives of
South America and grow only at an elevation of more than eight
thousand feet above the sea in volcanic soil where there is a
tropical climate with a rainfall of more than one hundred inches a
year.
To obtain the bark the Indians not only stripped the trunks but
felled the trees in order to secure the bark from the branches. As
there were no large groves or forests of the trees their numbers
were so reduced that the world was threatened with a complete
loss of the precious medicine. Fortunately, however, it was found
that the cinchona trees would thrive in other lands, and about
fifty years ago plantations were established in Java and
elsewhere. To-day over thirty thousand acres of land are devoted
to the cultivation of cinchona in Java alone and 99 per cent of the
bark is produced in that island.
Although an infusion of the bark is as efficacious or even more
efficacious than the commercial quinine, yet it is seldom used
except in its refined and prepared state. So even if the tree itself
was given its name in honor of the woman who first made it
known to the
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outside world, its ancient Indian name still survives in the name
of the drug, quinine.
Another priceless blessing to the human race which was given to
the world by the Incan races of Peru is cocaine obtained from
coca leaves. To be sure cocaine has proved a curse as well as a
blessing to mankind, but the benefits derived from it have far
outweighed all the degradation and misery it has caused through
its used by drug addicts. It has deadened the pain and relieved the
agonies of millions of people, it has made many difficult and
dangerous surgical operations simple and safe. Before local
anaesthetics (of which cocaine was the first) were used, many
operations were impossible, while those which we now consider
trivial and painless were so agonizing that the subjects had to be
chloroformed or etherized into insensibility. Yet thousands of
years before our surgeons had discovered the pain-deadening
powers of the drug the Indians of Peru and Bolivia and Ecuador
had discovered its value as an anaesthetic and had made use of it
in performing truly amazing surgical operations.
It seems incredible that the pre-Incan and Incan surgeons,
equipped only with bronze and stone instruments, could have
amputated limbs, removed cancers and tumors, performed
cassarean operations, filled, crowned, and bridged teeth, and even
trepanned skulls successfully. Yet we have abundant evidence
that they did all these things and more. Hundreds of trepanned
skulls have been found in the ancient graves and tombs and a
very large portion of these show by the healed edges of the bone
that the patients recovered completely from the dangerous
operation. Some not only recovered but,
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later on, were trepanned again. One skull from Peru has five large
apertures cut through the bone and all healed perfectly, while
another had a huge piece removed from the top of the cranium
and two other large pieces cut from the sides, leaving only a
narrow bridge of bone separating the holes. Moreover, in this
case the apertures were so large that silver and gold plates were
required to cover them, and as the skin, which still adhered to the
skull, had grown over the metal, and the bone beneath had
healed, we know that the man recovered and lived for years after
his terrible operations. Also many skeletons with a leg or an arm
amputated have been found, while pictures and pottery vessels
show men and women with amputated limbs and some even
wearing artificial legs. Even more difficult and painful operations
were successfully performed by these ancient Indian surgeons
and we know that they made use of cocaine as a local anaesthetic,
for on some of the sculptures and pottery, surgeons are shown at
their work and are represented actually using the drug to deaden
the pain of their patients. To be sure their method of using
cocaine was crude and far from antiseptic, for they merely
chewed the leaves of the coca plant and from time to time
expectorated the juice into the wound as they proceeded with the
operation. However, the results must have been satisfactory, for
unless the pain had been deadened so that the patient did not
squirm or move, the delicate operation on of removing a section
of skull and exposing the brain would have been practically
impossible.
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ancient Peruvians used the coca leaves macerated with wood
ashes or lime and applied as a poultice.
Just how they discovered the properties of cocaine no one knows,
but for thousands of years the Andean Indians have been in the
habit of chewing the coca leaves to allay hunger, thirst, and
weariness. Among the most ancient specimens of pottery are
vessels showing men with one cheek distended by the little wad
of coca leaves and lime, and the practice is still universal among
the mountain and desert tribes. Without the lime or ashes the
coca leaves have no effect, for an alkali is necessary to extract the
cocaine from them. Unlike the use of cocaine by drug addicts, the
custom of chewing the leaves has no injurious effects and does
not become a mania or even a fixed habit. Indians from the
mountain districts who have chewed coca leaves for years almost
invariably abandon the habit when they make their homes in the
larger cities of the coastal district, and have no craving for the
leaves. The great majority of household servants in Lima and
other coastal towns are Indians from the mountains, yet it is rare
indeed to see one of these men or women chewing coca, although
the leaves are everywhere on sale in stores and markets.
Neither do the lowland Indians use the leaves, and I have never
known white men to acquire the habit, even if on long, tiresome
journeys they sometimes follow the natives' custom. The leaves
are chewed merely to deaden the sufferings of hunger, thirst, and
weary muscles and when provided with plenty of good food to
sustain him the Indian feels no need of the leaves.
Still another plant that has proved a boon to human
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beings is the chaulmoogra tree, for the oil extracted from the
seeds of this tree is the only known aid in the cure of leprosy.
Countless men and women afflicted with the dread malady have
been restored to health and happiness by treatment with
chaulmoogra oil. Unfortunately it is not always efficacious and
moreover, the treatment is so agonizing that many lepers have
preferred to remain such rather than endure the suffering of the
cure. But corps of men are striving steadily to find a means of
treatment which will obviate this and at the same time render the
results more certain.
Oculists, too, depend upon a plant. They would find it difficult
indeed to carry on their profession without belladonna or atropine
which are derived from the same plant. And how many of us
know that the useful belladonna and the atropine, which oculists
drop in their patients' eyes in order to dilate the pupils so they
may be more accurately examined, are obtained from the
common deadly nightshade, The despised jimson-weed also
yields a drug, valuable in the treatment of asthma.
It seems strange that plants which are so poisonous should
prove beneficial and curative as well. But there are many plants
which will either cure or kill men depending upon how they are
used: aconite, nux vomica, strychnine; foxglove, or digitalis;
morphine and laudanum (obtained from the poppy) ; the
poisonous
henbane plant, from which hyoscyamine is obtained. Many other
widely used medicines are obtained from poisonous plants.
Still more will kill men but will not cure them, and same of these
are so deadly that there is no known antidote for them. There is
an acacia tree of Africa
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which causes permanent blindness if it touches one's eyes.
Innumerable people have died in agony after eating poisonous
mushrooms or "toadstools," and the deadliest of all plant poisons
is the terrible curare or wourali poison used by the Indians of
South America for poisoning the darts used in their arrows. No
one other than the Indians knows just what plant or plants make
wurali so deadly, for the Indians use a number of different plants
when concocting the poison, and purposely conceal the true
source of its deadly character by adding harmless plants, hair,
bones, and various other substances to the brew. But so deadly is
the wurali that the least scratch of a poisoned dart brings certain
and almost instant death. A large bird, such as a wild turkey, may
fly a few yards before dying; a deer struck by a tiny wurali-tipped
dart may run a few hundred feet before death overtakes it, and a
human being may live for five or six minutes.
Yet this fearful poison is harmless if taken internally, provided
there is no cut, acre, or abrasion in one's mouth, throat or
stomach, for wurali is only deadly when it enters the blood and in
this respect resembles snake poison.
It may seem very remarkable that a poison which will kill or
injure a man by entering a wound may be taken internally
without serious results, yet this is true of many poisonous plants.
We all know the danger of poison ivy, yet the young leaves or
even the berries may be eaten without the eater being poisoned.
Stranger yet, the best means of preventing being poisoned by the
vine is to eat the young leaves in early spring. But don't make the
mistake of trying the same means of
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inoculation against poison hemlock, poison sumac or poison
dogwood.
One of the most poisonous American plants is the manchineel
tree of the West Indies. Even water dripping from the leaves will
burn and blister one's skin. To bathe in water where there are
manchineel trees is to court serious illness or death and there are
numerous instances of persons dying from the effects of the
poison when they had sought shelter from rain by standing
beneath manchineel trees. The fruit resembles a green apple and
is deadly poison. Back in the eighteenth century a company of
British soldiers sent out as a garrison at St. Kitts, discovered what
they thought were edible fruits and bit into them. As a result the
men were all dangerously ill and a number died in terrible agony.
As every one in the West Indies is familiar with these trees it is
rarely indeed that any ill-effects result from their abundance, but
strangers should be very careful and should learn to recognize the
manchineel on sight.
There are other poisonous plants which are deadly if eaten raw,
yet are harmless and nutritious food when cooked. The common
jack-in-the-pulpit or Indian turnip is one of these. Although the
raw tuberous roots are acrid and poisonous, yet the Indians
discovered a method of transforming them into a valuable and
nutritious food. By leaching the roots in lye, boiling and drying
them and grinding them into meal the Indians prepare a flour
which is used in making cakes or bread with a delightful nutty
flavor.
We all know the delicious cashew nuts, yet the raw nuts before
being roasted are very poisonous and the
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shell or "rind" contains a corrosive poison that will burn the skin
of one's mouth or lips like strong acid.
But perhaps the strangest and most remarkable poisonous plant
that is used for food is the cassava or manioc plant. There are two
varieties of this plant, one known as "sweet cassava" with edible
non-poisonous roots, the other known as "bitter cassava" with
roots which if eaten raw or merely cooked are deadly poison. Yet
the roots of this poisonous plant, which contain prussic acid,
form the staple food for hundreds of thousands of Indians of
tropical America and for thousands of white and colored people
and are the source of our tapioca.
This is wonderful indeed, yet it is even more wonderful that the
Indians should have discovered the secret. How they did so is a
mystery which no one can explain, Probably it was by accident,
just as so many great discoveries have been made. It scarcely
could have been by experiment, for the experimenters would
have died before they had carried their experiments far. But
discover it they did and thereby provided their descendants with a
food plant which yields abundantly where no other crops will
thrive.
In preparing the poisonous roots the Indian women carefully
wash and pare them, thus at the outset getting rid of a large part
of the poison, most of which is in or just under the outer skin.
Next, the pared roots are grated, chopped fine or ground between
stones. The damp soggy mass of pulp is then packed tightly into
a peculiar wickerwork device known as a "metapee." This is a
long cylindrical affair so woven that its diameter increases when
the two ends are pushed
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together and diminishes or contracts when the ends are pulled
apart. With the metapee shortened and fully expanded the grated
cassava roots are packed into it and the metapee is hung on a
beam or a branch of a tree by a loop at one end, and a stout stick
or lever is thrust through another loop at the lower end. One or
two women then seat themselves on this lever and their weight
draws the matapee out, thus decreasing its diameter and exerting
a tremendous pressure upon the contents and forcing the juice of
the grated roots through the countless openings between the
strands. When no more juice is squeezed out the metapee is taken
down and the contents, packed into a cylindrical mass, are
dumped out. This is almost dry and is broken into lumps which
are rubbed through a basketwork sieve to form a coarse white
meal, and this is baked or cooked on hot stones or a sheet of iron
over a slow fire. Sometimes the meal is moistened and made into
big thin cakes, but at other times it is stirred and moved about
while cooking and forms a dry crisp meal known as "farine." In
either case the last traces of poison are driven off by the heat and
the cassava bread or farine is a nutritious food which, if kept dry,
will keep for months.
The starchy manioc meal is the source of tapioca, while the
poisonous juice extracted by the metapee is boiled down into a
thick brown syrupy substance known as "cassareep" This is
edible and forms the bases of the Worcestershire and other
well-known sauces, of our dining tables. In the countries where
the cassava grows the cassareep is used in making "pepper pot,"
which is an odd name for it as it is not hot and does not contain
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peppers. Any vegetable placed in it will ruin it, but it has the
property of preserving and tendering meat and if heated every
two or three days it will keep good indefinitely. All that is
necessary is to add meat and fresh cassareep as fast as the
contents are used. Properly prepared this pepper-pot is a delicious
dish with a very rich flavor, and no matter how tough the meat
may have been when placed in the cassareep it will be tender and
delicate after a day or two.
Still another product is made from this strange plant, although
few white persons would consider it edible or, rather, drinkable.
This is "paiwari," an intoxicating drink made by the Indians from
scorched farine or cassava bread. It is prepared by the Indian
women chewing the cassava and expectorating it into a wooden
trough where it is allowed to ferment and is diluted with water.
The paiwari is the Indians' beer and is always served as the
welcoming draught to strangers who visit them. Disgusting and
nauseating as it may seem to a white person, the explorer or
traveler who visits the primitive tribes of Brazil and the Guianas
must overcome his repugnance and drink the paiwari if he
expects to win the friendship and confidence of the Indians. Like
the calumet or peace-pipe of our North American Indians, the
calabash of muddy looking paiwari is the symbol of friendship,
and refusal to accept it is equivalent to an insult and a declaration
of hostility. As a matter of fact the preparation of the drink is not
quite so unsanitary and repugnant as one might suppose. The
women who masticate the cassava are selected especially for this
duty. They must have perfect teeth, they must be healthy and free
from all
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skin diseases, and before chewing the cassava they are obliged to
undergo a long and elaborate cleansing process of washing and
rinsing their mouths and teeth with decoctions of aromatic and
astringent roots and barks.
Finally we must not forget the pineapple. "Pineapples
poisonous!" you may exclaim. "Nonsense. Pineapples are never
poisonous." But if so you will be wrong, for decayed pineapples
supply the poison with which many savages poison their arrows
and darts which are almost as deadly as those tipped with wurali.
Quite aside from this strange use, pineapples are very strange and
unusually interesting plants. They belong to the bromeliad family
and are first cousins of the gray Spanish moss that drapes the
trees of our southem states. What we call the fruit is not a true
fruit but a cluster of hundreds of small fruits each with its own
core and its spiny hearts where the flowers matured.
But perhaps most interesting of all is that the pineapple is the
symbol of hospitality. When the Spaniards first visited the West
Indies they soon learned that whenever they came to an Indian
village or an Indian hut where there were pineapples or pineapple
tops placed near the entrance, the inhabitants welcomed them as
friends. The custom of using the fruit as the symbol of friendship
appealed to the Spaniards who carried it back to Spain. From
there it spread to England and when the British colonists settled
in Virginia and New England they brought the old Indian custom
back to its native land. But instead of displaying real pineapples
which, of course, they did not possess, the English settlers placed
carved or painted pineapples beside or above their doorways,
their gates
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and even on their bedposts and other furniture, to indicate that
visitors would be hospitably received. The chances are that those
old ancestors of ours were wholly ignorant of where or how the
custom originated, while only those few who had visited the
tropics had ever seen a pineapple or knew what the fruit was. But
they did know that it was the symbol of friendship and hospitality
and that is why we see so many carved pineapples on the old
colonial houses.
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Chapter VI
PLANT GIANTS
IF a person were asked to name the strongest of all living things
he would probably say "the elephant." But in that case he would
be wrong, for the strongest of all living things are the plants.
Even the largest and most powerful elephant is a weakling
compared to little, delicate-appearing plants. This may sound
impossible, yet no elephant can perform such prodigious feats of
strength as do the plants which the big beasts eat.
A slender threadlike root of a tree will rend solid rock asunder. A
sprouting seed will force its way upward through the hardest
packed earth and will lift soil many times its own weight. And
the most fragile of all plants-the weak and pallid mushrooms,
will break and lift concrete floors in their upward growth to find
light.
How do they accomplish such feats of strength? By hydraulic
pressure. Every one at all familiar with the laws of physics knows
that a hydraulic jack, consisting of a cylinder and a piston which
is forced upward by a tiny stream of water pumped into the
cylinder below it will exert terrific force, and is far more
powerful than a jack operated by mechanical devices. Any child
can easily lift many tons by means of a hydraulic jack, and in a
way, every plant is a living hydraulic jack.
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Although few of us realize the fact, yet the sap of a tree exerts a
pressure of many hundred pounds to the square inch. It is this
pressure which keeps the stems and leaves erect and enables
them to resist heavy winds. It is this pressure which lifts the giant
trees high above the earth and it is this same steady irresistible
pressure that enables a root to burst rocks or a mushroom or
sprouting seed to lift tremendous weights and to break concrete
or even slabs of stone.
There is no mystery as to how the plants perform their miracles
of strength but it is a mystery how they secure and retain the
immense pressure of their sap.
Regardless of the solution of this puzzle, we must credit the
plants with being the strongest of all living things, and hence
giants.
And when it comes to size the plants again are the most gigantic
of living things on earth. The largest of all land animals is the
elephant and the largest of all creatures are the whales. Yet the
biggest whale who ever swam in the sea would appear a puny
creature beside the giant sequoia trees of California or beside
many other plant giants. No one has ever yet measured a whale
that was over one hundred and ten feet in length, no one has ever
seen an elephant more than twelve feet in height, and the
mightiest of dinosaurs who lived on earth measured only a trifle
over one hundred feet from tip of nose to tip of scaly tail.
Place such huge creatures as these mighty whales and these
amazing dinosaurs beside one of the giant California trees and if
standing on its tail it would be unable to reach the lowest
branches with its nose. And it would take a whole family of such
whales to equal
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the bulk and girth of the enormous plant giant. In fact the mighty
whale would still seem small and insignificant if he were leaned
against any one of countless millions of trees in the great forests
of Central or South America. Many of these are more than two
hundred feet in height and soar upward for more than one
hundred feet without a branch, yet compared to the giant
sequoias they would seem as small as would a whale compared to
them.
Famed as they are for their size and age, yet the giant trees of
California are not the biggest or the oldest plants on earth. As far
as is known, few if any of the sequoia trees are over 4,000 years
old which is a ripe old age when we stop to consider that they
were good-sized saplings when Moses was found amid the
bulrushes. Yet these venerable sequoias are mere infants by
comparison with the giant cypress trees of Mexico, such as the
famous cypress of Chapultepec, which is said to be 6,270 years
old. Think of it! A tree that was hoary with age when Abraham
lived. A tree that was as old as the sequoias are to-day when the
giant trees of California were tiny seedlings bursting through the
soil.
Although so much older than the big trees of California, these
almost prehistoric cypresses of Mexico would appear mere
dwarfs if placed among the mighty sequoias and redwoods.
Cypresses, no matter how old they may be, never attain the
astounding heights of the giants of the Golden State which tower
skyward for nearly three hundred feet. The famous sequoia
known as "General Sherman" measures 280 feet in height.
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But what the Mexican plant-giants lack in stature they make up
for in girth, some measuring 120 feet in circumference or almost
40 feet in diameter, whereas the largest of the California giant
trees are less than 100 feet in circumference at the base. Both the
giant cypresses and the giant sequoias and redwoods are
evergreen trees and all are famous for their durable wood. In fact
cypress is probably the most enduring of all woods, for it will last
practically forever. Many of the mummy-cases of the ancient
Egyptians were made of cypress and are as untouched by decay
or the lapse of thousands of years as though made yesterday. The
original doors of St. Peter's Church in Rome were made of
cypress and lasted untouched by decay or rot for eleven hundred
years when Pope Eugenius the Fourth had them replaced with
bronze doors. Even when buried underground in moist soil or
submerged in water, cypress wood remains solid and sound for
centuries.
Almost as indestructible by time and the elements is the timber of
California's giant redwoods and sequoias, and in one respect their
wood is superior to cypress, for it contains practically no resin
and hence will not burn readily. In fact the wood of the sequoia
trees is so non-inflammable that it maybe said to be fire-proof.
Giants among trees are not confined to evergreens or conifers
such as the cypresses, the redwoods, and the sequoias, the
gigantic firs, and spruces of the northwest, the famous cedars of
Lebanon and the two-thousand-year-old junipers of Natural
Bridge in Virginia. In India and Africa, as well as in other
tropical and semi-tropical lauds, there are the giant fig trees or
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banyans, The banyans might be called juvenile giants for they
attain enormous proportions in a very short time, comparatively
speaking. The giant sequoias, redwoods, and cypresses have
required thousands of years to reach their present size but a
banyan will grow from a seed to a real giant in a single century.
And unlike these other tree giants, who devote all their energies
to increasing their individual dimensions, the banyans develop
whole families of giants and form genuine forests by means of
shoots which droop from the branches, take root in the soil and
like Jack's famous beanstalk, develop into giant trees with
amazing rapidity. One of these banyan trees which is in the
botanical station at Calcutta, India, is only a trifle over one
hundred years old, yet the main trunk is over 15 feet in character
and has 250 supplementary trunks each from 5 to 8 feet in
diameter, as well as more than 3,000 smaller trunks. Although it
is barely 70 feet in height, yet it covers such a wide area that at
one time 7,000 people stood beneath its branches. And if we
should add the dimensions of this giant's 3,250 trunks together,
think what a stupendous girth this giant tree would have. Even
larger banyan giants grow in various places, one African explorer
having described a gigantic banyan which formed a roof
spreading over nearly an acre and forming a shade for a large
native village. Unlike the wood of the giant conifers, that of the
banyan is of no value, and as the trees are held sacred by many of
the races where they grow, they are rarely disturbed and grow to
great age and enormous size. Another tree giant is the baobab of
Africa, India and Australia. If plant giants are judged by girth
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rather than height then the baobabs are the biggest of them all,
for while they never attain great height they become enormously
stout with trunks even larger than the Mexican cypresses.
Immense as they are they have none of the dignity and grandeur
of the mighty sequoias and redwoods and none of the age-old
appearance of the giant cypresses and gnarled cedars. Rather,
they remind us of the fat women of side-shows who are giants in
weight and corpulency. Showmen are well aware of the value of
contrasts or the truth of relativity as one might say, and by
exhibiting giants and dwarfs side by side the giant appears even
larger than he is and the pygmy much smaller, while by placing a
living skeleton near a fat woman she seems even fatter and the
emaciated man seems even more of a skeleton. If we consider the
baobabs as the fat women giants of the plants, then the giant
living skeletons of the vegetable kingdom are the palms.
Many species of palm-trees grew to immense heights with trunks
so slender that they seem utterly inadequate to support the crown
of long, plumelike leaves. Even the cocoanut palms look as if
they were top heavy and might double and break at any moment,
yet the tallest of cocoanut palms rarely reach a height of 60 feet.
Far more beautiful and stately are the royal palms with their
smooth symmetrical, granitelike trunks and drooping fronds.
These are real giants, for it is not unusual for royal palms to lift
their plumed heads over 100 feet above the earth, and under
favorable conditions they may become far taller. In the little
island of Dominica in the Lesser Antilles, there are a number
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of these royal palms bordering a road in the Layou Valley, and
not one of these is less than 130 feet in height while the tallest
measures 155 feet from base to tip of topmost leaf-bud.
In Barbados there are, or at least were until quite recently, a
number of royal palms nearly 140 feet in height, while the giant
of them all was on the island of St. Lucia where its fronds waved
and thrashed like green banners over 200 feet above the earth. As
far as known this is the greatest of all palm-tree giants, yet it does
not appear as tall as many of the palms which grow in tropical
American forests. Here, where the interlacing branches form a
roof of vegetation which even the tropical sunlight cannot pierce,
there is a constant struggle among the trees, each striving to
thrust itself upward until its foliage finds the sunshine so vital to
its life.
In this endless battle for height the palm-trees are always the
winners, for they grow far more rapidly than the other trees and
their slender trunks and comparatively small heads enable them
to push through the jungle roof and rise high above the mass of
tangled branches, leaves, and intertwined vines. It seems strange
indeed to find slender stems, only a few inches in diameter,
extending straight as an arrow from the floor of the jungle and
vanishing amid the branches 100 feet or more above one's head,
yet with no sign of leaf, shoot or branch throughout their
polished lengths. But it is still stranger to look across the forest
from some eminence or from a river and see the heads of
palm-trees rising high above the jungle's roof on trunks which
appear no larger than pipe stems. I cannot say exactly how
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high these attenuated tree giants are, for it is a most difficult, in
fact an impossible matter, to measure them accurately even by
triangulation. But in many places scores may be seen flaunting
their leaves 50 feet or more above the forest of trees many of
which are more than 100 feet in height.
It may not seem so very remarkable to find giants among the
trees, but how about violet, verbena, heliotrope, and pansy plants
60 feet and more in height, with stems 5 feet in diameter?
Impossible, you say. Not at all. Although we always think of
these familiar flowers as little garden plants, yet in the tropics
there are huge forest trees belonging to the same families as our
pansies and violets, our verbenas and our heliotropes. And their
blossoms are as lovely and as sweetscented as those of our
gardens. It is a most wonderful sight to see a huge tree
completely covered with odorous, brilliantly colored flowers, and
it is a still more remarkable sight to see great mountainsides and
endless forests gorgeous with pink, golden, white, rose, blue,
mauve, scarlet, cerise, lavender, and orange-colored blossoms as
if a gigantic crazy quilt had been spread over the roof of the
jungle.
In many places these giant flowering plants grow close to the
rivers with their branches overhanging the water, and as the
flowers fade and drop from above they form a multicolored
mosaic covering the surface of the stream for hundreds of yards
in every direction.
In sluggish creeks, tranquil backwaters, and sheltered coves,
there are other flower giants, for in such places gigantic plants
like our familiar arrow-head and pickerel-weeds spread yard-long
spear-shaped leaves
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10 feet or more above the water, and flaunt huge spikes of waxy
white or rich purple flowers 5 feet in length and as thick as a
man's thigh.
And here is the home of the most gigantic of water lilies-the
Victoria Regia, with lovely flowers a foot or more in diameter
and with great platter-like leaves so immense and buoyant that
they will support a child.
In the humid swampy areas we will find giant pitcher plants with
urn like leaves quite capable of trapping the
Rafflesia, Madagascar
equally gigantic insects that hum and drone about in the warm
damp air. In such places we may come upon amazing giant arums
related to our lovely calls, lilies with enormous flower-spathes 6
or 8 feet in length rising above the huge leaves like gigantic
candles.
Big as are such floral giants, none can equal the greatest of all
giant blossoms, the raffiesia flower of Malaysia which measures
a yard or more across its curiously mottled, fleshy petals. If the
odors of flowers were in proportion to their size, what wonderful
perfumes could be made from some of these giant blossoms.
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But in the case of the rafflesia it is fortunate that the strength of
flowers' scents do not depend upon their size, for the blossoms of
this gigantic parasitic plant give off the stench of putrid flesh.
Many plants are giants in one respect and not in others. Aside
from its enormous carrion-scented blossoms, the rafflesia is not
gigantic.
The largest of giant trees frequently have small leaves and tiny
inconspicuous flowers, while many plants have truly gigantic
leaves but can lay no claim to being considered giants in other
respects.
Among these are the giant caladiums, or elephant's ears, many of
which have edible tuberous roots such as the taro of the Pacific
Islands, the yautias of tropical America, the dasheens of the
Antilles and the taniers of the French West Indies. Other species
are widely cultivated because of their handsome leaves which are
variegated with white, yellow, red, or purple. All have large
leaves, but the true giants of the family are natives of the islands
of the South Pacific. Most appropriately may these be called
elephant's ears, for their enormous leaves are often 3 or 4 feet in
diameter and are borne on great fleshy stems higher than a man's
head. Yet even these great leaves, any one of which would serve
as an umbrella, are not so gigantic as the leaves of the apa-apa
plant of Hawaii. In appearance the leaves of the apa-apa are much
like geranium leaves magnified thousands of times. Found only
on these mid-Pacific islands, the apa-apa plants cover whole
mountainsides, their great fleshy stems, topped by the immense
five-foot leaves, forming a weird forest. Walking through it with
the gigantic leaves
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shutting out the sunlight, a person realizes how an ant must feel
as the little insect moves about in a patch of violets.
Another similar plant with equally gigantic leaves
Apa-apa, Hawaii
is found only on Juan Fernandez, the famous island where
Alexander Selkirk lived with his goats and parrots, the original of
Robinson Crusoe. These plants, known as gunnera, are useful
giants, for the thick leaf stems, which are ten feet in length,
contain a great amount of water like sap and are chewed by the
natives
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to quench their thirst when traveling about this almost waterless
island.
It seems very strange to find giant trees belonging to the same
families as our violets, verbenas and other garden flowers; to find
mosses as large as ferns and ferns as large as palm-trees; and it is
equally strange to find giant grass forming impenetrable jungles
of bone-hard six-inch stems towering sixty feet or more above
the earth. These giant grasses are the bamboos. Although there
may seem to be little resemblance between a giant bamboo and
the grasses of our lawns and meadows, yet if we examine a
bamboo we will find that in its manner of growth it is very
similar to a spear of grass. It has the same jointed, hollow stem,
the branches and bracts sprout from the joints in the same way as
those of grass, and the flowers are much the same. And the
bamboo is as useful as many of our more familiar grasses. For
that matter our most useful and valuable food plants are grasses.
Wheat, barley, oats, rye, rice, and maize are all grasses, and even
if the bamboo cannot be classed as an important food plant it
serves a manifold of useful purposes. What would the angler do
without a bamboo rod? How handicapped the clever Japs and
Chinese would be without bamboo with which to manufacture
furniture, matting, screens, musical instruments, and even houses.
And how about chop suey and other Oriental dishes without the
tender shoots of bamboo?
Useful as this giant grass is, there are other plant giants which are
just as useful. Moreover, these are leafless giants, for they are the
giant cacti. Every one who has traveled across our desert lands
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of the southwest has seen the giant cacti, like enormous
candelabra, but few persons realize that these huge prickly plants
serve many useful purposes, or what interesting plants they are.
They are of vital importance to thousands of human beings. The
most casual observer will notice that the trunks and branches of
these desert giants are deeply grooved or fluted, but how many
know that this feature of the plants is vital to their very
existence? Without its fluted trunk the giant cactus or saguaro
could not thrive in the dry and desert areas where it is such a
conspicuous feature of the landscape. A most remarkable and
strange device it is, too, for during damp weather and at night the
grooves open or expand to absorb all the moisture possible, and
then closing, they retain the moisture during dry weather. Even
with this bellows-like arrangement for obtaining every atom of
moisture in the air, it is a miracle that these giant plants manage
to survive and even increase. Many creatures, birds, cats, bats,
and insects, devour the cactus fruits before they are ripe. Vast
numbers are gathered by the Indians, and the few which ripen
and fall are eaten by lizards and other ground-dwelling creatures
before the seeds can sprout. Woodpeckers, who find the giant
cacti ideal nesting places, riddle the trunks and branches with
holes. But instead of bleeding to death from these scores of
wounds, the cactus heals them quickly by forming a woody
growth lining the holes. These cavities form welcome refuges for
owls, hawks, and many other birds, While bees find them
ready-made hives in which to store their honey.
To the Indians the saguaro cactus is as useful and
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essential as the cocoanut tree to natives of tropic islands. It would
be dificult if not impossible, for the Pimas, Papagoes, Cocomas
and other desert tribes to exist without the saguaro, for they
depend upon the giant cacti for food, drink, and timber. Early in
the spring the saguaros' flowers appear, covering trunks and
branches with their cream-colored petals, and developing into
large egg-shaped fruits which ripen about the first of July. Within
the prickly skin or rind is rich, crimson pulp which is slightly
sweet and juicy and is very refreshing and nutritious.
Great quantities of the fruits are eaten raw, but far more are made
into a thick syrup, much like molasses. This is stored in jars and
later on is made into the saguaro brandy or "wine" which is an
important accessory to the Indians' ceremonies, The fruits are
only one of the products of these giant plants. The seeds are
dried, ground into meal, and eaten as a cereal. The fibrous woody
skeletons of the dead cacti are tough and strong and provide the
Indians with building material for their houses, fences, furniture,
and other structures, while the wood-lined cavities formed where
woodpeckers nested, are dug from the trunks and branches and
serve the Indians as drinking cups and water jars.
Just why some plants should be giants while others belonging to
the same families or even the same genera should be tiny
things-real pygmies--is something of a mystery. We all know that
a plant growing in favorable surroundings with soil and climate
adapted to its needs, will thrive far better and will attain much
larger size that another plant of the same species in poor
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soil and struggling for existence under unfavorable conditions.
Agriculture consists largely of providing the most favorable
conditions and most suitable soils for cultivated plants in order to
produce the largest possible growths and most abundant crops. In
this way plants may he produced which are true giants by
comparison with the rank and file of their kind.
On the other hand it is possible to produce dwarfs from giants, as
witness the fascinating dwarfed trees
Dwarfed tree (1/10)
of the Japanese who produce gnarled, twisted, ancient pines,
cedars, and cypresses a foot or two in height which are so exactly
like the great forest giants that they appear like full-sized trees
viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.
If man can reduce plant giants to plant pygmies and can induce
dwarf plants to develop into giants, surely old Mother Nature can
do the same. The seed of a normal-sized plant finding lodgment
in some certain soil in a new environment might attain gigantic
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size, and its seeds taking root in the same locality would also be
giants. Perhaps, ages and ages ago, the ancestors of all plant
giants were small, and some becoming giants by chance survived,
while their smaller fellows fell by the wayside in their struggle
for existence and left only the giants to perpetuate their species.
Most surprising things happen in the plant world, and no one can
be certain just what the results may be when a plant is reared in a
new locality under conditions different from its native home.
When I was living in the West Indies I experimented with many
northern plants and flowers, and while the majority did well and
developed no new or novel characteristics in their tropical home
others did most surprising things. Perhaps the strangest of all was
the behavior of a Japanese morning-glory. Instead of growing
into a climbing vine as all normal self-respecting morning glory
plants should, it formed a short upright stalk, sent out a few
leaves, produced one single enormous blossom, and promptly
died.
Far more surprising was the result of introducing the
St.-John's-wort to New Zealand. Normally a little herb barely a
foot in height, the plant in its new home didn't know when to stop
and continued to grow and grow until to-day, eighty years after it
was taken to New Zealand, the little St.John's-wort is a real giant,
a sturdy tree forty feet in height.
But perhaps the strangest of all plant giants are the huge lily like
plants that grow on the mist-shrouded high plateau about the
Kaetuerk Falls in British Guiana. Here, beside the world's
greatest cataract, the
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rocky tableland is covered with queer plants found nowhere else.
Among them are strange orchids, grotesque air-plants, immense
maidenhair ferns, giant sundews and blanket like lichens. But
most conspicuous of all are the stout-stemmed, lily like plants
with stiff sword shaped leaves six or eight feet in length. The
strangest feature of these giant lilies is that the bases of the leaves
are filled with water, and in these miniature aquariums dwell
golden frogs and tiny silvery fish which have never been found
anywhere else on earth,
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Chapter VII
INTELLIGENT PLANTS
Do plants possess intelligence? Do they know pleasure and pain,
do they suffer when they are injured, do they recognize their
friends?
No one really knows the answers, but there are many
persons---even some scientists-who believe that certain plants
feel pain when injured, that they possess a certain sort of sense
which might be called intelligence, and that their roots or tendrils
serve as crude ganglions and take the place of brains. And every
one who has had much experience in raising trees, flowers, and
other plants knows that they certainly respond more readily to the
attentions of some persons than others. In fact, there are countless
instances of plants growing badly or even failing to survive when
cared for by one person, yet the same plants will thrive and do
splendidly when reared by another individual. We often hear
people say that a certain person has "good luck" with plants. But
is it so much good luck as it is the result of the plants "taking to"
the successful gardener?
Neither is there any doubt that certain plants behave in what most
certainly seems an intelligent manner. Vines will unerringly turn
and grow towards the nearest tree, netting, or other support.
Scientists may try to explain this by the theory that the vines are
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guided by the shadow cast by the stake or tree, that they grow
towards the object merely because of the effect of light or
absence of light, just as the sunflowers turn their faces towards
the sun. But if that is the case how do they explain the matter
when a vine is surrounded by objects all of which cast shadows,
or when a trellis is so situated that it never casts a shadow, or
when the support the vine selects is always in the shade?
A British scientist carried on some very interesting experiments
in an endeavor to determine whether or not plants do possess any
intelligence or reason. In one case he planted a vine in a spot
where there were no trees, shrubs, or other objects which would
serve as supports. Then he placed a pole at some distance away
and almost at once the vine headed for it. Before it reached the
pole he removed it and placed it the same distance from the vine
on the opposite side. Without hesitation the vine doubled back
and started in the new direction heading for the pole as straight as
if it possessed eyes. Again the pole was removed and set up in
another spot and again the vine altered its course and made for
the support. Again and again the location of the pole was
changed and again and again the vine turned towards it
unerringly. But there was a limit to the plant's patience and
perseverance. After many futile attempts to reach the elusive pole
the vine finally gave up and refused to be lured by the pole even
when placed within a few feet of it. Not until the support was
placed in the midst of the foliage did it show any further interest
in it.
Even more remarkable and convincing was the action of a
trumpet-creeper growing in a garden in one of
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our southern states. More than twenty feet from the vine there
was a dead tree with the rough bark still adhering to the trunk in
places. Although the creeper had never shown any tendency to
send exploring shoots in the direction of the stump, yet after a
fire built about the dead tree lied burned off the loose bark,
leaving the trunk bare and charred, the vine immediately started
towards it. For twenty feet and more a slender shoot made
directly for the dead tree and reaching it commenced to climb.
Completely abandoning its previous support, the creeper sent
trailer after trailer to the stump until it was completely concealed
beneath the vine's foliage. If this was not intelligence how can it
he explained? Surely it was not mere instinct or the effect of the
stump's shadow, for in that case the vine would have made for
the stump before it had been burned. Yet it was not until the
loose unstable bark had been removed, and the bare trunk
afforded a secure hold for the vine's tendrils that the plant
became interested in it.
Any one who has been south of the equator and who is interested
in plants will have noticed that in the southern hemisphere vines
which climb by twining spirally about a support turn from right
to left or anticlockwise; whereas vines (with a few exceptions), in
the northern hemisphere turn from left to right or clockwise.
Nothing will induce a northern spirally climbing vine to reverse
its direction and grow upward from right to left.
If you doubt it, just try it on a common morning glory vine. Take
a long shoot or sprout which has not started to climb and twist it
about a stick or a string
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from right to left. Will it continue to grow in that manner? Not a
bit of it. Unless the stalk has been tied in place it will unwind and
start on its upward way from left to right. And if the stalk has
been secured so the vine cannot free itself it will double back or
form a loop and resume its normal and accustomed way above
the spot where it was fastened. Nothing could be more stubborn
and fixed in its determination to have its own
Vine' (1/2) Left: South of the equator Right: North of the equator way than a vine under such conditions, and south of the equator
the vines (with few exceptions), are just as stubborn when it
comes to spiraling from left to right. It is just as impossible to
induce a vine of the southern hemisphere to climb from left to
right as it is to force a northern vine to go from right to left.
Moreover seeds from a vine which, north of the equator, spirals
from left to right will produce vines south of the equator which
will grow only from right to left.
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Just why this should be the ease no one appears to know with any
certainty. Possibly it has some connection with the sun or the
revolution of the earth or the fact that in one case the North Pole
and in the other case the South Pole is the nearest. But whatever
the reason the fact remains that some instinct or willpower
appears to guide the plants and cause them to refuse to be led
astray.
Far more remarkable and savoring of real intelligence is the
uncanny ability with which certain plants will find water or food
or will avoid obstructions.
The eucalyptus trees are famed for the manner in which their
roots will seek out water or dampness. The same British scientist
who tried the experiment with the vine tells of a most marvelous
case of a eucalyptus tree seeking water. The tree was planted
some distance from a stone wall on the farther side of which, and
many yards distant, was a drain pipe, one joint of which leaked
slightly. Great as the distance was and slight as was the moisture
that seeped from the pipe, yet the roots of the tree had found it.
Not only had the tree located the tiny area of moist soil caused by
the leaky joint, but its roots had been forced to go a roundabout
way in order to reach it. At the point nearest to the tree the wall
rested upon a ledge and the roots could not find a way. But
turning aside they had crept along until they had located a crack
through which they had forced their way and then, turning back
had followed their original course directly to the drain. Such
behavior certainly appears to border on real intelligence, but even
if the roots located the drain and were guided to it by the remote
dampness caused
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by the leak the extreme sensitiveness of the roots is almost as
remarkable as if they had been actuated by intellect.
Many plants have roots or tendrils so sensitive or so well
provided with nerves or intelligence that when touched they will
not only draw away like animate things, but will telegraph other
parts of the tree or plant or send a message, as we might say, a
warning, that something strange or dangerous is near. If we touch
the tip of a vine's tendril with our finger or even with a stick or
other object, the tendril will curl up. But if left alone it will soon
uncurl and straighten out as before. Some species of vines, such
as the ivy, will even produce new and special roots when the vine
finds a contacting surface where no existing roots can reach it
and cling to it. Darwin, the famous naturalist, considered the
roots of plants acted as the brain does in the lower animals. He
wrote: "If the tip be lightly touched, burnt or cut it transmits an
influence to the upper adjoining portion causing it to bend away
from the affected side. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the
tip of the radicle (root) thus endowed, and having the power of
directing the movements of adjoining parts, acts like the brain of
one of the lower animals."
The most remarkable of all plants in this respect are those known
as sensitive plants. There are many species of these, nearly all
belonging to the leguminous group which includes the locust
trees, the peas and beans, the acacias and mimosas, the lupines
and other plants.
Although there are a number of species of these
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sensitive plants found commonly in the United States, even as far
north as New England, the largest and most remarkable forms are
inhabitants of the tropics.
It is usually necessary to touch the leaf or a stem of our northern
species in order to cause the little fernlike leaves to close up and
appear to shrivel. But so sensitive or intelligent are some of the
larger tropical
Sensitive plant (1/2) species that if a person or a large animal passes near them the
leaves instantly close. Even a sudden or loud noise will affect
them in the same way and, in the cases of those which are trailing
vines, if the extreme tip of a plant or a single leaf near the tip is
touched, every leaf will close. It is a strange sight to see hundreds
of leaves all shriveling and closing one after another in rapid
succession for a dozen yards or more. Amazingly swift is the
reaction of the nerves of these plants, and within the fraction of a
second after the first leaf closes every leaf over an area several
yards in diameter will be tightly shut.
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Then when the plant finds that it was a false alarm and all danger
has passed, the leaves open one by one. But in every case in
which I have experimented with the plants, the leaf first touched
or alarmed is the first to reopen. It is as if the others signalled,
"You were the one who gave the alarm, now go ahead and find
out if it's safe for us to open up." And very cautiously and timidly
the disturbed leaves open, not all at once, but one at a time as if
half afraid and ready to close instantly if danger still lurks near.
Perhaps you may think that this is not because these plants are
intelligent, but is just a reflex action; but in that case wouldn't the
plants continue to close their leaves no matter how often they
were disturbed? They do not, however, but after a few times, if
no injury is caused, they remain with leaves open when touched.
And incredible as it may seem they actually learn to recognize
individuals. In Panama these plants are very abundant and the
roadsides are covered with them. It was here that I carried on
most of my tests and experiments and one day I made a
remarkable discovery. I had been in the habit of gently touching
the tip of one particularly large vine and it had never failed to
respond. But on this particular morning when I touched the plant
the first two or three leaves started to close and then immediately
opened. Again and again I touched the plant, even lifting a
section of the vine free from the ground, yet the leaves remained
fully open. While I was examining it and trying to induce it to
close its leaves as usual, a friend happened along. He had been
quite interested in my "monkeying" with the sensitive plants, as
he put it, and now stopped to
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see what new test I was trying. When I explained that the plant
appeared no longer sensitive he reached down and grasped a leaf
to see for himself. Imagine my astonishment when instantly
every leaf shivered and closed !
Even my friend's interest was now aroused, for I insisted that the
plant had not closed a leaf even when I had handled it and that I
believed it knew me. Of course, he laughed at any such idea, but
when, after waiting for the leaves to reopen, I demonstrated that
it paid no attention to my touch and then, when he touched it, the
leaves again closed, he was as flabbergasted as myself.
Had this been the only instance in which a sensitive plant acted in
this seemingly intelligent manner I should have decided it was
merely a peculiarity of that particular plant or that it was the
result of some cause other than recognition of a human being.
But I soon proved to my own and my friend's satisfaction that
other plants acted in the same amazing manner. He became so
intrigued by the ability of the plants to recognize individuals that
he began "taming" one of the vines himself. I have never seen a
man more delighted and triumphant than he when after a few
days his "tame" plant remained unaffected by his touch yet
closed its leaves immediately when I touched it.
At the time I thought I had made an epochal and astonishing
discovery, but I discovered that similar experiments had been
carried on by several scientists and that full accounts of the
sensitive plants' remarkable ability to recognize individuals had
already been published.
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Possibly these plants do not demonstrate intelligence by
becoming "tame," but their behavior proves that plants know by
some means when to protect themselves and when protection is
not needed.
Perhaps it will surprise many to learn that the holly,
Holly twig and a leaf from upper part of tree (1/2)
which is such an important accessory at Christmas time, is
another plant that knows when or rather where protection is
desirable. We are accustomed to think of holly leaves as prickly
and stiff, but if we examine a good-sized holly tree we will find
that the prickly,
armed leaves extend only a certain distance up the tree.
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On the higher branches the leaves are very different, being quite
flexible and spineless, for the holly, having protected its danger
zone by ramparts of dense armed foliage, feels quite secure
beyond its leafy fortifications. Of course, matter-of-fact scientists
will declare that this habit does not indicate any intelligence on
the part of the plant, but is simply its manner of growth. But how
can they be sure that "manner of growth" is not actuated by some
sum of intellect? And how does it happen that the extent of the
holly's protected area varies greatly? In some localities the spiny
leaves may reach almost to the top of the tree whereas in other
situations they may be confined wholly to the lowest branches or,
in occasional instances, they may be entirely lacking. Anyhow it
makes the holly far more interesting and attractive if we credit
the plant with a glimmering of common sense and foresight.
Finally there is the lizard tree of the West Indian forests.
Personally I think that "centipede tree" or rather "centipede vine"
would be a far more appropriate name for this strange and
remarkable plant. Its long, jointed, green stalk clinging tightly to
the trunk of a tree by means of its numerous slender leg like roots
which spring from each joint, give the plant the appearance of a
gigantic green centipede despite the small and rather
inconspicuous leaves. But it is this plant's manner of spreading
rather than its form which is really strange.
As the clinging, jointed stem climbs upward, joints break off and
fall. If the detached sections find lodgment on a branch or other
portion of a tree they immediately
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take root and commence to grow until three to five feet in length,
when their joints break away and repeat the process.
Very often, however, the sections fall to the earth, and it is then
that the plant behaves as if it possessed intelligence. Sending out
threadlike roots it crawls along the ground, not actually moving
but budding out new joints at one end. The truly remarkable
feature of this is the fact that the new joints unerringly grow in
the direction of the nearest tree. Reaching its goal the plant at
once begins to climb and after ascending a few yards it breaks
free from the portion still on the ground, which then produces
more joints which in turn climb upward. Very rarely a specimen
may be found which has climbed high up a tree and still remains
a portion of the vine on the ground. These, of course, cannot
spread as they have no rear ends to be dropped off. It might be
argued that this proves that the strange plants do not possess any
atom of intelligence. But even among human beings, as among
other forms of the higher animals, there are certain individuals
who do not care to propagate their kind. Just because a man
remains a bachelor throughout his life or a woman prefers to be
an old maid is no reason to declare them lacking in intellect. So
perhaps the lizard trees which fail to break away from the
ground-growing sections are merely bachelor or old maid plants.
It is now generally conceded that plants possess organs of vision
or eyes. Dr. Haberlandt has proved that plants can distinguish
light shades or colors. There are two forms of these plant eyes,
one simple, consisting
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of cells which merely transmit light, while the others are more
complex and are formed of papillae with the surfaces forming
plane-convex lenses. In many respects these are very similar to
the eyes of many of the lower animals.
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Chapter VIII
PLANTS THAT BUILD RAFTS
In many tropical forests especially near the large rivers, the bases
of many of the trees spread out in immense hips or buttresses,
often extending for twenty feet or more beyond the main trunk,
and only a few inches in thickness. Other trees are even more
peculiar. For their trunks end several feet above the earth and
are supported by numbers of slender wirelike roots which spread
in every direction. Both of these strange forms of growth serve
the same purpose, which is to anchor the trees firmly to the thin
soil and to prevent them from being uprooted by gales or floods.
But the wide-spreading buttresses also serve other purposes. By
constructing a roof of palm leaves across them they make
excellent camps, and quite frequently an Indian family may be
found dwelling cozily in a hut whose walls are two of the
immense extensions of a tree trunk. Also they afford most
welcome shelter from the torrential showers. On one occasion
when hunting in the Central American jungle, I was caught in a
terrific downpour and hurried for protection to the nearest tree,
where I squatted between two of the great out jutting hips, shel-
tered from the heaviest of the rain by the towering tree with its
dense canopy of foliage a hundred feet and more above my head.
As I waited there for the deluge to let up, I heard the sound of
something moving on the other side
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of the living wall beside me, but paid no attention to it as I
supposed it was some bird or small creature. At last the shower
passed and rising I stepped from my temporary refuge, glancing
over the edge of the slab like wall as I did so. Imagine my
surprise when I discovered a big spotted jaguar snuggled against
the other side of the partition! Barely three inches of wood had
been between the big beast and myself as we both had waited for
the downpour to cease. For several moments we stared at each
other, the jaguar apparently as much astonished at my presence as
I was at his. Then with a bored yawn the giant cat stretched itself,
rose to its feet and trotted off while I stood staring after it, too
flabbergasted to shoot.
But my strangest experience with these buttressed trees of the
jungle was when I was on one of my expeditions in Guiana. It
had been raining hard and steadily for days-an almost incessant
downpour for three weeks, and the low swampy forest was
flooded, making it difficult beyond words to find a camping
place. At last, after a long search, we found a small spat of
reasonably dry land and, spreading the tarpaulin shelter and
slinging our hammocks, made the best of our cheerless,
water-soaked condition. Everything was wet; our matches,
tobacco, food, blankets hammocks, and clothing were soaked
through and through. But one of my Indians kindled a fire by
rubbing two sticks together and thereby brought to my notice
another wonder of the plant world. Searching about he had soon
found an etah palm and from it cut the flower-stem and a piece of
the bark. Both, of course, were wet, but despite their damp
condition he quickly
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produced fire, a feat which would have been impossible with any
other wood.
Despite our soggy provisions we managed to get a meal of sorts
and dog-tired as we were slept soundly although wringing wet.
At dawn I was aroused by a shout from one of the men, and
opening my eyes, I gazed about in bewilderment. We had
camped at the edge of the forest with big trees towering back of
the shelter, and now the forest had vanished. We were
surrounded with water and seemed to be rocking gently. Then I
glanced about to find the forest on the west instead of the east,
and separated from our camp by several hundred feet of open
water. Not until then did I realize what had occurred. During the
night the rising water of the river had lifted a section of the forest
floor-trees, camp, and all-and the floating island thus formed had
drifted downstream, carrying us with it. By the merest chance the
plant raft had not broken apart, or capsized, and by an even
smaller chance our boat had remained with us, although we were
nearly twenty miles down river from where we had gone to sleep.
Such floating islands composed of sections of the jungle floor are
commonly seen when traveling on the rivers near the coast
during the rainy season. The soil is only a few feet in thickness
and rests upon a rocky or hard clay foundation. This is
completely filled with the roots of trees which are entwined,
interlocked and knotted together to form an almost solid mass
which is floated by the floods and breaks away in sections of all
sizes. But in nine cases out of ten the plant rafts topple over from
the weight of trees firmly anchored
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by their wide-spreading hips and cable like stilts, or break into
fragments as the trees sway to the wind and the motion of the
current. It is seldom indeed that human beings find themselves
involuntary and unwitting passengers on such a raft, but it is
quite usual for other living creatures to go a voyaging in this
manner. Often the masses of detached forest will house quite a
menagerie. There will be frightened chattering monkeys, queer
spine-tailed porcupine rats, coatis and kinkajous, squirrels and
opossums, ant-eaters, and sometimes even a deer, a puma, or a
jaguar on board these forest arks. In some places they are a real
menace, not only because they endanger and impede shipping on
the big rivers, but because of the animal passengers they carry. At
Buenos Aires a force of men is constantly employed in
destroying these floating islands that come drifting down the Rio
de la Plata with their unwelcome visitors from the jungles of the
far interior.
In order to secure an ample supply of water for the Panama
Canal the Chagres River was dammed and an immense area of
land was flooded to form Gatun Lake. Much of this area was
virgin forest which on the higher portions of the inundated land
rose far above the surface of the great artificial lake. The
countless thousands of drowned trees presented a strange, weird
sight;
a dead forest of leafless skeletons, their bare branches and
massive trunks draped with fantastic air-plants, withered trailing
vines and masses of orchids. But gradually as their bases rotted
by the water they fell and drifting hither and thither became
entangled and inter locked and formed great rafts. Soon
vegetation appeared
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upon them; rank grass and water-loving weeds found roothold
among the logs, seeds wafted by the winds or dropped by birds
sprouted and grew, and in an astonishingly short time the masses
of fallen trees and dead branches were transformed to floating
islands covered with a dense growth of tangled vines, ferns,
brush, and small trees. Oftentimes they would drift upon the
shores of the lake or would be stranded upon some of the real
islands that marked former hilltops rising above the water. As
they rested there for weeks, months, sometimes for years, snakes,
and other reptiles, small quadrupeds and even large animals,
frequented them, and birds nested in the vegetation. Many
remained immovably anchored to the shores by vines, roots, and
other growth, but many others floated free when the water rose
high during the rainy season and continued to drift about bearing
with them their little colony of furred, feathered, and scaled
inhabitants. Some were small but others grew to immense size,
for as they floated here and there they came into contact with
other drifting flotsam and fallen trees and these becoming
entangled with the waterlogged rafts and their burden of detached
jungle added more and more to the floating islands. Many were
or rather I should say are several hundred feet in length and width
and some are several acres in extent. No one would ever dream
that these jungle-covered islands are supported upon masses of
dead, waterlogged tree trunks and are not natural formations of
solid land. For that matter the majority of the larger masses have
become true islands, for as their size and weight increased they
have gradually sunk deeper and deeper until the original
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rafts of dead trees now rest upon the bottom of the lake as
immovably fixed as though a portion of the earth itself.
As the living creatures, other than birds, upon them cannot
escape except by swimming, and as most wild animals are averse
to taking to the water, and as there is an abundance of food and
plenty of cover, these plant-formed islands are often richer in
wild life than the mainland. Deer, tapirs, and other large animals
inhabit them and they are favorite hunting grounds for sportsmen.
In the quarter of a century which has passed since the drowned
trees began forming islands, huge trees have grown upon them,
and the larger ones are now covered with a forest almost as high
as that which was sacrificed to provide water for the great Canal.
There are many plant-made islands other than these of Gatun
Lake. In Mexico and in Malaysia the floating islands formed by
masses of logs and other flotsam are used as farms and gardens
by the natives who have their houses and their cattle upon them.
If you were to visit one of these floating farms you would never
suspect you were not on solid land. Palm-trees rear their plumed
heads high above the shores, hedges of prickly cactus and
flaming hibiscus border the paths and fence in the gardens. Cattle
graze upon the grass in little pastures; great gnarled trees cast a
welcome shade over the little thatched huts of the farmer, pigs
wallow and root in the muck and the air resounds to the songs of
birds and the harsh cries of parrots and macaws.
Like the plant-made islands of Gatun Lake most of the larger
floating gardens of Mexico have become anchored
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and fixed to the bottom of the lake, but many still remain afloat
as do those of the Malaysian floating farmers*.
Such floating islands built by plants are beneficial to man instead
of being a menace like the floating islands of the great South
American rivers. But the latter are far less of a menace than
another form of plant-raft which causes enormous damages and
affords employment for many hundreds of men who are kept
constantly busy destroying and removing these floating
plant-islands.
It seems strange that a little water plant with lovely sweet-scented
orchidlike flowers should block navigable streams, cover
thousands of acres of the surfaces of lakes, canals, and rivers
with impenetrable rafts of vegetation, choke locks and pumping
stations and become such a pest as the water-hyacinths have
proved.
Like so many of our worst weeds and plant enemies the
water-hyacinth is an alien and a most undesirable alien from
foreign lands. Its native home is in the Orient. But like so many
immigrants-whether plants, insects, birds, or human beings-it has
found our country so satisfactory that it has increased and spread
beyond all reasonable bounds. Like the common white daisy, the
quack grass or couch-grass, the wild carrot and the devil's paint
brush, the English sparrow, the starling, the gipsy moth and the
Japanese beetle, the lovely water-hyacinth, beautiful as it is, has
become real public enemy. Very fortunately for all concerned it
* Many of these floating farms are on artificial, floating islands. These are made of logs, woven withes and brush covered over with earth. The roots of the growing plants bind all these together into a solid fabric which has all the appearance of a natural floating island.
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is a tropical plant and will not survive northern winters, although
it will stand a severe cold snap and heavy frost. In northern
Florida the temperature frequently falls well below freezing and
on the Suwanee River I have seen the thermometer only 12° F.
above zero for several nights in succession. Everywhere the
millions of
Water-hyacinth (1/3)
water-hyacinths wilted and shriveled and turned black. To all
appearances they were as dead as the proverbial door-nail. But no
sooner was the cold spell over and the sun shone brightly with
semi-tropical warmth than the water-hyacinths put forth new
leaves and were soon as healthy as ever. For that matter the brief
intense cold benefited them and at the same time made them even
more of a nuisance than before. Their shriveled collapsed leaves
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they had formed and to travel farther with the current and
everywhere new colonies and new rafts appeared.
Aside from the beauty of its fragrant blossoms the water-hyacinth
is a very interesting plant, most perfectly adapted to life on the
surface of the water. Each leaf-stalk is swollen to form a bulbous
float which contains air, so that the entire plant with its mass of
black wiry roots is supported by leaf pontoons. Starting from a
single fragment of root the leaves rapidly sprout and form the
buoyant floats which spread in every direction. Drifting with the
current, the plants lodge in backwaters or shallows, the roots
become entangled with water-weeds or attach themselves lightly
to the bottom, other floating masses find lodgment with the first
and as if by magic the spot soon becomes a solid mass of broad
green leaves, lavender flowers, and buoyant bulbous leaf-stalks.
Thicker and thicker the growth becomes; rapidly the plants
spread outward from the edges of the mass and if unchecked they
will completely cover the surface over an area of acres. And from
time to time when the current runs more swiftly than usual, when
a stiff breeze blows or when a boat is forced through the mass,
countless plants break away and go drifting off to form new
colonies.
In the Panama Canal Zone the water-hyacinths have become a
serious menace. They choke the feeder streams, clog the strainers
to the pumping station and they afford a breeding place for
mosquitoes. No effective means of combating them has been
discovered other than gathering and destroying them, and a small
army of men is kept busy raking and dragging the pestilent
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tial plants from the water and piling them in great heaps upon the
shores.
In the drainage canals of the Florida Everglades they are even
worse. Many of the smaller canals are so choked and filled with
the plants that no trace of ditch or water remains, for under
favorable conditions the plants reach huge size with leaves
extending several feet above the water. They are also a great
nuisance in another way, for the Florida cows have developed an
acquired taste for the water-hyacinths and eat them greedily
whenever they have the chance, with the result that the milk from
a hyacinth-fed cow is so rank with the plant's flavor that it is
impossible to use it.
Perhaps eventually, the problem of this raft-making plant may be
solved by finding some natural enemy that will destroy it faster
than it can increase. One naturalist suggested that hippopotami
introduced to Florida would keep the water-hyacinths under
control, for the big amphibious beasts are very fond of these
plants. Why the idea was not carried out is a mystery, for
unquestionably the "behemoths" would greatly decrease the
floating plants. Possibly the authorities felt that the hippos might
prove a greater nuisance than the water-hyacinths, that it would
be out of the fryingpan and into the fire. But there should he no
difficulty in keeping hippos under control, for if they became too
numerous, an open season could be decreed and a new form of
game would be provided for hunters who would make short work
of the excess beasts. On the other hand, some one may discover
some commercial
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use for these plants, but up to the present time their only useful
purpose is to serve as ornamental plants in the north and to
provide food for goldfish.
By far the strangest and largest of plant-made islands are those
formed in great rivers by stranded logs or trees. Even a very
small limb or stick or uprooted tree becoming stranded in a
stream may form an island or a cape. Once the object is securely
lodged, the current of the stream is split and flows to either side,
creating an eddy or an area of still water below the obstruction.
Here the silt and sand carried by the stream settles and piles up to
form a bar, while other bits of drift become lodged against the
first log or tree trunk. And with each bit added, more and more
slack water is formed, more and more silt accumulates, and
presently the bar breaks the surface of the stream and a new
island is created. Very soon coarse sedges, reeds, arums, and
other water-plants take root about the verges of the new-made bit
of land. Seeds lodge upon it and sprout and grow and rapidly the
size of the little island increases and it becomes covered with
vegetation. Sometimes a heavy freshet or a change of wind may
cause the new-made island to disappear before it has become
fairly established. But at other times it continues to grow and
increase until it forms a large heavily wooded island or, by
turning the current aside, it may gradually extend to the nearest
shore and form a cape or promontory.
It seems strange indeed that a single plant or fragment of a plant
can build a big island, yet there are many such islands in
existence.
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In the Essequibo River in British Guiana there is a huge island,
nearly ten miles in length and two miles in width, with fields of
sugar-cane, a good-sized town and big mills upon it. Less than a
century ago the broad sluggish river flowed unbroken over the
spot where the island with its waving cane, its lofty chimneys and
its tramways now stands. Then one day a freshet brought
countless uprooted trees drifting down the great river. One of the
trees, torn from its forest home far up the river, became stranded
on a shoal. Other trees sweeping toward the sea became
entangled in its roots and branches and the fallen giants
commenced to form an island. To-day no trace remains of those
floating fragments of jungle, and no one who did not know the
island's history would ever guess that it owed its existence to
drifting trees carried seaward by a freshet.
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Chapter IX
STRANGE PARTNERS
We all know what an important part the busy bee and other
insects play in the plant world. In most cases the buzzing bees,
the gaudy butterflies and moths, the flower-loving flies and other
insects who carry pollen from one blossom to another and thus
fertilize the flowers so that they produce seeds or fruits, are
customers of the plants rather than partners. The majority of
plants remind us of our shops with their window displays. They
dress themselves up with gaudy flowers or fill the air about them
with perfume or scents in order to attract the attention of the
insect shoppers. And just as the department stores or corner
groceries welcome any and all patrons, so most plants welcome
any old bee or fly or other insect customer who helps itself to the
plant's stock in trade.
But there are many plants as exclusive and as particular as any of
the swanky specialty shops on Fifth Avenue. No frayed and
ragged butterfly or humble bumblebee can enter their doors to
secure the sweets within. They cater only to certain favored
patrons and in place of impressive haughty gorgeously uniformed
doormen to keep out the undesirables they are provided with
cleverly designed portals which can only be opened by the insect
visitors they desire.
These devices to bar undesirable insect shoppers
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produce many strange and often fantastic forms of flowers. This
is particularly true of the orchids, for these plants are among the
most exclusive and discriminating of all. There are countless
species but in nearly every case the flowers are designed to be
pollinated by some one or a few privileged insects. It is for this
reason that very few tropical orchids will produce
Vanilla bean orchid (1/6)
seeds when cultivated in the north, for the insects which fertilize
the flowers in their native haunts are absent and orchid growers
must pollinate their prizes artificially and by hand in order to
secure seeds and to hybridize the species and obtain new
varieties. Many orchids are so dependent upon some one insect
that they cannot fruit or produce seeds, when removed only a
short distance from their original home. One of these is the
vanilla plant, for the vanilla bean is the seed pod of an orchid.
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In its native home in the hot, humid jungles of the lowlands of
Mexico, the vanilla, which is a vine which climbs to the tops of
the tallest trees and is often more than one hundred feet in length,
is pollinated by certain species of small insects. But when grown
elsewhere, even in other sections of Mexico, the flowers must be
pollinated artificially in order to produce the pods which are the
source of the flavor so widely used.
It is a very delicate operation and must be accomplished before
two o'clock in the afternoon, for the flowers exist for only five or
six hours after opening in the morning. An expert can pollinate
two hundred flowers a day by means of a small stick or sliver of
bamboo. With this he gently lifts the stigma of a flower and
presses out the pollen from the anther. As the object in
pollinating the flowers is to secure the finest and largest pods
possible, only a small portion of the flowers in each cluster are
thus treated. A healthy plant, however, will bear as many as two
hundred clusters of flowers so that even the small proportion
pollinated will yield a great number of pods. And as a pod eight
inches in length when cured will weigh twice as much as a
six-inch pod it pays the vanilla culturist to sacrifice numbers for
size. In the case of the vanilla orchid its exclusiveness is of real
benefit to man, for if the flowers welcomed any insect that
happened to come along so many would be fertilized that the
pods would be small and almost worthless, just as they are on the
wild vines where the flowers are patronized by the particular
insects which, alone of all others, are acceptable to this exclusive
orchid.
There are other orchids far more particular than the
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vanilla. Some of these bar all insects from the inner precincts of
their gorgeous blossoms and rely wholly upon the probing beaks
of humming-birds for pollination. And not a few form regular
partnerships with certain insects which are as essential to the
welfare of the orchid as the plant is necessary to the life of the
insects.
One species of orchid which is a native of Panama is always
infested by hordes of vicious biting red ants. The insects make
their home amid the mass of roots and bulbs and the moment the
orchid is disturbed they swarm forth ready to do battle. On one
occasion I sent a fine large specimen of this orchid to a friend in
the States, first having made sure that all of the ant population
had been eliminated. Within my friend's greenhouse the shriveled
bulbs swelled with life and sent forth glossy green leaves, but
never a bud appeared. In vain the owner waited and watched, for
the orchid was new to him and he was most anxious to see the
flowers. But when, at the end of the second year, the plant still
declined to bloom, he decided that something was amiss and
wrote to me asking me to give him all details regarding the
orchid's home and habits, the kind of tree on which it grew, the
height above the ground, the atmospheric conditions of the
locality where I found it, the elevation above the sea and whether
it grew in sunlight or shadow. In my reply I mentioned the ants
and back came a cable asking me to send on a supply of the
insects.
This was easier said than done, but I solved the problem by
shipping another plant with its ant colony still intact. A few
months later I had a most enthusiastic letter from my friend. Not
only had the second
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orchid blossomed, but the ants had spread to the first specimen
which had also bloomed. Moreover, the ants had swarmed over
the flowers, feasting on the nectar, and had pollinated them, and
seed pods were developing.
But my friend's elation was short-lived. Although the orchids
thrived in the artificially heated air of the greenhouse the ants did
not. For some reason they could not survive, and within a few
months not an ant remained and no more flowers ever appeared
upon the plants.
Here was a real partnership between the orchid and the ants. Why
the plants would not blossom without the ants I cannot say, but
beyond question their presence was essential, and when the
flowers did appear the vicious tenants did their bit by fertilizing
the blossoms. And in return for being provided with living
quarters and a feast of honey they protected the plant by
attacking any bird, beast, or man who attempted to molest it.
Even stranger is the partnership between ants and a plant found
in Java which is known as the ant tree. The woody root of this
plant is bulbous and swollen and so so filled with natural holes,
tunnels and galleries that it resembles a sponge. These provide
ready-made homes for a certain species of ant which always
inhabits the strange roots. Indeed, the plant is absolutely
dependent upon the ants dwelling in its roots, for without them it
cannot grow and thrive, while without the tree with its natural
ants' nest the insects cannot live.
But perhaps the most remarkable of these plant-ant partnerships
is that of a tropical American acacia tree
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and a certain species of ants which are so vicious and poisonous
that they are called "fire-ants" by the natives. Like all the acacias
the tree is covered with thorns, which in this species are huge,
curved, double thorns with swollen bases which give them the
appearance of miniature water-buffalo horns. So impassable is a
thicket of these trees that the patois-speaking Negroes of the
French West Indies call them "Arrete le Neg" or stop the Negro.
Even if armed with a machete no one familiar with these trees
will attempt to cut a path through them unless compelled to do so
by necessity. The terrible thorns alone are bad enough, but the
bases of the thorns are always inhabited by hordes of the tiny
ferocious fire-ants, and the moment a tree is disturbed or a blow
is struck with a machete, they pour forth by thousands and swarm
over the intruder biting viciously like so many red-hot needles.
It would seem as if the ants were capable of protecting
themselves and that the fearsome thorns were ample protection to
the trees. But thorns are no protection from leaf-cutting ants and
other insect enemies which the fire-ants kill and devour, while
without the protecting thorns the ants would fall victims to many
a hungry ant-eater and other creature.
Interesting and strange as it is to find plants so dependent upon
their ant partners, it is even more remarkable to find plants which
are propagated and cultivated by ants. In South America there are
several species of ants which make their nests in trees and
construct hanging gardens where they cultivate plants to supply
them with food. Mouthful at a time the ants carry earth far up in
the trees and there press and
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mold it into a huge globular mass in which they make their
chambers and galleries which are neatly lined with paper like that
of hornets' nests. Then, with their homes ready for occupancy,
the ants transform the outer surface of their houses into farms and
sow them with seeds of plants to provide food. But that is not all.
Incredible as it may seem, the plants raised by these ants have
never been found growing anywhere except upon the ants'
hanging gardens. Think of it; fourteen different species of plants
cultivated by these ants and found nowhere else in the world as
far as known. Where do the ants secure the seeds? No one can
answer that question, but scientists assume that the plants have
been cultivated by the ants for so many millions of years that new
species utterly distinct from the original plants have been
developed by the insects, and that the seeds from the gardens are
so carefully gathered and cared for that they never find roothold
elsewhere. In other words these strange food plants of these ants
are very similar to our corn or maize. Although hundreds of
varieties of maize are known, all are cultivated and no wild maize
plant has ever been found. In fact no one knows what plant may
have been the wild ancestor of Indian corn, for maize has been
cultivated for so many thousands of years by the Indians that it
cannot exist or seed itself without man's aid.
That ants should have become expert farmers and should have
produced food plants all their own is truly amazing yet in a way
it is not so remarkable as the fact that some ants raise
mushrooms. In one case the ants merely plant and cultivate plants
in their natural
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surroundings, but in the other instance they raise fungi where the
plants would never grow naturally.
These mushroom-raising ants are the leaf-carrying or
umbrella-ants of the American tropics. Cutting bits of leaves
from trees and plants they shred these with their jaws, mold them
into pellets and with these form hotbeds which they impregnate
with the threads of a certain species of fungus which is never
found anywhere but in the ants' nests. The beds are very carefully
tended and weeded and as the fungus grows it is constantly
pruned to prevent it from producing fruits. This is essential, for
the ants feed upon the liquid or sap on the fungus roots and this is
not formed after the plants bear fruit. In this case we know how
the ants manage to establish new mushroom farms even if the
plants do not exist elsewhere, for when a queen leaves to
establish a new colony she carries with her a tiny pill of fungus
paste. This she carefully guards until a new brood of workers
have been hatched and are able to bring in the leaves in which to
plant the spores preserved by their queen.
Perhaps you may think that in these cases it is the ants rather than
the plants which are most remarkable. But is it any more
wonderful that insects should cultivate and produce unique plants
than that plants should exist only when cultivated and propagated
by insects?
Although all of these partnerships between plants and insects are
beneficial to both parties involved, there are many plants which
welcome insects for a very different reason. This is the case when
the insect visitors
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benefit only the plants; for instead of insects eating plants the
plants eat the insects. There are many species of these
insectivorous plants which are not all of one family but belong to
widely separated groups. All are very strange and some are most
remarkable for the manner in which they capture their prey.
Moreover, they are not all denizens of the distant tropics, many
of them being common plants of our fields, swamps, and forests.
Perhaps the best known, although not the commonest of our
insect-eating plants, is the pitcher-plant, also known as
side-saddle flower and hunter's drinking cup. There are several
species of these strange plants found in the United States, but all
are inhabitants of swamps and damp meadows and all are easily
recognized by their curious pitcher or jar-shaped leaves. Our
eastern species are quite small with pitchers four to six inches in
length, but there is a species found in California which is a real
giant with pitchers three feet high. If we examine one of these
queer plants we will find what a wonderfully clever and
remarkable device Nature has provided to supply these plants
with nitrogen, for all insect-eating plants depend upon their prey
for the essential nitrogen which is lacking in the soil in which
they grow.
Each leaf has been transformed into a vase-shaped receptacle,
the edges of the leaf joining along one side and showing as a
slightly raised seam or scar on the outside and as a keel or fin on
the inner side, while above the open mouth of the pitcher a broad
flattened lid has been developed. The under surface of this cover,
as well as the edge of the rim or mouth of the pitcher
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and the keel-like ridge, are coated with a sweetish slightly sticky
nectar, while the rest of the inner surface is smooth and slippery
and is provided with hairs all bending downward towards a little
pool of liquid at the bottom of the strange leaf. Attracted by the
bright red or purple blotches on the leaves, insects hasten to feast
upon the honeylike nectar and crawling over the rim of the
pitcher lose their foothold on the smooth slippery surface beyond
and slide into the death pool below. Even if they struggle to
climb upward they are baffled by the downward-pointing hairs
and quickly expire in the liquid which digests their bodies just as
an animal's stomach digests the food within it.
Some species of the pitcher-plants make assurance doubly sure
by quickly closing the lid of the pitcher the moment an insect
enters. Then, the instant the captive is killed, the lid opens and
the trap is ready for the next victim.
In tropical lands, especially in the East Indies, there are many
species of pitcher-plants which are very different from those of
our swamps. These are climbing vines and are provided with
tendrils formed by the midrib of the leaves which are extended in
long delicate filaments. Some of these serve to anchor the plant
to the trees and shrubs over which it climbs, but others serve as
insect traps and develop into perfect pitchers which hang from
the vine. Like those of our own plants these tendril-borne
pitchers are provided with nectar about the rims and the under
surface of the lid, but in this case the honeylike substance is
doped and the insects which sip it become stupefied and
befuddled and tumble into the "stomach" of the plant.
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Although these pitcher-plants capture and devour insects yet
there are certain insects which are partners of the plants and live
unharmed within the "pitchers." One of these is a fly whose
larvae feed upon the decomposing bodies of other insects which
have fallen victims to the plant. The other insect is a small moth
and is a parasite rather than a partner, for the female lays her eggs
within the deadly receptacle and the caterpillars, emerging from
the eggs, feed upon the leaf, weaving silken carpets so they will
not slip into the pitfall, and eventually destroy the "pitcher."
A remarkable insect-eating plant which is quite common in some
parts of the United States is known as the fly-trap or Venus
fly-trap. It is a rather small inconspicuous plant with a flower
stalk rising above a rosette of broad-stemmed leaves. But if we
examine these leaves we will find that each is provided with a
curious extension with sharp spines along each edge while the
surface is coated with a purplish sweet substance. Projecting
from this are three hairlike bristles hinged at their bases and
forming a triangle. The whole arrangement is amazingly like a
steel trap and that in effect is just what it is. Presently a small bee
comes buzzing by, and attracted by the sweet moisture on the
leaf, he alights. Instantly as the insect's feet touch the sensitive
hairs which act as the trigger to the trap, the two sides of the leaf
snap together and the poor bee is a prisoner. Even if by chance
his entire body is not within the trap there is no escape, for he
will be impaled upon the sharp interlocking spines. In this case
the captive will meet a quicker and more merciful death, for if he
is confined within the leaf he will be digested alive by
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the fluid excreted by the leaf which will remain tightly closed for
several days. Then when only the empty skin of the insect
remains, the leaf will again open, the remains of the bee will be
cast out and the trap will be set ready for the next victim.
Another plant which traps insects in its leaves is the butterwort,
which is very common in our southern states. Unlike Venus's
fly-trap, these plants bear handsome orchidlike flowers of yellow,
white or lavender which serve to attract the insects necessary to
pollination. But it is a treacherous plant and its rosette of broad
leaves at the base of the flower stalk is a deadly trap. Unlike the
leaves of Venus's fly-trap which are harmless except at the tips,
those of the butterwort are deadly throughout. Innocent appearing
as they are, they are coated with a sticky sweetish substance and
woe to the unwary insect that alights upon them, for once its feet
touch the surface it is held as securely as if it had stepped on
tanglefoot flypaper. And as it struggles to free itself the edges of
the leaves curl quickly upward and inward and lock the captive in
a living tomb where it is digested.
The Venus's fly-trap and sundew plants not only capture and
devour insects but know what is edible and what not. If a tiny
pebble or bit of twig or grass is placed on the leaf of one of the
plants the tentacles will close over it, just as a steel trap may be
sprung by a stick. But they will almost instantly open again and
eject the inedible object.
Still another of our insect-devouring plants is the little sundew.
These sundews are very abundant in moist situations but being
rather inconspicuous, with tiny
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flowers, they rarely attract attention and are passed unnoticed by
most persons who never suspect what amazingly strange and
remarkable plants are being trodden underfoot.
Indeed, the sundews are among the most remarkable of all the
many carnivorous plants in the manner in which they capture
their prey. Brightly colored with red or pink in order to attract the
insects, each leaf appears as if covered with countless glistening
dew drops, but the shining globules which give the plant its name
are treacherous deadly snares, for each is a globule of sweetish
sticky material about the base of a tiny tentacle. There are two
hundred of these on each leaf and the moment an insect touches
them he sticks fast and instantly all the near-by tentacles bend
inward towards the center of the leaf and actually roll the captive
along as the leaf curls up like a closed fist. At the same time the
honeylike globules which have lured the insect to its destruction
become transformed to an acid digestive fluid which dissolves
and absorbs the nitrogenous substance of the plant's prey. This
requires about two days, when the leaf again unrolls, discards the
waste material of the digested insect and once more displays its
gleaming drops of nectar to lure other prey to the treacherous
plant. Moreover, these plants actually detect the presence of an
insect before it alights upon them. This was demonstrated by
securing a live fly over half an inch from a sundew which at once
began moving a leaf toward the captive insect and within two
hours reached and seized the fly in its tentacles. Although our
native sundews are small and capture only
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tiny insects there is a species in southern Europe which preys
upon large flies and good-sized bees and other insects. In Spain
and Portugal the countryfolk use these plants as we use sticky
flypaper and hang the voracious sundews in their cottages.
But the most remarkable of all the insect-catching plants is the
little bladderwort, a water plant which lives in ponds and
sluggish streams. The roots of these plants are covered with little
bottle-shaped pouches or bladders, with the open ends provided
with filaments or tentacles. These serve the plant as lobster-pots
or fish-traps, for any water insect or small fish or baby tadpole
entering them is securely held within by the tentacles which close
over the opening until the prisoner has been digested. But when
the plant is ready to bloom, the strange bladderlike roots serve a
very different purpose. No longer do they capture living prey but
become filled with air, and acting as pontoons, float the plant and
buoy it up so that the flowers are well above the surface of the
water where insects can visit and pollinate them.
How fortunate it is for us that these treacherous carnivorous
plants do not grow to such size that they could capture large
animals and human beings. What a terrible fate it would be to
find one's self caught in the relentless grip of a giant tendril or
sticky leaf, be entombed within its folds and to be slowly digest
by the fearsome cannibal plant.
Many tales of such man-eating plants have been told by travelers
and by natives of tropical lands, but as far as known these stories
have no basis of truth, for although there are carnivorous plants
which catch and
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devour small birds and other creatures no reliable traveler or
explorer has ever discovered a man-eating plant. Possibly such
awful plants may exist somewhere, but until their existence has
been proved we must regard them as figments of vivid
imaginations.
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Chapter X
PLANTS THAT SAIL SEAS
PERHAPS you have sailed the seas in a steamship or have
watched the liners passing in or out of some port or have gazed in
awe and admiration at their towering steel sides, their
thousand-foot hulls and their mighty prows as they lie berthed at
the piers. If so, has it ever occurred to you that these wonderful
fabrics of steel and iron, with their gigantic engines and palatial
furnishings, would never have existed had it not been for plants?
That may sound ridiculous, for on a modern steamship what
purposes do plants serve other than to decorate the dining-room
and saloons with flowers or in the form of potted palms and
ferns, or to supply the almost negligible amount of woodwork
that enters into furnishings and finishing?
But we must remember that we would not have had steel ships if
we had not had wooden ships, which would have been
impossible without plants; and that wooden ships were developed
from small boats and that the original small boats were canoes.
And if we go a step further back in the story of the ship we will
find that before canoes were invented or evolved, men managed
to cross streams or lakes on logs and rafts or bundles of plant
stems.
It may seem a very far cry from a savage's canoe
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or a crude raft to a de luxe super-liner, but the steamship is
merely a gigantic, vastly improved form of canoe with machinery
replacing human muscles for motive power, and with steel
substituted for the plant fibers of the other.
Even to-day there are far more craft made of plants than of metal
afloat, even if their total tonnage is far less, and it is safe to say
that they are of vital importance to more people than are steel or
iron ships. We could get along without our metal ships but there
are thousands, yes millions, of human beings who could not exist
without their craft made of plants, many of which are most
strange and interesting.
The manner in which men of many races have adapted the plants
of their lands to the making of boats, or rather, I should say, have
invented boats made possible by the plants available, is truly
remarkable.
We are all familiar with the birch-bark canoes of our North
American Indians, although these lovely graceful craft have
largely been supplanted by the canvas canoes patterned after
them.
It must have been a most ingenious and inventive Indian who
first saw the possibilities of the light, tough bark of the white
birch trees, and from this plant material constructed a canoe. The
chances are that a bit of floating birch bark gave him the idea, but
regardless of how it was invented the birch-bark canoe was one
of the most buoyant, graceful and seaworthy boats ever made by
man, and was built entirely of plants. Cedar and spruce supplied
ribs and thwarts; hemlock roots or moosewood withes served to
sew and lash the fabric together; the white birches supplied the
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covering and pine, spruce and balsam gum, pitch, and resin were
used for filling seams and holes and rendered the craft watertight.
Although all familiar with boats know that the famous
whale-boats of New England were the staunchest, most
seaworthy and fastest of all small boats ever built by man, yet
very few know that these marvelous Yankee craft were modeled
after the Indians' canoes. And like the birch canoes, every portion
of the whaleboats, other than nails and a small amount of metal
gear and fittings, were supplied by plants of the New England
forests. Good white oak, pine and spruce, tamarack and cedar, all
were obtained from the woodlands of New England. For that
matter the whale-ships themselves were constructed largely of
native plants, even to the flax that went into the making of linen
for sails, the staves of the oil casks and the hickory of tool and
implement handles. And we must not forget that the cordage, the
ropes and hawsers, the rigging and the lines of the harpoons that
made sailing and whaling possible, were all made of plants---the
fibers of the Manilla hemp plant.
No other plants in all the world have ever traveled so far and
wide as those of New England which, transformed into
whale-boats, cruised the five oceans and sailed the seven seas.
There were other plants than those whose lives had been
sacrificed to the cause of the industry which sailed the seas in
Yankee whale-ships. Seldom did a whaling vessel set sail from a
New England port without potted plants from the captain's
garden in the cabin. And if the Missus went along, as she often
did, there would be all her favorite vines and
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flowers, as well as some growing mint, pennyroyal and other
herbs to gladden her eyes and remind her of home during the
years she would be at sea. At many a strange port and far-distant
isle the ship would cast anchor to secure water, fresh fruit, and
vegetables, and to give the crew shore leave, and when the
Missus returned to the ship after her visit ashore she would bring
with her plants or "slips," seeds, or bulbs of the strange plants in
native gardens or growing wild. Even if the Skipper's wife was
not with him on the cruise, the Old Man, tough and hardened and
lacking in all sentiment as he might seem, would often, in fact
usually, gather seeds, cuttings, or bulbs, to carry back to his
better half for her garden or window-boxes in New Bedford,
Provinectown, Salem, Nantucket, New London, or some other
home port.
Many of our most popular cultivated plants were first introduced
by the whalemen returning from foreign lands, and not a few of
our old fashioned New England flowers found their way via
whale-ships to far-distant lands where the captains' wives
exchanged seeds or slips with women they met on their voyages.
Unfortunately the whalemen and their wives brought many an
alien plant to New England which might far better have been left
in its native land, for all too often these became most obnoxious
weeds. And in all probability many an insect pest was carried as
an unsuspected passenger on whale-ships, for the Yankee
whalemen knew nothing of the peril of introducing insect
stowaways and took no precautions to eradicate such as might be
upon the plants they brought home.
We all know that dug-out canoes were used and are
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still used by many races of many lands and, of course, these are
entirely plant-made craft. So also are the proas and outrigger
boats of the natives of the Pacific and South Sea Islands and
Malaysia, the great war canoes of the Indians of our far northwest
and the aborigines of Australasia, the junks of the Chinese and in
fact practically all small craft other than the skin boats of the
Eskimos and the crude crafts of inflated hides used in a few
portions of the world.
Even the strange circular goofahs of Arabia, Palestine, and Persia
are made wholly of plants, for they are constructed of willow
withes woven like huge baskets, and are smeared with pitch and
gum to render them water-tight.
Wherever plants grow we find the people using them for making
craft of some sort, and very often they employ strange plants in
strange ways and produce very strange boats.
In the West Indian Islands, as well as elsewhere in the American
tropics, the cecropia tree is a very conspicuous feature of the
landscape. With its straight stout stem and broad palmate leaves
it always attracts attention, especially if there is a breeze when
the huge leaves, turned by the wind, show their silvery-white
under surfaces which gleam like burnished metal against the
surrounding greenery. In the West Indies they are known as
"hurricaine trees," the natives believing that the approach of a
hurricane is foretold by the manner in which the big leaves turn
and expose their undersides. The trunk of the tree is hollow and
jointed like giant bamboo, and while worthless as timber it serves
many useful purposes. Sections split in half are
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Cecropia tree used as troughs and tanks. The largest trunks which may be two
feet in diameter at the base, make excellent casks or barrels,
while the smaller sections are used for conduits, pipes, and
various other purposes. Being hollow and filled with air the
trunks of these trees are as buoyant as pontoons, and a few lashed
together provide rafts capable of supporting very heavy loads. Many of the most valuable tropical woods, such as
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greenheart, bullet-tree, letter-wood and others are heavier than
water and hence cannot be floated down the rivers.
But by lashing a few lengths of cecropia tree trunks to the heavy
logs they are buoyed up and float safely. On the large rivers of
Guiana one often sees rafts of these cecropia-tree trunks, each
supporting several immense squared hardwood timbers, and a
little thatched hut wherein the Indian lumberman and his family,
together with their dogs, poultry, and even pigs, live quite
happily as the cumbersome structure drifts slowly with the
current towards the distant seaport.
In the West Indian Islands the half-amphibious colored
youngsters find another use for the buoyant stems of the
"hurricane trees."
Cutting a few of the smaller trees, the boys lash them together
with lianas or "bush ropes," hew a crude paddle from the broad
base of a cocoanut palm leaf, and equipped with hooks and lines
go paddling out to sea on their flimsy "pipiris," as the makeshift
craft are called.
As the little rafts are barely large enough to support the boys'
weight they are constantly awash, but that matters nothing to the
black and brown-skinned owners who are not bothered with
clothing and whose naked bodies rubbed with cocoanut-oil shed
water like the back of the proverbial duck. At a short distance the
pipiris themselves are invisible, and it is a strange and surprising
sight to see dozens of boys apparently standing or sitting upon
the surface of the sea miles from the nearest shore.
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Even in treeless lands the natives have learned to navigate the
lakes, rivers or even the ocean by means of plants. In many parts
of the world boats or canoes consisting of bundles of reeds
lashed together are used by the natives, but these reed-built boats
reach their highest development among the Indians dwelling
about the shores of Lake Titicaca high in the Andes of Peru and
Bolivia.
Not only are the canoes or "balsas" composed wholly of reeds
bound together by lashings of twisted reeds, but the sails with
which many are equipped are also made of reeds woven into a
form of matting.
Many of these reed boats are of large size and it is not unusual to
see a reed balsa fifty or sixty feet in length carrying a cargo of
live cattle or other freight, sailing slowly across the surface of the
highest navigable lake, propelled by its immense reed sails.
In times past such craft sailed the sea and the Incan races (who
were the only American Indians who learned the art of sailing
prior to the arrival of white men) ventured far out into the Pacific
and even voyaged to Central America in their reed vessels. When
on their way to conquer Peru, Pizarro and his men sighted a
distant sail, and thinking it a Spanish ship headed for it. Much to
their amazement they discovered that the vessel, navigating the
ocean out of sight of land was a reed balsa with reed sails
manned by Indians.
Speaking of balsas, we must not forget the balsa wood, which is
another plant that sails the spas. No one knows whether the wood
was named after the buoyant reed boat or if the boats were named
from the wood, but as the word means something that floats there
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is no reason to suppose that either was named for the other. Of all
known woods that of the balsa tree is the lightest, but there are a
number of different trees varying considerably in the quality and
lightness of their wood all of which are marketed as balsa. Being
lighter than cork and being more water-resistant, balsa wood has
largely supplanted cork for use as life preservers, life rafts, and
similar purposes. Insect collectors have found it excellent for
lining cases of drawers in which to pin their specimens, builders
of model aeroplanes, coaches, and other objects find balsa wood
ideal, for it is soft, easily cut or carved, does not chip or split and
takes a good finish; quantities are also used in manufacturing
aeroplanes, in boat building and in other industries. To-day this
strange plant product is in great demand and has become a most
important, I might even say indispensable, wood, although prior
to World War I it was scarcely known outside its native lands and
was regarded as a curiosity of no real commercial value.
No one would guess from the appearance of the living tree that
balsa wood was as light and almost as soft as pith, for the trees
from which it is obtained are sturdy ponderous giants with huge
swollen gray trunks and are often one hundred feet in height. The
most striking peculiarity of the tree is the scarcity of branches.
These are few, short and are confined to the upper portion of the
tree so that it appears unfinished or as if broken off just above the
lower limbs.
In this respect it differs from the ceiba or silk-cotton trees, which
otherwise are so similar that one is often mistaken for the other.
But they may readily be distinguished, for the silk-cotton trees
have short heavy trunks with great buttresses or "hips" extending
from the base and with innumerable large, wide-spreading
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spine-covered branches which, during certain seasons of the year,
are covered with the bursting seed capsules containing the soft
fluffy silk. As the seeds ripen and fall from their pods they float
through the air supported by their silken covering, and wafted by
the wind strew the earth and everything else in the vicinity with
the downy buff-brown substance which of recent years has
become of great commercial value under the name of "kapok."
Great quantities of this soft, resilient silken substance are used
for stuffing pillows and mattresses. As kapok is far more
waterproof than any other known vegetable fiber suitable for the
purpose, it is widely used in making boats' cushions which in
case of emergency may be used as life preservers, while many of
the life-vests and jackets aboard ships are also filled with the
buoyant material. This is still another plant that sails the seas.
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Chapter XI
PLANTS THAT WE EAT
No matter what food we' may eat it may be traced back to some
form of plant. Salt is the only ingredient of our meals which does
not owe its existence to plants, but salt is not food in the strict
sense of the word. Moreover, even salt may be obtained from
plants, and many races secure what salt they require by
evaporating the water in which certain plants have been boiled.
Meats and fish, even lobsters and clams and the succulent oyster,
are the products of plants, for without plants herbivorous
creatures could not exist and there could be no carnivorous
animals unless there were plant eaters to provide them with flesh.
But by far the greater portion of our foods are plants, and aside
from a few races who depend entirely or principally upon a meat
diet, human beings are primarily herbivorous creatures, while the
races as well as individuals who are strictly vegetarians far
outnumber those who dine exclusively upon animal food. For
that matter I do not know of a single race or tribe that is wholly
carnivorous by choice. Some are far greater meat eaters than
others, but such people as the Eskimos and a few other savage
races who dwell in lands where there are no edible plants, are
carnivorous by necessity and not by choice.
Wherever there are plants suitable for human consumption we
will find that vegetable foods are the mainstay of the inhabitants
who, with very few exceptions, cultivate the more important
food-plants in order to insure an unfailing supply as well as to
improve the size and quality of the plants. Even our nomadic
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Indian tribes of the western plains varied their diet of buffalo
meat with many wild plants and cultivated a number of
food-plants, while the South American Indians, dwelling in
tropical jungles which, according to popular fancy, teem with
game, could not exist without their gardens and fields and depend
almost wholly upon plants for their food supplies. And although
few persons realize the fact, we are indebted to the South
American Indians for over 80 per cent of our own food-plants.
It seems strange indeed that so-called "ignorant savages" should
have supplied the world with over 80 per cent of our plant foods,
that they should have cultivated more than two hundred species
of wild plants and should have bred and developed these until
they became our most important food plants, so totally different
from their original ancestors that even botanists cannot identify
the wild forms. It is even more remarkable that the Indians
should have made such a thorough job of their agriculture that
white men with all their boasted skill, knowledge, and
superiority, have never succeeded in reducing any important
American wild plant to cultivation. But the most amazing fact of
all is that many of the plants which the Indians cultivated and
improved, until they are now important food plants throughout
the entire world, should have been
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1. Okra (about 1/3) 2. Mote corn (Peru) kernels showing comparative size of ordinary corn (about 1/6) 3. Andean corn that stands frost (about 1/6) 4. Wild potato of Central America (about 1/4) 5. Tatu or Andean potato that stands frost (about 1/1) 6. Sweet potato (about 1/4) 7. Wild tomato from the Andes (about 1/4) 8. Manioc or cassava (about 1/8) 9. Peanut plant (about 1/3) 10. Coontie briar (about 1/3) 11. Marsh-marigold (about 1/3) 12. Sego lily (about 1/3) 13. Jojoba (about 1/4) 14. Camas (about 1/3) 15-15A. Mesquite and mesquite beans (about 1/3)
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developed from plants which are inedible or even poisonous in
their wild state.
I have already described the manioc (see Chapter V), and the
preparation of its deadly root to form a valuable and nutritious
food. Even stranger is the story of the potato, for the potato, as
well as the tomato, the sweet and chili peppers, the eggplant and
other food plants are members of the deadly nightshade family.
Few plants have a stranger, more unusual and more romantic
history than the lowly "spud" or "Irish" potato, and one of the
strangest and most interesting features of the potato's story is the
origin of its popular name.
Just where the potato was first cultivated by the Indians is not
definitely known, for when the Europeans
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reached America it was grown and used by both Mexican and
South American tribes. But we do know that it had been
cultivated for thousands of years by, the Indians of Peru and
Bolivia, for we find potatoes in the most ancient graves and
tombs of the pre-Incan races, and many of their pottery jars and
vessels were modeled in the form of potatoes. Moreover, the
Peruvian Indians had produced and developed a great number of
varieties of the plant. Not only did they have practically all the
types of potatoes which our farmers cultivate to-day, but in
addition they raised a number of varieties of superior quality
which are not now familiar to us. Some of these thrive only in the
higher Andes and will withstand heavy frosts, others are edible
only when they have been frozen or frost-bitten, while others
have plants immune to the potato beetle. In fact the number of
odd and unusual varieties of potatoes one sees in a Peruvian
market is truly bewildering. There are potatoes of every form,
size and shape; potatoes with purple skins, potatoes with
golden-yellow flesh, potatoes streaked, spotted or blotched with
various colors, but all true potatoes or "papas" as they are called
by the Indians and all Spanish-speaking people.
Finding the tubers excellent and nutritious food, the Spaniards
carried them back to Spain, where they were cultivated and eaten
for forty years. Then in 1560, when Spain was establishing towns
and settlements in Florida, the tubers were carried back to
America by the colonists. Five years later, those famous old
sea-dogs, Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins, raided the
Florida coasts, and being in need of provisions they helped
themselves to the settlers' crops, including potatoes.
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The strange tubers transported to England by these
pirate-privateers met with a cool reception and were used only as
cattle fodder for more than two hundred years. But the Irish took
to them and when Captain John Smith and his fellow colonists
set sail for Virginia, the "Irish" potatoes were among the various
Plant roots and seeds they carried with them. This was the
potatoes' fourth voyage across the Atlantic, and more than one
hundred years after they had been carried to Europe by the
Spaniards, they were back on American soil far from their
original home. But the British settlers in Virginia knew nothing
of the tubers' history or origin. To them they were Irish potatoes,
although they were neither Irish nor potatoes for the word
"potato" is a corruption of the word "batata" which was the
Arowak Indian name of the sweet potato.
Saddled with the erroneous name, the "Irish" potatoes became a
most important factor in life of the colonists of Virginia and New
England, although it was not until 1773 that the tubers became of
any importance in Europe. Yet so rapidly did they come into
favor, once their true value became known, that they saved the
people from famine during the Thirty-Years' War, and so
dependent upon potatoes did the Irish people become that when,
in 1845, the crop in Ireland failed, it started the exodus of Irish
emigrants to America. To-day this edible and nutritious
food-plant of the nightshade family is cultivated throughout the
world with an annual crop of more than six billion bushels and a
greater value than all the world's yearly production of silver and
gold combined. Strange as it may seem, nine-tenths of all
potatoes are raised in Europe,
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although the plant is a native of America and was first cultivated
and used by the American Indians.
More than a hundred years before Drake and Hawkins carried the
stolen "spuds" from Florida to England, the sweet potato had
been introduced to Europe; for the "batatas," although first
cultivated by the Indians of Peru, had spread throughout tropical
and semi-tropical America and were cultivated by the natives of
the West Indies where Columbus found them. From Spain they
were carried to Italy, from there to Belgium, Austria, Germany,
and finally to Great Britain, where they at once became popular,
although so expensive that they were literally worth their weight
in gold and only the nobility and the very wealthy could enjoy
them.
Unlike the white potato which as I have said is a member of the
deadly nightshade family, the sweet potato or "camote" as the
Peruvian Indians call them, are members of the morning-glory
family. Moreover, the sweet potatoes are merely swollen or
enlarged roots, whereas the common potatoes are true tubers.
That the Indians should have developed a morning-glory into this
important food-plant is almost as remarkable as their discovery
that a member of a family of poisonous plants could be
developed to produce edible tubers.
If a person were asked to name the most valuable of all
root-crops, nine times out of ten the answer would be "potatoes."
But the world's most valuable root-crop is sweet potatoes. To be
sure, comparatively few sweet potatoes are raised in the United
States, the total crop amounting to less than one hundred
thousand bushels a year, but in many other lands they are the
most impor
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tant of all food-plants. In South and Central America, the West
Indies and many other lands, sweet potatoes or "camotes," to use
the original Incan name, are the universal food of millions of
people and are as much a matter of course as white potatoes with
us. Vast quantities are raised and consumed in Africa. Still more
are cultivated in Asia. Countless people of Malaysia, the Pacific
Islands and the Philippines depend upon these plants for their
mainstay, for they will thrive and yield in abundance in localities
where the white potatoes cannot be grown successfully.
Moreover, they are far more easily propagated and cultivated
than the "spuds." They grow both from cuttings of either roots or
vines and need no planting, for merely by plowing under or
spading or hoeing in the vines after the crop has been gathered,
another crop will be assured. They have fewer insect enemies
than white potatoes, and an acre of land devoted to them will
yield a far greater quantity of actual food than will white
potatoes, for the roots of the vine are far more nourishing and
contain a much greater food value, pound for pound, or rather
acre for acre, than any other food-plant except maize. While only
the tuber of the white potato is used as food, although the seeds
or "balls" are edible despite the popular belief that these are
poisonous, both the roots and the foliage of the sweet potatoes
are eaten. In the Philippines sweet-potato shoots are regarded as
the finest of all "greens," and are far superior to spinach and
similar vegetables both in flavor and nutritious value.
Finally, the sweet potatoes have many more uses than do white
potatoes. Not only are the roots and "greens" eaten in their fresh
or natural state, but great
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quantities are dried, countless tons of the roots are made into
flour, others are used for making alcohol and syrup, while Indian
tribes make beautiful and fast dyes from the juice of certain
varieties of these plants which, combined with lime juice and
other ingredients, produce a great number of colors and tints.
It is truly surprising that these most valuable of all root-foods
should be so little used in the United States. To be sure they are
extensively cultivated in our southern states where the damp, red
variety known to the Peruvian Indians as "camote apichu" is very
popular. In our country these thin-skinned, damp, very sweet
roots are called yams but they are very distinct from the true
yams which are the huge roots of a totally different family of
plants.
Perhaps one reason why most persons prefer white potatoes to
sweet potatoes is because the varieties cultivated in the United
States and sold in our markets are all more or less sweet. But
there are many more varieties of sweet potatoes than of white
potatoes, and among the vast array of yellow, brown, pink, red,
purple, orange, greenish, and white-skinned "camotes" one sees
in the markets of tropical America, there are many with dry
mealy flesh which is no sweeter than that of the least sweet of
white potatoes. Perhaps, some day, our people may discover that
cultivated morning-glory vines will produce more nutritious and
more abundant food than cultivated nightshades, and the sweet
potatoes may become our most important root-crop.
Next to the white potato, the tomato is the best known and most
important member of the nightshade family which provides us
with food.
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Like so many other plants that we eat, the tomato originated in
Peru where it was cultivated and developed by the pre-Incan
races many centuries before the discovery of America. In the case
of the wild nightshade plants the fruits are the most poisonous
portions, and it is even more remarkable that the Indians could
have developed some of these and transformed them into edible
fruits than the fact that they developed the roots of others into
edible tubers.
Not only did the Peruvian races develop all of our present-day
varieties of the tomatoes and the peppers which are very closely
related-but in addition they had a number of varieties of tomatoes
which are unknown to us, although still cultivated in Peru. Our
tomato plants are tender, delicate things and very sensitive to
frosts, but in Peru there are tomatoes which withstand the
heaviest frosts and even freezing weather. In the Andean regions,
at altitudes of eight to ten thousand feet above the sea, the
commonest tomato is a small fruit about the size of a plum which
is borne on vines that clamber riotously over trees or buildings,
while the egg-shaped yellow tree-tomato thrives best from ten to
fourteen thousand feet above sea level and is unaffected by the
bitter cold and severe frosts of its Andean home nearly three
miles above the sea.
Long before the first Europeans reached America, the tomatoes,
and the capsicum and sweet peppers had spread far and wide over
tropical, and many portions of temperate, America and were very
popular with the Indian races, yet it was not until centuries later
that white people could be induced to eat tomatoes. For some
reason the "love apples" were regarded as
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poisonous, and they were not recognized as edible until 1850.
To-day they are one of the most important of our agricultural
products and are cultivated in every portion of the world where
they will grow.
It was quite a different matter with the peppers. From the time of
the Spanish conquerors, both the sweet or "bull" peppers and the
hot or "chili" peppers have been popular and in great demand.
Perhaps the strangest thing about these peppers is the fact that the
name "chili" is the old Aztec name of the plants and is used
nowadays to designate the very hottest of peppers. But in Peru
the name is applied to the big sweet or mild peppers, for in the
Quechua Indian language "chile" or "chire" means cold or cool.
American peppers are the source of red or cayenne pepper and
paprika, but our white and black peppers are obtained from very
different plants, for these are the ground seeds of Oriental trees.
Oddly enough, both the fiery cayenne pepper and the mild
paprika are obtained from the same chili pepper-pods. The "hot"
portions of the peppers are the seeds and the membranes
surrounding them, and when these and the dried pulp or pith of
the fruits have been removed and the dried skin only is
pulverized it is known as paprika, whereas, if the entire fruits are
dried and ground, the product is cayenne or red pepper.
Another condiment which causes a great deal of confusion and is
a puzzle to many persons is our allspice. Most people, or at least
a great many people, think that allspice is a mixture of a number
of different spices, but in reality it is the ground seeds of a West
Indian tree known as the pimento. And here arises an
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other chance for confusion, for the Spanish name for pepper is
Pimiento which is so similar to pimento that many persons think
the two words refer to the same plant.
Among the many food-plants which add zest and nutriment to
our diet are the various beans, the squashes and pumpkins, all of
which are American plants cultivated and developed by the
Indians everywhere although they, too, originated in Peru. But
perhaps the strangest plant which these ancient American
agriculturists developed and used was the peanut which is just as
popular with us as it was with the Indians ages before the arrival
of Columbus.
Although the peanut is a first cousin of the peas and beans, yet its
manner of growth is unlike that of any other plant, for instead of
bearing its edible seeds like ordinary plants the peanut buries its
pods beneath the surface of the ground. As soon as the yellow
pealike flowers fade and the seeds commence to develop, the
stems bend downward and burrow into the earth where the seeds
develop and ripen.
We seldom think of peanuts as one of the most important of
food-plants, yet in the United States alone the annual crop
amounts to nearly a billion pounds valued at more than twelve
million dollars, yet we raise only a very small portion of the
world's supply of peanuts. In China they are one of the most
important of crops, while vast quantities are raised in Europe, the
Pacific Islands, in Africa, and in the West Indies and in South
and Central America and Mexico, the total world's crop
amounting to more than three million tons of the little nuts.
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No doubt it will surprise many to learn that pound for pound
peanuts are one of the most nutritious of all known foods. Even
the very best beef steak does not contain as many proteins as a
pound of peanuts, which also contains one-third as much fat as a
pound of butter, in addition to as many carbohydrates as a pound
of white potatoes. But peanuts are valuable for many purposes
other than as food for human beings. The oil is an excellent
substitute for olive oil and is also of great importance for the
manufacture of soap, oleomargarine, and other substances.
The "hay" made from the dried plants, as well as the pods or
"shells" and the reddish "skins" surrounding the kernels, are
among the most valuable fodder for live stock, while the waste
material remaining after the oil has been extracted from the
ground nuts is unexcelled as a fattener for cattle and hogs and is
one of the best of all crop or land fertilizers. Finally, like all
leguminous plants such as clover, alfalfa, peas and beans, the
peanut roots produce nitrogen which they give to the soil. Hence
barren or exhausted soil may be enriched and rendered
productive by planting and harvesting a crop of peanuts.
It may seem strange that we should eat the fruits, seeds, roots, or
tubers of poisonous plants. But how many of us realize what a
variety of foods are obtained from roses? Not from the rose
bushes of our flower gardens, it is true, but from closely related
members of the rose family. Plums, cherries, pears, peaches,
apricots, apples, nectarines, almonds, blackberries, raspberries,
and strawberries are all members of the rose family, as are also
the wild buckthorns and hawthorns which
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bear edible even if not desirable fruits. There seems little
resemblance between a luscious peach and an almond, but if we
compare the peach stone with the shell of the almond we will
find them almost identical, while the kernel of the peach stone is
exactly like that of the almond aside from its flavor. And while a
big rosy apple is a very different fruit from a strawberry, yet we
will find the flowers very much the same. Here it is interesting to
note that blackberries and raspberries, as well as strawberries, are
all American plants and were unknown in other portions of the
world prior to the arrival of Europeans in the Western
Hemisphere.
Finally, among the strange plants that we eat there are the
grasses, which are the most important of all our food-plants.
Think of how badly off we would be were it not for the giant
grass called sugar-cane. And what would we do without the
grass we call wheat, the other grass we know as rye, the grass
from which we obtain our oats and the barley grass? Millions of
human beings depend almost entirely upon the swamp-loving
grass whose seeds are the cereal we know as rice, while millions
more would be faced with famine were it not for maize or Indian
corn which is still another grass. Perhaps of all these grasses
which provide human beings with their most important and
widely used foods the maize is the most interesting and the
strangest. In the first place "corn," as we call it, is of particular
interest to us, for it is 100 per cent American. But that is not its
only claim to be considered both interesting and strange.
Although the original wild ancestors of sugar-cane and wheat
are known we cannot identify the original
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grasses which, through ages of cultivation, became transformed
to rice, barley, and rye. But all of these are very similar in
structure and manner of growth to common grasses. Among the
grasses of our fields and meadows, our waysides and our
woodlands there are species which are almost exact counterparts
of the various grains which provide us with food. Some have
"heads" with seeds like barley or rye, others have seeds that
droop like oats, while still others have the "heads" covered with
slender threadlike filaments resembling the "beard" of wheat. But
nowhere on earth, as far as known, is there a wild grass having its
stalks topped with flower tassels and with its seeds enclosed in
tightly wrapped husks growing from the stalk at the bases of the
leaves in the manner of our familiar Indian corn or maize.
Even stranger is the fact that maize is the only cereal plant which
is totally incapable of propagating itself. Wheat, barley, rye, oats,
millet and rice if not harvested will drop their seeds or grains and
these will sprout and grow. But the kernels of maize on their cobs
enclosed within the tight covering of husks cannot drop from the
parent stalk and produce more corn. Even if by chance the
kernels do drop to earth, if they are accidentally scattered by
birds, beasts, or human beings, and even if they sprout, the plants
cannot grow and spread without the aid of man. For so many
thousands of years has maize been cultivated by human beings
that it has become entirely dependent upon man for its existence.
Of all known plants it is the most thoroughly domesticated.
Never does it revert to a wild state like most cultivated plants.
Only where planted and cultivated by man does it exist. It has
become as helpless as a Pekinese if left to itself, and in its early
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stages it is one of the tenderest, most delicate, and frail of all
plants.
No one knows with certainty where maize first originated, for
there are reasons to think it was first cultivated in Mexico and
there are as many if not more reasons for thinking maize
originated in Peru, the home of so many of our important
food-plants.
But regardless of where the plant was first developed from some
unknown wild grass we know that it had been cultivated by the
Indians of North, South and Central America for thousands of
years when the white men first arrived in the New World.
Moreover, the American races had developed all of the principal
forms or varieties of corn known to us, with many varieties
which have never become familiar to us in the North. In the most
ancient known tombs and graves of the pre Incan races we find
pottery vessels bearing perfect reproductions of ears of maize,
and accompanying the ancient mummies are dried and shriveled
ears of maize placed beside the bodies to provide the spirits with
food. Among these ancient specimens of maize are flint corn and
dent corn, sweet corn and popping corn, black and red corn,
yellow and white corn, as well as examples of the various kinds
of maize still cultivated in Peru but unknown to our farmers.
Among these is the mote' corn with each kernel an inch or more
in width. These are leached and cooked and are eaten singly, just
as we eat chestnuts or peanuts. At the very opposite extreme is
the pygmy of all maize with ears only two or three inches in
length.
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But this tiny Andean corn has one great advantage, for its home
is about the shores of Lake Titicaca nearly three miles above the
sea, and is the only known variety of maize that will withstand
cold weather and frost. The Peruvian races knew the maize as
"sara," but they had a name for each variety of the plant. Thus the
big-kerneled corn was called "sara-mote'," black corn was
"kollo-sara," popping corn was "sara-cancha" corn used for
making meal was "sara-sancu," while sweet corn was called
"chocli." But the grain became first known to Europeans when
the Spaniards conquered Mexico and Yucatan where it was
known as "mahiz," the name which was adopted by the Dons and
was corrupted to maize by English-speaking people.
To-day this plant, first cultivated and developed in America,
has spread to every quarter of the globe where it can be grown. In
every land and on every island, other than those lying in the
frigid zones, there are fields of waving corn. From New Zealand
to the Siberian steppes, from the heart of Africa to the islands of
the
South Seas, everywhere throughout the world, Indian corn is
cultivated by civilized men and by savage tribes, and it has
become the third most valuable food-plant. Only wheat and rice
stand above it, while its commercial uses other than as food are
far greater than those of any other grain. Few persons realize the
almost inconceivable quantities of corn that are annually
harvested. In the United States alone the crop amounts to over
three billion bushels with a total value, greater than that of all our
yearly production of coal, iron, gold, and silver combined, and
often worth more than all the wheat, rye, barley, rice, beans,
potatoes, sweet potatoes,
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and tobacco harvested in our country in a single year. But
perhaps the very strangest fact about this wonderful plant we eat
is that among all the races who cultivate and eat the grain, there
are only two (other than the Indians) who know it by its proper
name. In Africa and portions of India it is called "mealies"; the
natives of Egypt refer to it as "Syrian corn"; the French know it
under the name of "Spanish corn"; the Hungarians and the Dutch
call it "Turkish wheat", while the Turks know it as "Egyptian
corn." To us it is just "corn"
Only the Spanish-speaking people and the British call it maize,
and only the English, who of all races appreciate maize the least,
give credit to those who originated the grain by referring to it as
Indian corn.
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Chapter XII
WONDER PLANTS THAT WE DRINK
It is rather remarkable that aside from water and milk, all our
beverages are made from plants. Moreover, all portions of plants
are used. We have drinks made from fruits, others from leaves,
others from flowers, others from seeds; some are made from nuts,
others from roots, and there are still others made from buds,
stems, sap, bark, or the entire plants.
Among the fruit beverages we have lemonade, orangeade,
limeade, cider, wines, and the popular pineapple juice, orange
juice, tomato juice, grape juice and others.* Roots, barks, and
saps supply us with most of our soft drinks such as root-beer,
birch-beer, ginger-ale, coca-cola, sarsaparilla. We have elder
flower and dandelion flower wines, as well as delicious wines
made of blackberries, cherries, barberries, elderberries, and other
berries. Buds and tender leaves supply our tea; our coffee and
cocoa are made from seeds. When it comes to "hard" drinks and
liquors there are the beers and ales made from seeds of hop vines
combined with malt from grains, with the microscopic yeast
plants added. Barley, rye, wheat, and maize seeds are the sources
of various kinds of whiskey, while the Irish use potatoes for the
same purpose. The berries of the
*A refreshing and delightful beverage may be made with crushed sumac berries and water sweetened to suit the taste.
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juniper give the flavor to gin---or are supposed to, although I'm
afraid only a very small proportion of the liquor contains real
juniper. But even if the flavor is imparted by chemicals, the basis
of the liquor is alcohol which is distilled from the roots, fruits,
sap or other portions of plants. Brandy, also, is made from plants,
for it is made from grapes, while finally there is rum made from
the sap of the sugar-cane.
Man certainly has exhibited a great amount of ingenuity in
inventing drinkables, and there is scarcely any group or form of
plant life he has not employed in his desire to assuage his thirst,
add zest to his meals, refresh his weary body or befuddle his
brain. But it is rather a sad commentary on human nature that he
should have devoted so much effort to producing intoxicating
beverages. I doubt if there is a race anywhere, no matter how
primitive, that does not have its alcoholic drinks. For that matter,
about the first plant industry of human beings seems to be that of
making home-brew of some kind. Even when cast away upon a
desert island, shipwrecked mariners and others often manage to
concoct some sort of a toddy to cheer their spirits, stimulate their
energies and all too often make them disgracefully drunk. History
records that the first white men to dwell upon the Bermuda
Islands were shipwrecked sailors, and that even before they had
erected shelters for themselves or had found means of sustenance
other than shell-fish and birds' eggs, they had discovered how to
make a fiery intoxicating liquor from the palmettos on the
islands.
Perhaps Nature is as much to blame for this state of affairs as are
human beings for she has put temptation
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in man's way and has provided a vast number of plants capable of
being more quickly and easily transformed to alcoholic than to
non-alcoholic drinks. Wherever there are cocoanut palms-and
that means practically every tropical land or coral reef-there is an
ever-ready source of fiery liquor. All that is necessary is to cut
open a nut and allow the liquid within it to ferment. If there are
no cocoanuts available, wild berries, fruits, pineapples, oranges,
even palm fruits may be crushed and the juice left to ferment. For
that matter, the sap of many trees will serve the same purpose,
and if the land is a barren desert waste there will be cactus plants
or agaves filled with watery sap which may be transformed to
liquor by the simple process of fermentation. And by creating the
minute plants which produce fermentation Mother Nature has
provided the most essential detail of all. Think what a
prohibitionists' paradise this earth would be if there were no
microscopic plants to produce fermentation. No doubt the
teetotalers feel that these minute plants are a curse, but without
them life would be impossible. The "curse" lies in mankind, not
in Nature, for it is the misuse, not the use of Nature's gifts that
has resulted in most of mankind's misery and shortcomings.
But irrespective of our ideas of temperance or intemperance the
stories of our plant beverages, either alcoholic or non-alcoholic,
are interesting and in many cases are truly strange and wonderful.
Very probably it was chance or accident that led to the discovery
of alcoholic drinks. Some primitive savage may have left a
portion of his cocoanut water or some fruit juice unconsumed,
and a little later, when he took
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another drink, he found the liquid completely altered. The
slightly sweet or mildly acid flavor had been replaced by a sour,
acrid, or even fiery taste. Perhaps the fellow made a wry face and
spat it out, but the chances are that he swallowed enough to have
its effect upon his system, unaccustomed to alcohol, and he soon
became aware of entirely new sensations. Probably the savage
was terrified at first and had visions of devils or evil spirits
having entered his body by means of the funny-tasting liquid. But
presently his fears gave place to unusual gaiety and exuberance
of spirits, and as it dawned upon his rather dull brain that this was
the result of the beverage, he gulped down more and became so
filled with "Dutch courage" that his fellow tribesmen gazed upon
him with wonder and admiration. If he kept the secret of his
condition to himself he may have become a chief or a great
medicine man, but probably he decided it was too good to keep,
and became convivial and invited his friends to share his
home-brew.
Even if primitive man did discover intoxicating liquors
accidentally it could scarcely have been by accident that he
discovered how to prepare the seeds of a berry to provide him
with coffee or how to transform the beans in the pod of a tree to
cocoa and chocolate. Nobody knows when or how coffee was
first discovered, but compared to the process of making cocoa
and chocolate, that of making coffee is very simple. To prepare
coffee all that is necessary is to dry the beans, remove the
"parchment" or thin membrane that covers them, roast and grind
them.
But the preparation of the seeds of the cacao plant is a long and
complicated process. It is impossible even
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1. Cacao flowers and pods (about 1/6) 2. Cacao pod open to show beans (about 1/6) 3. Yapon or Carolina tea (about 1/3) 4. Tea (about 1/3) 1. Broken orange pekoe 2. First gunpowder 3. Second gunpowder and orange pekoe 4. Pekoe and young Hyson 5. Hyson and Imperial 6. Souchong 5. Coffee (about 1/3) 6. Mate gourd and bombilla (about 1/4) 7. New Jersey tea (about 1/3) 8. Maguey plant (about 1/40) 9. Biscuit root (about 1/3) 10-10A. Indian bread-root plant and root
to hazard a guess as to when man first discovered how to prepare
cocoa and chocolate. For that matter we are not at all certain
whether cocoa and chocolate were first made in Mexico or in
Peru, for when the Spaniards first reached these countries they
found both the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Incans using the
beverages just as their ancestors had been doing for unknown
centuries.
And here let me call attention to the confusion in regard to the
words "cocoa," "cacao" and "coco." We read of "cocoanuts," but
the nut of the palm-tree has no connection with the cocoa we
drink and some think it should be spelled "coco." Neither is the
term "cocoa" properly used when referring to the plant or to the
beans which provide us with cocoa and chocolate, for the word
"cocoa" is the name of the prepared beans only and these are the
seeds of the "cacao" tree.
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In the Incan or Quechua language, both the seeds and the drink
made from them were known as "cacahua," while the Aztecs
knew the plant as "cacao" and called the beverages
"cacaoquahitl" and "chocolatl." These Indian words were far too
long and too difficult for the Spaniards, and were shortened and
corrupted to "cacao" and "chocolate." When the beverages
became known to the English people the Anglo-Saxons, as was
so often the case, transposed a letter and changed "cacao" to
"cocoa." Then to still further confuse the names. they added a
letter to the Spaniards' "coco," (their name for the well-known
palm-nut), and called it "cocoanut." Finally there is the "coca"
plant from which cocaine is derived, which made matters even
more complicated.
As wild cacao trees which might be ancestors of the cultivated
species are found only in South America, it seems probable that
the ancient Peruvians were the first to discover the process of
making cocoa and chocolate, while the similarity of the Incan
"cacahua" and the Aztec "cacao" would seem to indicate a
common origin and that the Mexicans learned the method of
using the plant from the Peruvians. Whatever the truth of the
matter may be, we know that both the people of Peru and the
people of Mexico used cocoa and chocolate in the most remote
times.
Cacao beans are found with other food-plants in the most ancient
of Peruvian graves and tombs, and pre Incan pottery vessels
dating back for thousands of years are modeled in the form of
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cacao pods or are decorated with pictures of men or women
holding the pods in their hands. In Mexico there are equally posi
tive evidences that the use of the beans was familiar to the
Indians even before the Aztec Empire came into existence.
Moreover, in both South and Central America a great number of
varieties of the cacao trees had been developed, all quite distinct
from the wild species, which proves that the trees had been under
cultivation for an almost immeasurable length of time. Mainly
the recognized varieties of cacao trees differ only in the color or
size of their pods, the color of their leaves and the quality of their
beans. All are easily recognized and all are most striking and
peculiar. Unlike the great majority of plants, the flower-buds
sprout directly from the bark of the trunk and branches, and as
the pods mature the tree presents a very curious appearance
resembling, as one tourist expressed it, "a beech tree with
summer squashes nailed to the trunk."
Even though the cacao tree is very different from a beech and is a
very beautiful tree with large deep-green or copper-crimson
leaves, the fruits or pods do resemble squashes, especially when
they are yellow or green. But there are varieties with scarlet pods,
crimson pods, and deep, almost purple pods. The pods
themselves are not edible, however, and are filled with a rather
sweet, mucilaginous whitish substance or "flesh" containing
many large seeds which are quite soft and pinkish-brown in color
and somewhat similar in general appearance to raw peanuts.
When the pods are fully ripe they are picked and are heaped in
piles beneath the trees where workers armed with machetes
quickly split the pods in half and empty the slippery mass
containing the seeds into boxes or
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trays. The next step is the fermentation or "sweating" process
which is the real secret of the preparation of the cacao beans, and
by which their natural raw-potato flavor is changed to that of
cocoa. It is a rather tricky process requiring practice and
judgment as well as great care, for if the seeds or beans are
fermented too much they are ruined.
There are a number of ways employed in "sweating" cacao.
Sometimes the contents of the pods are placed in vats, other
planters prefer the use of gratings, while many of the smaller
growers simply cover the mass of pulp and seeds with leaves,
burlap sacks, or other material.
No matter what method is followed the result is much the same,
the pulp souring and fermenting and becoming almost liquid, in
which state it flows off leaving the seeds exposed. The next step
in the process is one in which planters also disagree, many
insisting that the beans are improved by washing before being
dried, while others feel equally certain that they are better if dried
without being washed. But in either case it is highly important
that the beans should be dried very evenly and thoroughly. To
accomplish this the beans are spread on huge trays on the large
estates, or on ox hides in the case of growers who have only a
few trees, and are constantly raked or moved about in the
sunshine. As the beans mildew and spoil if wet by rain, the large
estates have the drying-trays mounted on wheels running on
tracks leading into huge sheds so that the beans may be quickly
placed under cover in case of a shower or at night. Other growers
employ artificially heated air for drying their beans, while many
thousands
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of tons of cacao beans are dried on raw hides or small trays or
even on sheets of corrugated iron placed on the ground, or in the
streets of villages and towns. As dogs, poultry, sheep, goats, and
even cattle wander about freely and go where they please, they
frequently walk over the drying beans. Finally the beans are
polished and are usually colored with red clay or ochre mixed
with water and sprinkled on the dried beans while they are being
polished. Unlike the question of fermentation and washing
wherein experts disagree, all cacao growers seem to agree that
the very best method of polishing the beans is to employ
barefooted Hindus, Indians, or Negroes to shuffle the beans about
with their feet. But we need have no hesitation about partaking of
cocoa or chocolate because of this or because live stock wander
over drying cacao beans, for in the subsequent manufacture of
cocoa and chocolate the superficial skin or shell of the beans is
removed.
When the dried and polished cacao beans reach the factories they
must go through an even longer and more intricate process before
they are ready for human consumption. First of all they are
roasted. Then they are dehulled and the germs or "chits" are
removed and the beans cracked into fragments by special
machinery. They are then sifted, screened, and blended. In fact
the blending of various grades and flavors of beans from different
localities is a most important part of the process, for the quality
and flavor of the finished products depend upon this. When the
blending is completed the beans are passed through the grinders
and are transformed into a creamlike paste or "liquor" which is
beaten and churned for hours until it becomes "cocoa
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cream." The warm cream is poured into forms or molds where it
solidifies and becomes the chocolate of commerce. Cocoa is
prepared by extracting the oil or "cocoa butter" and pulverizing
the dry remainder.
In addition to cocoa and chocolate there is the product known to
the trade as "broma." This is merely the husks or skins of the
beans pulverized and sweetened and therefore contains any dirt
or foreign matter that might have adhered to the beans while
being dried and polished. At one time large quantities of broma
as well as the whole "cocoa shells" were sold because of their
cheapness, but nowadays cocoa and chocolate are so abundant
and so low in price that there is practically no sale for the inferior
shells, which are used mainly in the manufacture of cattle fodder.
When we consider what a long and involved and complicated
process is required to transform the seeds of the cacao tree into
nourishing food and drink, it seems beyond the bounds of reason
to assume that the Indians hit upon it by chance. But if not how
on earth did they learn the process? To be sure they did not
produce the same high quality of chocolate and cocoa as result
from modern manufacturing methods and specially-designed
machinery. But the flavor of the Indians' crudely ground and
'prepared chocolate is fully equal to and often superior to that of
our highest grade product.
Of course, we all know that our tea consists of the leaves or buds
of a plant, but how many of us know that the tea plant belongs to
the same family as the sweetscented, waxen-flowered camelia?
How many of us know that the various kinds of tea, such as
Orange Pekoe, Hyson,
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Colors, Souchong, and others are all leaves from the same plant,
the grade or name depending upon the portion of the plant or the
size of the leaves used? How many of us know that black tea and
green tea differ only in the method of preparation? And how
many of our tea drinkers realize that tea leaves must undergo a
long process almost as involved as that of chocolate, before they
are ready to use?
When we speak of "Orange Pekoe" we refer to tea made from the
tenderest buds at the tips of the stalks. When we ask for "Young
Hyson" we wish tea made from medium-sized leaves. If some
tradesman offers a bargain in tea and vows it is just as good as
the best Orange Pekoe, and we notice it is marked "Souchong," it
is no bargain, for Souchong means that the largest and poorest
leaves are contained in the package. On the other hand
"Gunpowder" tea is made from very young and tender leaves
near the top of the plant-stalk and is next to Orange Pekoe in
quality.
Oolong, green tea, and black tea differ in a very different manner.
In preparing leaves for black tea they are spread on trays for
several hours or until they wilt and become soft and velvety.
Then they are handled and rolled on stone tables to break open
the leaf cells and release the oils or juices, after which they are
roasted and are finally "fired" or dried by artificial heat or hot air
at a temperature of about 210' F. Green tea is not wilted, roasted
or rolled before being dried, but is steamed or "fired" as soon as
gathered, thus destroying the ferments, while Oolong is tea from
Formosa which is very slightly fermented before "firing"
Although practically all real tea is imported from
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Japan, China, India, or Ceylon, yet there are a number of native
American plants whose leaves may be used for making tea.
Perhaps the best known of these is the woodland shrub known as
New Jersey tea. The leaves of this common plant when carefully
dried make an excellent beverage and served our ancestors as a
substitute for Oriental teas during the Revolutionary War.
Sassafras leaves were widely used for making a beverage in the
past, the "sassafras tea" being considered a certain remedy for
many forms of sickness.
In our more southerly states there is a member of the holly family
which is known as yaupon or Carolina tea which is far superior to
the New Jersey tea plant as a source of tea. The tender shoots and
leaves of the yaupon when "steeped" produce a very healthful
and refreshing beverage which was very popular with the
Cherokee Indians to whom it was known as "black drink."
But the only tea which competes with that of the Orient in
popularity and widespread use is the Paraguay Tea or "mate" of
South America.
Mate', however, is not the name of the plant, which is a species of
ilex or holly, and in the Indian language means a small gourd, the
real name of the plant being Yerba maté or gourd plant. This
name was not bestowed upon the plant because it bears gourds,
but on account of the way in which the dried leaves and twigs are
used. In the lands where the beverage is popular and is as
universally used as is tea, cocoa, or coffee in our country, no
native would ever dream of brewing mate' in a pot. To obtain the
full flavor of the drink it must he prepared in a certain way, the
leaves and tender
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twigs being steeped in a specially designed vessel from which it
is sipped by means of a slender tube with a spoon-shaped end
pierced with many tiny holes to form a strainer. This device is
known as a "bombilla" or "little pump," while the rounded or
egg-shaped container is the mate' or gourd. Originally these were
made of real gourds, and many of the poorer people still use
them; but the majority of people, and all who can afford to do so,
use imitation gourds made of glass, metal, or porcelain which are
often highly decorated or are of solid silver or gold. In preparing
the beverage, a few of the ground dried leaves are placed in the
gourd into which boiling water is poured until it is about two
thirds full. For a few minutes the contents are stirred gently with
the bombilla, until the drinker deems his tea just right, when he
sucks it through the "little pump." One of the principal reasons
why mate' has not become, popular in the United States is
because our people have not learned how to prepare and use it.
But there are other and greater reasons. In the first place only the
poorer grades of mate have been obtainable here, and there is as
much, or for that matter more, difference between poor and good
mate' than between Souchong and Orange Pekoe tea or between
the cheap and the high grade coffees. Unlike true tea, the mate'
tea is made from the leaves, twigs and even the smaller branches
of the plant, while aside from being partially dried in the
sunshine and "cured" over wood fires no other preparatory
process is needed, other than to chop or grind the dried product
into a coarse powder. Inferior or cheap grades of mate are mainly
made from the branches and twigs and contain a great deal of
fine
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dust, whereas the really superior grades consist wholly of the
buds and leaves and are free from all small particles which bother
the drinker by passing through the openings in his bombilla.
The other reason why we have never become mate' conscious is
because wholly misleading and exaggerated advertisements of
the beverage have been widely circulated, and because equally
misleading and wholly unfounded statements declaring that mate'
is a drug and injurious have been broadcast in the press, by radio,
and otherwise. There is no more truth in such statements than in
the advertisements which declare that mate' will insure long life,
perfect health and will cure almost every ailment from dandruff
to heart disease. Just how or where the idea that mate' is a drug or
is injurious originated, is a mystery. Perhaps well-meaning but
ignorant reformers and self-appointed guardians of public
welfare, confused mate' and marijuana owing to the fact that both
words begin with "m" and both are used by Latin Americans. But
I strongly suspect that the outcry against the use of mate' was
inspired by the liquor interests who realized that users of
Paraguay tea are seldom heavy drinkers of alcoholic beverages,
and foresaw losses to their own trade if mate' became as popular
as it deserves to be.
Although it is no cure-all and has no more effect upon falling
hair, the postponement of old age or the acquisition of strength
than does tea, coffee, or cocoa, it is fully as refreshing and
stimulating as these beverages, and is no more harmful. In fact it
contains far less caffein than any one of the three most popular
drinks, and it is not nearly so habit-forming a drink as
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ordinary tea or coffee. More than thirty million people in South
America drink mate' as regularly and as often as we drink coffee
or tea. In Europe it has become a very popular and widely used
beverage, and in many districts has almost entirely supplanted all
other drinks. Surely over thirty-five million human beings can't
have gone to the damnation bow-wows by drinking this "tea of
the Gauchos," and it is a great pity that such a harmless,
refreshing and truly desirable "tea" has not been popularized in
our own land. Perhaps, once we learn how to prepare it properly,
and when the higher grades of the mate' tea are imported, we may
see thousands of our people sipping the beverage through silver
bombillas instead of standing by a bar and tossing raw whiskey
down their throats. Mate' may not be the means of reforming
drunkards, it may not be a "cure" for intemperance, but the fact
remains that where the plant is most widely used the
consumption of alcoholic liquors is almost negligible.
In various lands the people have plant beverages that are almost
or quite unknown to us, but are as popular locally as are tea,
coffee, or cocoa in our country or as mate' in Brazil, the
Argentine, and Paraguay.
In Africa, millions of people consider beverages made from the
cola nut the finest of all, while in Arabia the native khat is the
favorite. In our southwest the Indians prize the sweet syrupy
juice of the giant tree cactus or "saguaro" (see Chapter VI) when
freshly drawn from the plant or after being fermented to form a
rich heady wine. In rainless desert districts the cacti are most
important and valuable plants, for all contain a large amount of
watery sap which in the case of many species
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is drinkable and palatable. Some of the stout-stemmed barrel
varieties are real desert drinking fountains, for by cutting a slice
from the top of the plant and digging out some of the pithy
interior to form a hollow the
Barrel cactus (1/16) thirsty traveler may secure a draught of cool clear liquid which
quickly fills the cavity.
One of the most remarkable of plants which provide man with
beverages is the guarana' or devil-doer of the Amazon district in
South America. In its natural wild state the guarana is a liana or
climbing vine, but when cultivated it becomes a small bushy tree.
The seeds of this plant contain nearly four times as much
caffeine as coffee or from 4 to 5 per cent. These seeds are ground
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and pressed into cylindrical cakes four or five inches in length
and about an inch in diameter. By slicing off a few shavings of
one of these "sticks" and dissolving them in boiling water, a most
refreshing and stimulating beverage is prepared. A
half-teaspoonful of guarana in a cup of water is equal to several
cups of the strongest black coffee, and its effect upon weary
brains and muscles is almost magical. No matter how utterly
worn out and fatigued a person may be, a drink of guarana makes
him a "new man," as fresh, strong, and active as ever. Moreover,
as far as known, this appropriately named "devil-doer" has no ill
effects upon one's system. There is no depression or lassitude
after the effects of the guarana have passed off, its use does not
become a habit, and one may drink the beverage before going to
bed and sleep soundly to awaken in the morning as fresh as the
proverbial daisy.
Another popular beverage of many natives of Mexico, Central,
and South America is known as "chicha." This, however, is
merely a general name, for there are many kinds of chicha such
as corn chicha, pineapple chicha, sweet potato chicha and chicha
made of various fruits and other plants, and there are as many
methods of preparing the drink as there are plants used in making
it.
In Costa Rica, pineapple chicha is the favorite beverage, while in
Peru chichas prepared from special varieties of maize are the
most popular. Broadly speaking chicha is similar to slightly hard
cider, and like cider it becomes harder the longer it is kept and
the greater the fermentation. But unlike the well-known juice of
apples, chicha soon sours and spoils. When fresh and
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properly prepared it is a most refreshing beverage, regardless of
the plant used in making it, although few Northerners like the
flavor of the corn chicha until they become accustomed to it, for
like olives and many other edibles it is an acquired taste which
many persons never acquire.
Another plant beverage somewhat similar to chicha, is the cassiri
of the Caribs and other jungle Indians of South America. This is
made from the juice of a certain variety of red sweet potato and is
an excellent agreeable drink. As much cannot be said of another
beverage very popular with these Indians, paiwarrie, prepared
from the cassava or manioc meal, or the cassava cakes in the
manner described in Chapter V. The after effects of paiwarrie are
very bad, overindulgence in paiwarrie being followed by extreme
physical weakness and exhaustion, a severe cough and not
infrequently a wasting illness and even death. Moreover, it is not
unusual for the Indians to use their entire cassava meal supply for
making paiwarrie, leaving them without food when the orgy is
over, for in their exhausted condition the men are incapable of
hunting or fishing.
Paiwarrie is one plant drink that most fortunately has never
become popular beyond the boundaries of the tropical jungles,
for it does not possess a single redeeming feature.
It is quite a different matter with the national beverage of Mexico
known as "pulque" (pronounced poolkay), made from the sap of
the agave or maguey plant which is one of the so-called "century
plants." When the maguey is fully matured it contains a quantity
of
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starchy material and sugar stored in the fleshy stiff leaves. At this
time just when the plant is about to produce its flower-bud, the
maguey is tapped by having a deep cavity scooped from the heart
of the plant. Oozing from the surrounding fleshy portions of the
leaves, the sweet sap called "miel" accumulates in the hollow and
is gathered twice each day by a man who sucks the liquid into a
long tubular gourd and empties the contents into a skin bag or
cont ainer strapped to his back. When slightly fermented, the
"miel" or "honey" loses its almost cloying sweetness and acquires
a slightly sour, slightly acid flavor, very similar to good apple
cider. The pulque thus prepared is a most refreshing and de-
lightful beverage and is highly nutritious. Unfortunately,
however, the Mexicans are not satisfied with such a desirable and
innocuous drink. Like the majority of human beings, they
demand something with a "kick" in
it and obtain a "kick" worth while by allowing the pulque to
ferment until "ripe" and then distilling it, the resultant highly
alcoholic liquor being the fiery mescal. Yet even this is not so
potent a liquor as other native Mexican beverages.
I have stated that with the exception of water and milk all
beverages are made from plants, but if we are to believe the
natives of Campeche there is still a third exception.
On one occasion while I was in Campeche, the Alcalde of the
town invited me to have a drink with him and some of his
friends. "Senor Alcalde," I inquired as he filled the glasses, "of
what is this drink made?"
The Alcalde grinned. "Of a truth, amigo mio," he
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replied, "it is compounded of sulphuric acid and gunpowder."
And when I tasted the innocent-appearing, colorless, sparkling
liquor I was convinced that he had told the truth.
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Chapter XIII
MAGIC PLANTS
DID you ever notice how frequently some twig, root, tree,
flower, or seed-pod resembles some other object? The little wild
flower known as Dutchman's breeches has flowers which are
miniature replicas of the baggy trousers so typical of the national
costume of the Hollanders. The broad-leafed aristolochia vine
which shades so many of our porches is most appropriately called
Dutchman's pipe for its flowers are shaped exactly like the long,
crooked-stemmed pipes popular with the Dutchmen, while the
elephant flower has blossoms strikingly similar to the heads of
pachyderms. Another plant, found in South Africa, has a
root-stock so stout and massive with a bark so wrinkled and
cracked that it instantly reminds one of an elephant's foot, which
is one of its popular names. It is also known as the tortoise plant,
for at times it varies its mode of growth and forms rounded or
dome-shaped masses which at a very short distance might easily
be mistaken for land-turtle shells. Another plant which is just as
well named is the elephant's ear. There are many species of
elephant's ear plants, among them the taro of the Pacific Islands
and the eddoes and yautias with edible roots or tubers, of the
West Indies, some species of which are cultivated in our
greenhouses and gardens because of the big, ornamental leaves.
Far more remarkable are the orchids,
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Magic plants 1. Elephant flowers (about 1/3) 2. Mistletoe (about 1/3) 3. Mandrake (about 1/3) 4. Witch-hazel (about 1/3) 5. Beenas (caladiums) (about 1/3) 6. Dutchman's breeches (about 1/3) 7. Moccasin flower (about 1/3) 8. Dutchman's pipe vine (about 1/3) 9. Root fetish of South American Indians (about 1/12) 10. A root in the form of a bird (about 1/4) 11. Root shaped like a seal (about 1/4) many of which are famous for the strange forms of their flowers.
The common lady's slippers or moccasin flowers are true orchids
with blossoms strikingly like moccasins or slippers in form,
although perhaps they are even more like wooden shoes. Many
orchids have flowers which appear like gay-colored butterflies,
others resemble bees, hornets, or grasshoppers, while others are
so similar in form and colors to night-flying moths that it is very
difficult to distinguish the insect from the flowers.
Very frequently one comes upon freak plants with branches or
roots which are twisted, deformed, or inter-grown to produce
weird and fantastic shapes resembling various animals or
monsters. Recently it has become quite a fad to collect these, and
some of the specimens secured are truly amazing.
A friend who lives in Maine and is fond of wandering in the
woods and has an eye for anything strange or unusual, devotes
much of his time to searching the borders of ponds and lakes for
gnarled and weathered cedar
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and spruce roots which bear a resemblance to beasts. birds, or
other creatures. He has become so skilled in this hobby that he
will see possibilities in an old stump or root that the average
person would pass by unnoticed.
Butterfly orchid
1
By cutting away superfluous bits and with a few deft touches of
paint and artificial eyes he transforms the roots into really
remarkable figures of seals, lions, moose, and various other
beasts. Until one has searched for such queer plant-forms one
does not realize how numerous they are, although very often one
may chance upon them. A short time ago while walking through
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patch of woodland I picked up a bit of gnarled wood which had
unmistakably the semblance of a bird and needed only eyes and
feet to transform it into a perfect robin.
Of course, we know that such things are nothing more than freak
growths, but primitive and superstitious human beings regard
them in a very different way. To them the queerly shaped roots,
gnarled trunks, flowers and seeds are supernatural or magic, and
they prize or fear them accordingly. From time immemorial the
mandrake has been credited with magic powers by many races,
merely because the roots of this plant bear a resemblance to the
body and limbs of a human being. Among our American Indians,
almost any unusually shaped root or plant was often regarded as
"medicine" and was supposed to possess curative or magic
powers.
But there are many plants which are considered magic or
medicine or are used as charms or fetishes, although they are
quite normal in their mode of growth and other respects. The
Sioux and other plains Indians consider our common sweet-flag
as "good medicine" and value it very highly. In this case there is
good reason for prizing the root, for it does possess medicinal
properties. But when the word medicine is used in connection
with Indian practices and beliefs it does not mean a remedy, but
something that possesses weird, mysterious, or magic qualities,
and bits of the sweet-flag root strung on thongs to form a
necklace or placed in a "medicine bundle" are regarded as most
potent charms. Among the South American tribes a number of
peculiarly shaped flowers and seeds are used as love charms. One
of these is the pale purple flower of a
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climbing vine, which, when dried and powdered is supposed to
possess amazing powers. The Indians believe that if the
pulverized blossoms are scattered in a man's hammock or are
thrown upon his person he will fall in love with and marry the
woman who used the charm, or will go crazy. And it always
works, for the man is also a firm believer in the powers of the
charm and feels certain that he will go mad unless he marries the
girl. These Indians of South America are particularly addicted to
plant charms and magic plants, which are called beenas. Just why
certain plants should be supposed to be magic while others are
not is a mystery, but every Indian recognizes the beena plants
instantly. Moreover, there are beenas for nearly every purpose,
while in addition, every man and woman has his or her personal
beena plant which will bring dire misfortune upon any one else
who employs it. Usually these magic or beena plants are callalike
caladiums. Many varieties of these are cultivated in our
greenhouses, or are used as potted plants in our homes, because
of their beautifully colored and marked leaves which are spotted,
mottled, splashed, veined, or streaked with vivid red, white,
yellow, or purple.
To the Indians each of the colors and each form of marking
indicates a different kind of charm. Mainly they are used as
hunting, fishing, or travel charms, the Indians believing that the
use of the proper beena will insure success in his undertaking. If
he is about to start on a hunt for deer the Indian will select a leaf
with red spots. If he wishes to secure tapir he chooses a leaf of
deep liver and green color. If his quarry is the jaguar he uses a
leaf spotted with yellow and with deep red
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veins and so on. To the Indian's way of thinking no charm is
worth having unless it causes pain, so he cuts or scratches his
arm and rubs the acrid juice of the leaf into the wound. Of course,
the plant has no potency or power to bring him luck, yet the use
of the beena usually results in his being successful. Having used
it he feels self-confident and uses every effort to secure the game,
whereas without the magic plant to aid him he feels certain of
failure and makes no real wholehearted attempt to succeed in his
quest. Hence, indirectly, the leaf does serve as a charm.
Probably the peculiarly marked leaves of these plants first led to
the Indians' belief in their magic properties, yet there are many
other plants with even more curious and unusual leaves which are
never considered beenas, while others, among them the bulbs of
certain lilies, are highly valued as charms. If fantastic forms and
colors caused plants to be regarded as magic or medicine plants,
then surely the orchids would be among the most magic of all
growths. Yet I do not recall any tribe who considers any orchid in
this light. The ancient Britons regarded the mistletoe as a magic
plant, and to some extent it is still regarded as a charm or fetish,
or at least mystic, as witness our custom of hanging a sprig over a
doorway or on a chandelier at Christmas time. To be sure its
charm when thus employed lies largely in the privilege it confers
upon the lucky chap who catches a pretty girl beneath the sprig.
It would be difficult indeed to find a man who did not thoroughly
believe that mistletoe is "good medicine" and a worth-while
"beena" under such conditions.
Very likely the Britons looked upon mistletoe as a
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magic plant because of its parasitic growth, especially when
found upon oak-trees where it is rarely seen, and its cannibalistic
nature. Yet there are countless parasitic plants which no one
considers either magic or sacred.
Neither does there appear to be any reasonable explanation of the
magic properties attributed to the alder by "dowsers" or users of
divining rods. But in this respect alder is not by any means the
only plant which is supposed to indicate the presence of water,
treasures, or precious metals beneath the surface of the earth.
Some dowsers swear by hazel, others by apple twigs; some insist
that hawthorn or gooseberry forks are the most magic of all
plants when it comes to finding water, while I have met one or
two who admit that the "magic" is all in the user rather than the
plant and that a divining rod made of wire works just as well.
Another common plant which for untold centuries has been
considered magic or at least a charm, is the witch-hazel of Europe
which is a species of elm and should not be confused with the
American witch-hazel or hamameliis. It would not be surprising
if the American witch-hazel was regarded with superstitious awe
by the Indians, for it blooms in the autumn when by all rules and
regulations plants should be ripening their seeds, and it possesses
great medicinal properties as every one knows.
Although we seldom think of it in that light, yet our interest in
finding four-leafed clovers is merely a leftover from our
ancestors' belief in the magic properties of these freak leaves. For
that matter a great many otherwise sensible and intelligent people
still have faith
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in four-leafed clovers bringing good fortune to the finders. And
when children pluck the petals from a daisy and repeat the words,
"He loves me, he loves me not," they are unconsciously
perpetuating their ancestors' practice of divination by means of
magic plants. Of course, even the children of to-day have no real
faith in the results of their mutilation of the flowers, but their
ancestors did, and not so very long ago at that. Had any one,
child or adult, been caught pulling petals from a daisy while
repeating the well-known words during the early days of New
England, he or she would have been arrested and cast into prison
on a charge of witchcraft. From time immemorial, magic or
mystic plants have been a very essential part of necromancy.
Every witch had her "brew" compounded of magic plants, herbs,
and other ingredients, and no "spell" could be cast, no fortune
told, no ailment cured, no "devils" exorcised or no love philter
compounded without resorting to magic plants of some sort.
This former use of plants in witchcraft is perpetuated in the
common names of many species. Aside from the witch-hazel and
witch-elm and the witch-alder we have the witches'-besom, the
distorted broomlike branches of evergreen trees resulting from a
fungus disease the Witch-balls or tumbleweeds, the witch-broom,
which the witches were supposed to employ in making their
flying
brooms to carry them through the air; the witch-grass,the
witch-apples or curiously shaped galls on cedar and juniper trees,
and others.
It is a poor rule that does not work both ways, and our
witch-ridden and witch-fearing ancestors were as firm believers
in the efficacy of certain magic plants to
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circumvent witches as in the evil powers of the witches' brews. In
Scotland a sprig of white heather worn on one's person or placed
over the doorway of a cottage was considered a certain means of
safeguarding one's self or one's home from the perils of
witchcraft.
The sweet marjoram, sweet cicely, trefoil, and other common
plants were used in the same manner and for the same purpose.
The well-known custom of placing an evergreen tree or bough on
the roof of a newly erected barn or other building had its origin
as a charm against witches or evil spirits. Witches were popularly
supposed to work "spells" which caused cows to "go dry" and the
magic bough, placed on the building, was believed to prevent
such a catastrophe to the cows within.
The horse-chestnut was still another magic plant credited with
the power to keep witches and evil spirits at a respectful distance,
and the custom of carrying a horse-chestnut for "good luck" or
for its supposed curative properties is merely a survival of the
belief in the nuts' magical powers.
Many persons still have implicit faith in the efficacy of a white
potato as a cure for rheumatism, and always carry a spud in their
pockets or worn like a scapular. Seldom indeed do they realize
that by so doing they are unconsciously using a magic plant as a
safeguard from evil spirits or witchcraft. Yet such is the case, for
the custom dates back to the time when all ills that flesh is heir to
were attributed to "devils" taking possession of the afflicted
person or to "spells" of witches, and the potato was deemed a
most potent charm to drive out the devils and to render the spells
impotent. Probably
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many worthy and highly intelligent people will rise up in arms
and declare that potatoes will cure rheumatism. I have no doubt
that in a great many instances the "Irish cobbler," for this is
considered the most reliable and efficacious variety of the tubers,
does relieve the sufferer who carries it. Faith will cure many ills,
and if one has sufficient faith in the curative properties of a
potato the "charm" will work. But the same results would follow
if the afflicted person carried a turnip, a carrot, or an onion, and
had the same amount of faith in either. For that matter an onion,
or better still a bit of garlic, might have even greater magic
powers than a potato, for there are many persons who swear by
asafetida and carry a bit of the fetid gum in a pocket or in a little
bag suspended about the neck. Certainly it would not be at all
surprising if this magic plant did keep witches and devils at a
distance.
Very probably, in many cases the magic properties attributed to
certain plants resulted from the ancient widespread belief that
various trees and plants were the abodes of spirits or supernatural
beings. Dryads, wood-nymphs, and numerous sprites or fairies
were supposed to dwell within certain trees, and in some cases
were believed to be able to assume the form of a tree or human
form at will, while' other trees were believed to be fearsome
monsters or ogres who preyed upon human beings. To appease
these dangerous spirits sacrifices and blood offerings were made,
especially when a tree was felled or cut. Among the Vikings and
other races it was customary to lash a prisoner to the ways when
a ship was to be launched, the people believing that when the
vessel crushed the unfortunate victim as
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it slid into the sea, his blood would satisfy the demands of the
spirits of the trees sacrificed for timbers and planking, thus
preventing them from wreaking vengeance upon the ship's crew.
This may seem like a most heathenish and terrible custom, yet we
still follow it in a less bloodthirsty manner by substituting a
bottle of wine for human blood when a ship is launched.
In some of the Pacific islands the people believe that the spirits of
their dead chiefs enter certain trees. These are regarded as sacred
and are regularly given food and drink. In former times the trees
were provided with human flesh and blood, but with the abolition
of cannibalism the spirit trees have been forced to be satisfied
with the blood of pigs or other animals smeared upon them.
A far more terrible custom is that of some of the tribes of Central
Africa. These tribes use huge wooden drums for ceremonial
purposes and provide the sections of the trees with a "spirit" or
"soul" by sealing a living boy within them. When the drum has
been almost finished, a boy is given a knife and ordered to crawl
within the hollowed-out shell of wood in order to shave off the
rough projecting portions. Presently the men outside borrow the
boy's knife on some pretext or another and then fasten the head of
the drum in place, sealing the boy in his living tomb. The drum is
then taken into the forest and suspended upon a tree where it
remains until the boy dies a terrible lingering death and his body
becomes desiccated. In this case there is a reversal of the usual
order of things, for instead of the drum being made from a magic
plant, the plant, consisting of a section of tree, is made "magic"
or "medicine" by providing
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it with a human spirit. Fortunately the horrible custom has been
almost completely wiped out by the British officials, and instead
of the boy, "magic" stones are now placed in the drums.
A somewhat similar custom, and in its way just as cruel, was
formerly prevalent in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe and
is still in vogue in remote districts. A hole was bored in a tree,
usually a birch, and a living shrew was placed in the cavity which
was then tightly plugged, thus sealing the little creature within
the tree.
Such "shrew-trees" as they are called, are believed to possess
magic properties. A mere twig from a shrew-tree is a most potent
charm, and a branch placed in a house will insure safety from
witchcraft or any misfortune. On the other hand the owner of one
of these magic plants can employ it to bring misfortune on others.
By means of its occult power he can put "spells" on his enemies,
and merely by touching their cattle with a shrew-tree switch the
cows will go dry and the bewitched creatures will sicken and die.
Of course it is all most ridiculous superstition, yet it was very
real to our ancestors whose favorite expression "beshrew me" had
its origin in the supposed powers of the magic shrew-tree.
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Chapter XIV
PLANTS WITH STRANGE USES
WHEN we go fishing we carry a rod and line, hooks and sinkers,
bait or artificial flies, and usually a landing net or a gaff.
How much easier and simpler it would be if we could be relieved
of all this tackle and could go fishing with nothing more than a
bunch of flowers, a pocketful of seeds or a few leaves plucked
from some shrub, tree, or weed.
It may seem as if it would be an impossible feat to catch fish with
such things, but there are many races who find leaves, flowers, or
seeds all the fishing tackle they require, and who catch more fish
in a few minutes than an angler with hook and line could catch in
a day, even if he had unusually good luck.
Perhaps this method of fishing may not be "sport," but it brings
home the bacon---or rather the fish, and when one is dependent
upon fish for one's meals and it is a question of no fish, no
dinner, it is results and not sport that counts. Moreover, this
method of fishing has many advantages over taking fish by hook
or nets, for it doesn't injure the fish in the least, it enables the
fisherman to select those he wants instead of being compelled to
take those he gets, and there is nothing cruel about it.
There are a great number of plants whose leaves,
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seeds, or blossoms are used for catching fish, but the action of all
is the same, the juices of the plants stupefying the fish which
float helpless upon the surface of the water where those that are
desired may be dipped up by hand or in a net. In order to
understand just how these strange plants cause the fish to float
we must understand how fish control their submergence when
alive and well.
All fish have air-bladders which serve as buoys or pontoons
to support their weight which, being greater than the amount of
water their bodies displace, otherwise would make them sink to
the bottom. In order to rise towards the surface or to remain
suspended at any desired depth, the fish increases or decreases
the buoyancy of its internal pontoon and by means of its fins
keeps right side up and rises or dives in the same manner as a
submarine by means of its horizontal rudders. It is a popular
belief that when a charge of dynamite is exploded under water
the concussion ruptures the airbladders of the fish which bob up
to the surface. This, however, is not the case. The fish which
appear are those whose pontoons contain enough air to float their
bodies and, being killed or stunned by the explosion, have no
control over their movements and hence rise to the surface. But
those which are deeply submerged with their ballast-tanks filled
with water and their air-tanks empty, sink to the bottom. It is for
this reason that large deepwater fish are seldom obtained by
dynamiting, while the ruptured air-bladders of many dynamited
fish are the result of the sudden change of pressure rather than the
concussion of the charge.
The plants used in capturing fish act in a very differ-
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ent manner. Not only do they stupefy the fish like an anaesthetic,
causing them to lose control of their movements and buoyancy,
but they produce a sensation of suffocation forcing the poor fish
to come up for air, where they float helpless but alive and
unharmed at the mercy of the plant-fisherman. No one knows
how many plants affect fish in this way, but a great many
different plants are used in various parts of the world. The
Indians of California use the leaves and pounded roots of the
soap-plant and also the common turkey mullen. In our
southeastern states the seeds or "nuts" of the red buckeye,
pounded and broken and thrown into the water stupefy fish and
cause them to float helplessly to the surface. The natives of the
Canary Islands use the leaves of a euphorbia plant in the same
way, while the Negro tribes of Central Africa gather the
sweet-scented flowers of the muckanyoko trees and by scattering
these in ponds or streams capture vast numbers of fish. In South
America, the Indians have a number of "fishing plants." In
Guiana, the Caribs use the leaves of the mazetta tree and it is a
most interesting and strange sight to see them securing fish in
this simple and convenient manner. If the stream is swift, a
makeshift dam of rocks or a weir of sticks driven into the bottom
is first made in order to partly cheek the current and to form a
fairly quiet area where the fish are to be taken. But if the spot
selected is a sluggish stream or creek or a tranquil pool these
preparations are not necessary. Gathering a few handfuls of the
mazetta leaves, the Indian bruises them between two stones or
pieces of hard wood and tosses the bruised leaves into the water a
few yards above the spot where he expects to get his fish.
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The result seems almost magical. Within a few moments fish
appear upon the surface. Some splash and struggle, others rush
here and there and others jump clear of the water. I have
frequently seen a fifty-pound "lukanani" or salmon leap several
feet into the air as it felt the effects of the crushed leaves. But
very quickly the struggles of the fish cease; they give a few
spasmodic flaps of their tails and float motionless, unconscious,
but with gills opening and closing on the surface of the water.
Leaping into the stream or pool, or by means of a net if the water
is deep, the Indians gather up the helpless fish, tossing back any
that do not suit them or those they deem too small. It is not
unusual for the Indians to secure a bushel of fine fish in a few
minutes, but unlike white "sportsmen" the Indians never kill or
take more game or fish than they require, and scores of the fish
are left undisturbed. They do not float long, but presently they
begin to revive. For a few moments they swim about in a most
ludicrous, erratic, and drunken manner, turning first on one side
then the other, heading first one way then another, until having
fully regained their senses they disappear beneath the surface
none the worse for their temporary loss of consciousness.
When we stop to consider that there are many plants which
will render human beings insensible to pain or will cause them to
lose all consciousness for hours at a time, it is not so remarkable
that other plants should have a similar effect upon fish.
Perhaps somewhere there are certain plants which will act as
anaesthetics for every class of animals, and the time may come
when big game will be hunted with
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plants instead of with high-powered rifles. Even as it is, plants
play a very important part in trapping animals, for every
experienced and successful trapper uses some lure or scent to
attract animals to his traps, and almost invariably this is
composed largely of plants. We all know how cats are attracted
by catnip and forget everything else once they are reveling in a
clump of this common medicinal weed. Many of the larger cats,
such as lions. tigers, leopards, and jaguars are affected in the
same way by lavender, while bears, raccoons, and other creatures
forget all caution and are irresistibly attracted by the odor of
musk or rhodium. One famous grizzly bear hunter tells a story of
a big bear entering his camp and awakening the trapper by
licking his feet which had become scented from the "lure" he had
rubbed on his boots in order to form a trail of the musk and
rhodium to his traps. The same trapper, who was employed by
the authorities to destroy predacious animals such as wolves,
pumas, wild cats and coyotes, declares that no lynx, bob cat or
puma can resist the scent of oil of catnip and that traps treated
with the oil, especially if combined with decaying meat, will
invariably catch these animals. These plants- catnip, lavender,
musk, rhodium-are far more efficacious than any music when it
comes to charming the "savage breast," while oil of bergamot
will tame the wildest bird. Few persons realize the almost magic
effect which bergamot has upon birds. If you have a canary or
other bird who is wild or nervous and flutters and beats itself
against the bars of its cage in fright when you approach too
closely, just try rubbing a little oil of bergamot upon the bird's
bill about its nostrils. The bird may
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struggle in your hand for a few moments, but it will soon calm
down, and after a few applications it will become so tame that it
may be petted and handled and will readily take food from your
hand or perch upon your finger.
Even the insects may be charmed by certain plants. If you rub
your hands with anise you may handle honeybees with impunity
and with no danger of being stung, and even the most savage
hornets become quite peaceful if their nests are sprayed with
anise-seed oil. Every country boy knows what is liable to happen
if he starts to dig out a bumblebees' nest, but I have repeatedly
excavated these bees' burrows without the owners showing any
anger or resentment merely by a liberal use of anise.
On the other hand certain plants, or rather their
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odors or oils, are so distasteful to insects that they keep as far
away as possible.
Every one knows that citronella is a great help in keeping
mosquitoes at a distance. In India the "mosquito bean" is used for
the same purpose, and in the American tropics the natives grow
castor-oil bean plants about their houses, and hang leaves of the
plant in their homes to keep off the mosquitoes. Another insect
pest of the tropics and of our southern states is the red-bug or
"coloradita" as the Latin-Americans call the creature which is
known as the "jigger" in our southern states. Scientifically
speaking, the red-bug is not an insect but a mite closely related to
the spiders, but its proper place in the animal kingdom is of little
interest to any one who is afflicted with the pests. Kerosene.
sulphur, formaline, carbolated vaseline and many other
substances aid in keeping the mites from burrowing into one's
skin and causing an intolerable itching. But none of these
remedies or preventives are as efficacious as crab oil, which is
not made from crabs as many people suppose, but is extracted
from the seeds of the West Indian crab-tree.
Another member of the spider or mite family which is a terrible
pest in the tropics and the South, as well as in some sections of
the North, is the wood-tick or cattle-tick. Immune as are these
pests to nearly all ordinary remedies, they cannot abide the odor
of the common Osage orange, and a liberal use of the juice of the
fruits rubbed on one's skin will afford greater protection from
ticks than anything else known.
But how about fleas? you may ask. Is there any plant which will
keep these pests at a distance? Certainly there is,
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although to many persons the "cure may seem worse than the
disease," figuratively speaking, for the plant which causes fleas
to flee is the common onion.
Camphor, as every one knows, acts as a preventive of clothes
moths, although it has largely been supplanted by various
chemicals, and camphor is the gum of a tree. In the old days of
sailing ships, chests of camphor wood were in great demand for
storing woolen garments and furs which were safeguarded from
moths and buffalo beetles by the odor of the wood. Nowadays
camphor-wood chests are rarely seen, but chests of red cedar or
"juniper" are widely used for the same purpose and serve just as
well for the destructive insects find the aromatic and to our
nostrils pleasing, odor of red cedar most obnoxious to them.
Every gardener and the majority of housewives are familiar with
the Persian insect powder which not only drives off but destroys
plant lice, mites, larvae, roaches, and other insect pests and
vermin. But how many know that this yellowish pungent powder
is nothing more than the dried and pulverized flowers of a plant?
In many a garden this pyrethrum plant is grown for its attractive
blossoms which resemble single chrysanthemums to which it is
closely related .
Taming wild animals and birds, luring savage beasts to their
doom, stupefying fish, driving off or destroying insect pests by
means of plants are only a few of the strange uses of strange
plants.
Sometimes, however, the plant used for some strange purpose
may not be strange itself, while in other cases some very strange
plant may be put to some ordinary
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everyday use. Such is the yaretta. a very strange plant indeed.
Found only in the bleak, cold Andean regions of South America
where there are no trees and practically no other forms of plant
life other than cacti, dry harsh grasses, lichens and mosses, the
yaretta is a conspicuous feature of the landscape, although a
person unfamiliar with it might never recognize it as a plant. Its
dull, dirty grayish-white color and massive dome shaped form
give it the appearance of a weathered brain coral, or when seen at
a distance, a clump of the strange plants might easily be mistaken
for a flock of sheep. During the greater part of the year it has
neither leaves nor blossoms and appears merely a dry lifeless
mass with crinkled or wrinkled surface resting singly or in large
clusters upon the bare sand and rocks and varying from a few
inches to several feet in diameter. But at certain seasons of the
year small yellow flowers cover the surface of the odd growths
although no sign of a leaf appears. Perhaps the strangest feature
of the yaretta plant is the fact that it is a member of the celery
family. Although it is absolutely inedible, even in its youngest
stages, it is far more useful to the Andean Indians than celery is
to us, for it is most excellent fuel and burns readily with an
intense steady heat and practically no smoke and little flame.
No plant anywhere on earth is better adapted to its environment
than is the yaretta. Growing where there is practically no soil
from which to draw sustenance and water, the plant is almost
rootless and in place of roots has developed a lichen like base
that adheres tightly to the rocks. Constantly bathed in the mist of
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drifting clouds, it has acquired a sponge like surface to absorb the
necessary moisture from the air.
Exposed to bitter cold winds and howling blizzards which would
destroy branches and leaves, the yaretta has abandoned these
accessories and is all trunk, as one might say. Its rounded
domelike form offers the least possible resistance to gales and the
greatest possible area of surface to sunshine and air, while its
tough woody texture safeguard it from the weight of deep
Andean snows and the foraging llamas and alpacas. Only to the
hardy Andean Indians is the plant of any use or value, and it
would seem as if Mother Nature had created the plant especially
and solely for the Indians' benefit, to provide them with a fuel in
this otherwise fuelless land of thin cold air miles above the sea.
We all know that many plants contain combustible oils or
gums, such as pitch, resin, turpentine, and the like. Some of these
emit most agreeable odors when burning and are used as incense
in churches and temples as well as in our own homes. Among
these incense plants is the sandalwood tree, the gum elemi, and
the copal. Others, such as resin, pitch, and many gums burn with
brilliant flames and dense clouds of sooty smoke and are often
used for making torches and flares. But there is one plant, the
Mai Yans tree of Siam which provides the natives with
illuminating oil
for use in their lamps. In order to secure this vegetable petroleum
the natives burn holes in the trees. Sap oozes from the wounds
and seeps into the cavities where it accumulates ready to be
gathered and used without further preparation. So widely used is
this strange illuminating oil that it is practically impossible
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to find a Mai Yang tree that has not been tapped by dozens of
these miniature oil wells.
In other lands the natives find a very different use for certain
kinds of trees and transform them into living water-towers. Many
tropical trees, such as the ceibas or silk-cotton trees, the baobabs,
the tefeldi trees and others, have few branches and short,
immensely stout trunks. The wood of the interior is soft, pithy
and worthless, but is surrounded with a thin shell of hard wood
and bark. Very often these huge trees are hollow, the pithy
interior having decayed or been destroyed by insects, yet the
trees continue to grow and thrive, apparently none the worse for
having lost the greater part of their substance. Some bright and
observant savage may have noticed this and immediately
conceived the idea of taking advantage of it to benefit himself
and his fellow tribesmen. On the other hand some thirsty native
may have discovered that a hollow tefeldi tree contained rain
water which was drinkable, and realized the neglected
possibilities of the big tree near his hut or village. At all events
the natives of Africa and other lands make good use of the obese
trees by hollowing out the trunks and transforming them into
living tanks for storing water which remains sweet cool, and pure
indefinitely.
Strange as are many of the purposes for which plants are used by
man there is no stranger use than that of tobacco. It is also a
strange and interesting fact that when we say "tobacco" we are
unwittingly speaking of the pipe in which the plant is smoked
and not of the plant itself.
When the Spaniards first saw Indians smoking tobacco in the
West Indies and asked the natives the name of the strange plant,
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the Indians misunderstood, and thinking the white men wished to
learn their name for the pipe, they replied "toba-go." So tobago
the plant was called by the Spaniards and in the corrupted form
tobacco it became known to all English-speaking people.
How or why the Indians first discovered the use of tobacco or
acquired the habit is as great a mystery as how they learned to
transform poisonous manioc to nutritious food, how they
discovered that the fermented seed-pod of an orchid developed a
delicious flavor or how they learned how to prepare cacao beans
to afford a most nutritious beverage. Tobacco in its natural state
and merely dried is a mighty poor material to smoke. In fact one
might as well smoke turnip, cabbage, or almost any other dried
leaves as far as flavor or enjoyment goes. In order to bring out
the flavor and aroma of tobacco, the leaves must undergo a long,
complicated and delicate process of drying, fermentation, and
curing. Even the finest of tobaccos are worthless unless properly
prepared, and the treatment varies greatly, depending upon
whether the tobacco is to be used for cigars, cigarettes, for pipe
smoking, for snuff, or for chewing. Yet somehow, by some
means, the Indians had discovered how to prepare tobacco for all
of these uses ages before the first white men arrived in America,
for cigars, cigarettes, and pipes were all in use by the Indians of
North, South and Central America and many used snuff or
chewed tobacco.
Yet tobacco was not as universally used by our northern tribes as
is generally supposed. The majority of
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the tribes who dwelt in what is now the United States regarded
tobacco as semi-sacred and used it mainly for ceremonial
purposes. Moreover, in the northern districts, such as New
England and the districts about the Great Lakes and on the plains,
tobacco was very scarce and valuable. A certain amount was
grown in the rich valleys of New England, but the greater portion
was brought from the southern districts and was acquired by
trade and hence the supply was very limited. But our northern
Indians did not go smokeless because of this. From time
immemorial they had smoked sweet fern, the inner bark of red
willow, the silky cornel and other plants. Moreover, they had
learned how to mix or blend some or all of these, together with
bear berries and sumac berries to produce a very good substitute
for tobacco. This mixture was the "kinnikinnick" of the
Algonquin races, who as a rule mixed a certain amount of
tobacco with the other plants.
Neither were all Indians tobacco addicts. Many never used
tobacco in any form, and it is doubtful if any Indian ever
acquired the habit to the extent of white men. But by vastly
improving the Indians' methods of preparing tobacco, and by
raising superior varieties of the plants, white men made the use of
tobacco far more enjoyable and pleasant.
Many persons think that smoking was invented by our Indians
and that the habit spread from America to every quarter of the
globe. But ages before America's existence was suspected by
Europeans, men smoked plant products. Among these was opium
which as every one knows is obtained from the sap of the
Oriental or white poppy. But unlike tobacco, which is
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smoked for its pleasant flavor and as a mild stimulant or
sedative-depending upon the smoker---or as a ceremony, opium
is smoked because of its narcotic properties which produce a
stupor and strange dreams or visions. Another plant that is
smoked for a somewhat similar reason is the true hemp plant of
India and
other parts of the Orient. It is strange indeed that a plant which is
the source of one of our most valuable and widely used fibers
should also be one of the most injurious and mind-destroying of
drugs. To be sure, the hemp plant that is cultivated for its tough,
strong fibers is not the identical plant employed in making
hashish, bhang, and ganja, smoked by the people of the East
Indies. But the latter plant is merely a variety of the former which
may be used as a substitute if the other is not available. Hashish,
which is perhaps the most widely smoked of these hemp drugs, is
prepared from the acrid, resinous gum of the hemp seeds and
tops, while bhang and ganja are made from the dried leaves and
seed-capsules and are both smoked and chewed. Unlike opium,
hashish or bhang do not produce unconsciousness, but result in a
peculiar hypnotic state in which the user is conscious, but has the
sensation of being in another sphere and life. Sounds, colors, and
light are exaggerated and distorted, and glorious visions of riches
and everything desirable fill the addict's brain.
Many persons confuse this Oriental hemp with the native
American weed known as "Indian hemp." The name does not
refer to India but to our Indians, not because our North American
tribesmen smoked the plant, but because they used its fibrous
bark for bow
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strings and other purposes and employed its medicinal root as a
cathartic and emetic. It is a very different plant from the hemp of
India, and is not even a true hemp for that matter. The true hemp
of the Orient is a member of the mulberry family and is known to
botanists as Cannabis sativa, the variety Indica being the source
of "hashish." The narcotic derived from it is also known as
Cannabis indica. The native American "Indian hemp" belongs to
another family of plants, its botanical name being Apocynum
cannabinum. Unfortunately the term marijuana is now applied to
both the drug-producing introduced Oriental hemp and the
harmless native "Indian hemp."
Much has been said and written about this common weed.
Greatly exaggerated statements have been made as to its horrible
effects upon those who smoke it, and stringent means have been
taken to put an end to its use and to exterminate the plant itself.
Worthy as the cause may be, it is a hopeless task to accomplish
either the one or the other. We might just as well attempt to
exterminate the white daisy, the wild carrot, the ragweed, the
dandelion or the witch-grass, for the plant grows anywhere and
everywhere. Vacant lots in the cities, rubbish dumps, wayside
fields, even neglected back yards are all equally acceptable to this
vagabond plant, and wherever it grows it may be gathered and
smoked. Yet despite its abundance and the fact that this Indian
hemp plant has been used to some extent for untold centuries, the
habit of smoking it has never become very widespread or general.
Partly this is due to the fact that comparatively few persons
recognize the weed when they see it, but another reason that it
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has never become popular is because it does not have a pleasant
or agreeable flavor and, in the case of many persons, it has less
effect than tobacco by itself. Far be it from me to argue in favor
of the marijuana smokers or the plant. But I have dwelt among
people who were habitual smokers of the weed and I cannot
truthfully say that I could see that they suffered any ill effects
from it. In the Canal Zone very elaborate and careful tests were
made to determine the truth of the matter, and soldiers who used
it and those who did not were studied, queried and
psychoanalyzed. The conclusion reached was about what might
have been expected. Some men suffered terribly when deprived
of it, others felt no desire for it if provided with tobacco. Certain
individuals admitted they got a "kick" out of it while others
declared it did not affect them in the least. In other words the net
result was to prove the truth of the old saying that "what is one
man's food is another man's poison."
The real truth of the matter is that our native weed known as
"Indian 'hemp" has not only been confused with the hemp plant
of India in so far as its injurious effects are concerned, but in
many cases the effects of true hemp have been attributed to,
Apocynum, owing to the fact that in many localities the true
hemp plants have become naturalized and grow wild. This is not
surprising, for at one time large areas of land in the United States
were devoted to hemp cultivation, and the seeds from abandoned
fields have been carried here and there.
However, irrespective of the seriousness of the effects of hemp
smoking, it is unquestionably a form of
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drug habit, and many persons, especially boys and girls, have
most unfortunately become addicts. Even if it is not as injurious a
habit as smoking opium or hashish, it tends to lessen the will
power, to deaden the sensibilities, both mental and physical, and
to induce a laxity in morality. Hence it should be stamped out.
The great problem is to do so.
Whether or not the tobacco habit is injurious is a mooted
question. Those who decry the use of tobacco would have us
believe that it is responsible for nearly every ill that afflicts the
human race, and that smoking is the most direct and certain road
to perdition. But unfortunately for these extremists, statistics and
incontrovertible facts prove that many inveterate smokers and
tobacco chewers live as long and often even longer than those
who have never smoked or chewed, and countless habitual users
of tobacco are almost abnormally healthy. Many righteous and
goodly men, even priests and ministers of the Gospel, are tobacco
addicts, while many of the most despicable scoundrels and
hardened criminals have never smoked or chewed.
There is no question that tobacco is a stimulant and a narcotic,
but so are many other plants which we use daily, such as coffee,
tea, cocoa, and chocolate. Probably the truth is that like many
another plant, tobacco also is "one man's food and another's
poison," for while some men are made deathly ill by the mere
odor of tobacco smoke others smoke or chew or take snuff
constantly with no ill results, morally, mentally, or physically.
It would seem as if there were plenty of other matters of more
importance than tobacco to keep reformers
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busy, especially as nothing they can say or do will ever decrease
the consumption of the plant.
And even the most rabid and fanatical anti-tobacco apostle
must admit that the "sinful" habit acquired from the Indians has
been of inestimable benefit to the world at large. Hundreds of
thousands of men and women earn a livelihood from the tobacco
industry. Millions of acres of land are devoted to the cultivation
of this strange American plant, and billions of dollars are put into
circulation and enrich our country because people will smoke and
chew tobacco. Think what a calamity it would be if every one
stopped using tobacco! Not only would it mean ruin and
bankruptcy to countless people in our own land, but to many in
practically every country on earth, for the broad-leaved plant first
cultivated and used by the American Indians is now one of the
most important crops of all the continents and many of the
islands of the world.
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Chapter XV
PLANT TRAVELERS
Every one who has taken a walk in the country in autumn or late
summer knows beggar's-ticks, those variously shaped and
colored seeds that stick so tenaciously to our garments. Some are
little spheres covered with spines, others are long and narrow,
others almost rectangular, others oval, for beggar's-ticks or
beggar's-lice are the seeds of a great many different plants. One
of the commonest is the bur-mariqold, while the round seeds of
the cockle-bur, the two-tined black devil's anchors, and the seeds
of the green-bur are all well known nuisances. So also are the
seed-heads of the burdock with their countless fish-hooklike
spines, while many of the aster and goldenrod plants contribute
their share of tiny barbed seeds covered with soft fluff which
stick to one's clothing and give one the appearance of having
been showered with feather down.
Some have such stiff, sharp spines that they puncture one's skin
and cause painful wounds. Such are the spherical seeds of the
cockle or bur-grass so abundant in our southern states. Once the
tiny spines of such seeds become embedded in the skin it is very
difficult to remove them for they are covered with minute barbs
like those on a fish-spear.
Lodging in the skin they cause irritation and itching and the more
the spot is rubbed or scratched the deeper
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they penetrate, often causing serious sores or ulcers or even
necessitating a surgical operation in order to remove them. In
such cases the seeds overdo their parts and gain nothing, for all
of these various sticktight seeds are habitual hitchhikers and their
purpose is to travel from place to place at some one's else
expense, until the obliging carrier wearies of their company and
brushes or scrapes them off and leaves them to shift for
themselves. This is precisely what Nature intended, for the seeds,
dislodged far from their parent plants, take root and grow and
produce more hitchhiking seeds to travel and spread their kind
still farther.
When we stop to consider the matter, it seems strange indeed that
while we think of plants, and especially trees, as stationary fixed
objects, they are among the greatest of travelers. In fact many
plants have traveled completely around the earth and from the
Arctic to the Antarctic regions. Moreover, they journey hither
and yon by much the same means of transportation as those used
by human beings. In addition to the plant hitch-hikers there are
plant aeroplanes, plant autogiros, plant parachutes, plant boats,
and plant busses. There are also plants that creep and plants that
walk, but like human pedestrians these seldom travel very far
from home and move so slowly that they are left far behind by
their fellows who avail themselves of mechanical means of
transportation.
A very large proportion of plant travelers are air minded, and on
any autumn day we may see countless plant aircraft on the move.
As the pods of the milkweeds ripen they split open, releasing the
scores of
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1. Dandelion seeds (about 1/2) 8. Sand-box seed capsule (about 1/3) 2. Thistle seeds (about 1/2) 9. Walking fern (about 1/3) 3. Basswood seed (about 1/3) 10. Cockle-bur (about 1/2). 4. Maple seeds (about 1/3) 11. Teasel bur (about 1/3) 5. Elm seed (about 1/2) 12. Chestnut bur (about 1/3) 6. Milkweed (about 1/6) 13. Grapple plant seed (about 1/2) 6A. Milkweed pod and seeds (about1/3)
14. Lizard tree (about 1/30) 15. Air-cabbage (about 1/12)
7. Jewel-weed or Touch-me-not (about 1/4)
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aircraft stored within the plants' hangars. Quickly they emerge,
their silken wings folded back along their sleek brown fuselages,
and instantly, as they come forth, their wings spring open and
catching the faintest breath of air they go sailing off to unknown
destinations. Other autumnal aerial travelers are the tiny
fluff-covered seeds of asters, the shimmering gossamer winged
aircraft of the thistles, and the breeze-borne seeds of the wild
clematis or virgin's bower with their oddly twisted feathery
wings.
We may see the dandelion's gliders also, although the great
majority of these have winged away from their parent plants
during the summer, for the dandelions, as well as a number of the
thistles and other plants, do not wait for the approach of frosty
weather before sending their offspring on their cruises. But
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earliest of all are the poplar and willow trees whose fluff-covered
seeds have filled the air and covered the earth and have clung to
every object where they fell before spring merged into summer.
Although we consider most of these silken or feathery-vinged
seeds as nuisances, for mainly they are the seeds of weeds, yet
there are some which are of immense importance and value to
man. The thick, silky, brownish fiber that covers the seeds of the
ceiba
Cotton (1/4)
trees and transforms them into plant balloons is used for a
number of commercial purposes (see Chapter X), but the most
important and valuable of all flying seeds are those of a
yellow-flowered hibiscus which we know as cotton. I wonder
how many persons realize that the soft white fiber which is one
of the most valuable and essential of crops was designed by
Nature to float and carry the seeds through the air and thus spread
the plants far and wide. But I’ll wager there are even fewer persons who
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know that the okra or gumbo we use as a vegetable or in our
soups is the seed-pod of a plant closely related to the cotton, and
that the gelatinous slippery material surrounding the immature
seeds would become silken fibers to bear the seeds on their
travels if the pods were left to ripen on the plants.
A very different type of aircraft carry the seeds of many trees on
their journeys. Those of the basswood or linden with their broad
blades may be likened to parachutes, for the rudderlike fins are
too small to carry the seeds any great distance and merely prevent
them from dropping swiftly and directly to earth beneath the
parent branches.
On the other hand the elm trees, maples, ash, and tulip trees
believe in safety first with distance a second consideration, and
have seeds with blades that serve as horizontal propellers and
transform them to miniature autogiros.
A great number of plants whose seeds travel the greatest
distances rely upon common carriers to transport them for
hundreds or even thousands of miles from their original homes.
Some of these pay for their transportation by covering their seeds
with flesh or pulp. This provides food for birds and serves as
tickets for the seeds which the feathered travelers carry with them
as they move from place to place and drop the seeds here and
there. Some of these seeds, such as the "pits" of cherries, haws,
and other fruits, are so hardshelled that they remain unaffected by
the birds' digestive apparatus, and are dropped with their
excrement. Birds, however, are not the only creatures who carry
seeds in this manner. In the tropics, the fruit-eating
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bats are among the greatest of seed-spreaders, while the big bats
known as flying foxes of the East Indies provide man with the
most valuable of all coffees. These giant bats feed on the coffee
berries during the night and spend the day hanging in vast
numbers in their roosts. In these places the indigestible coffee
beans accumulate with the bats' guano. These beans when
gathered and cleansed, are the source of the highly esteemed and
costly Old Government Java coffee whose superior flavor is the
result of some chemical effect of the bats' digestive fluids.
Many fruit- and berry-bearing plants trust largely to luck for the
transportation of their seeds. As the birds dine on the sticky fruits
some of the pulp filled with the seeds adheres to the birds' beaks
or even to their feet, and is dropped here and there as the birds
wipe their bills against branches and twigs or the pulp dries and
drops off. We might think that such seeds would not be carried
long distances, but birds fly swiftly and far and may travel
thousands of miles in a few days. Moreover, before starting on a
long flight, especially during migrations, they gorge themselves
in preparation, and the seeds that adhere to their beaks when they
eat their last meal before taking off may remain there until the
feathered carriers reach their destinations. Of course, there are
many seeds carried in this manner which will not sprout or grow
in the spots where they fall. It is lucky for us that this is so, for if
all the northern seeds carried south by birds should take root in
tropical lands, and all seeds that the birds bring from the tropics
should thrive in the north, there would be little chance of raising
our crops.
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It is also fortunate that while many of our plants will thrive in
warm climates, few tropical plants will grow in our land and will
survive our winters.
No one can say with certainty how far seeds may travel by the
bird airways, but tiny seeds from waterplants of the Argentine
have been found in the mud adhering to the feet of wading birds
killed in our northern states.
Many plants prefer land travel to air travel, and some provide
their seeds with vehicles that go rolling across the country like
plant-trucks or buses. One of the commonest of these is the
tumbleweed so abundant on plains and prairies, especially in our
western states. When the seeds are ripe the tumbleweed folds
itself into a ball and, releasing the hold of its roots, it goes rolling
across the land at the whim of the winds, dropping its seeds along
its route.
Cocoanut in husk
Other plants send their seeds cruising on the surface of lakes,
ponds, rivers, or even on the ocean. Nature has enclosed these
seeds in waterproof buoyant coverings which serve as rafts or
boats, and some even have little wings which serve as sails to
catch the slightest breeze. Among these seed-boats is the
cocoanut. Enclosed within
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its thick fibrous husk with its waterproof and watertight skin,
these palm-seeds are perfectly designed for long ocean voyages.
Falling from the trees that rear their fronds above the tropical
shores the nuts are carried afar by the wind and waves until,
washed upon some coral reef or island beach or stranded on some
low-lying land, the nuts sprout. From the "eyes" in the end of the
hard shell ropelike roots burrow into the sand and a leaf-bud
shoots upward and rapidly unfolds. The cocoanut's travels are at
end and from the rotting hull a graceful palm-tree comes into
being.
Still another strange method of scattering seeds is that of the
air-cabbage, an air-plant of the West Indian forests. It is very
appropriately named, for it looks very much like an everyday
cabbage growing upon the limb of a tree. But instead of having a
firm dense "head" the center of the air-cabbage is hollow, the
leaf-bases forming a little cup which in due time is filled with
seeds. How on earth can those seeds ever reach the ground? you
wonder. Will they be carried away by some bird or other
creature? No, indeed. The air-cabbage doesn't require the help of
any outsider to scatter its seeds. It can take care of that important
matter all by itself, and it does so in a truly wonderful way.
The roots of the plant are small and weak and as the seeds mature
the plant's leaves swell and spread, until it becomes top heavy.
Then at the first strong breeze or heavy shower it capsizes and
out tumble the seeds which drop to the earth or find lodgment on
other branches where they sprout and grow.
An even stranger means of sowing seeds is to shoot
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them from a plant-gun. Some of our commonest plants employ
this method. Among these are the touch-me-nots or jewel-weeds,
the wood sorrels, the pansies and the violets. All of these familiar
plants have seed-pods which burst open with a little pop and
throw the enclosed seeds for some distance. But the "big bertha"
of plant artillery is a tree known as the sand-box which is
Milkwort (1/2)
common in tropical America. The fruit or seed-capsules of these
trees are circular, three or four inches in diameter and about an
inch in thickness, with deeply scalloped edges. When these
handsome pods ripen they explode with a report like that of a
giant fire-cracker and shoot the flat seeds in every direction like
so much shrapnel. During the season when the sand-box seeds
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are ripening a constant fusillade may be heard and the seeds fall
like hail. These plant-projectiles have considerable force and I
have known a seed-capsule within a cigar-box to blow the sides
apart when it exploded.
In the West Indies the natives say that every time a sand-box pod
explodes it announces a lizards' wedding. If so the reptiles must
have a mania for getting married.
The great majority of plants trust in luck to have their seeds lodge
in favorable spots in which to grow, and produce such vast
numbers of seeds that some are almost certain to do so. But the
pretty little milkworts or wild bachelor's buttons of our southern
states take a most unusual precaution to insure the perpetuation
and spread of their family. At the summits of their stalks they
display showy orange or yellow flowers which are conspicuous
enough to attract insects from far and near. But the milkwort
believes in preparedness and produces a second set of very
different flowers. If all goes well and the gaudy blossoms are
fertilized by insects, the spare flowers never develop beyond the
bud stage. They have no petals, no nectaries and even the pistils
are rudimentary. But if the showy blooms fail to lure insects, the
reserve flowers mature and produce seeds by a strange method of
self-fertilization.
Preparedness is the watchword with a great many plants. Some,
such as the houseleeks and life-leaf plants produce seeds, and in
addition have thick fleshy leaves capable of producing new
plants. If one of these leaves drops off and falls to the ground
tiny roots will appear on the lower surface, a little shoot will
spring from the
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upper surface and a new plant will soon take the place of the
vagrant leaf. Even when a leaf is pinned to a board or any other
object it will sprout and grow quite as well as when resting on the
ground.
Houseleek (1/2)
Other plants spread by means of running roots as well as by
seeds, and send up new plants as they burrow along just beneath
the surface of the earth, while some plants walk or stride along.
One of these is the walking fern which is fairly common on
mountainsides and other rocky spots in our eastern states. You
might not recognize this plant as a fern, for its leaves, instead of
being plume like or feathery, have only a
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few leaflets, with the tip of the leaf extending in a slender ribbon.
As the leaf grows, this fingerlike central portion bends towards
the earth and taking root produces a new plant. This in turn
produces leaves that creep onward and produce still more plants
which in turn progress by this strange series of leaf-strides.
Many plants produce seeds which are true amphibians, while
others provide their seeds with life preservers. The bladder-nut
seeds have three water-tight compartments like those of a modern
steamship, so that in case the flying seeds fall into the water they
will float safely until washed or blown ashore. The pods of the
locust and acacia trees, as well as those of many other plants,
have seeds enclosed in water-tight compartments, while the seeds
of the dock and various other common plants are provided with a
buoyant covering that acts as a life preserver if the seeds
accidentally fall into the water. Man may think he invented
corkfilled life preservers, but the common dock has seeds
surrounded with a layer of cork.
Every one knows how hopeless it is to attempt to walk across
mud, and in the south of France the shepherds solve the problem
by wearing stilts. But long before man appeared on earth certain
plants had taken to stilts to travel over the mud where they grow.
These are the mangrove and black-jack trees of the tropics and
warm countries where they form dense jungles in the shallow
water of river mouths and swamps and along muddy shores.
They are strange-looking trees, for instead of having trunks that
grow directly from the mud their trunks end some distance above
the surface of the water and are supported by numerous
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tough, stiff roots that serve as stilts. These anchor the trees
securely and yet leave open spaces through which the waves may
surge and wash without meeting the resistance of large trunks.
But even more wonderful than this means of self-protection is the
Mangrove tree
manner in which these trees spread. With no solid ground
beneath them the seeds would have small chances if they dropped
from the branches into the water. Nature, however, has taken
good care of this and has overcome the difficulty in a most
unique way. Instead
of dropping off when ripe, the mangrove seeds remain
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attached to the branches until they have sprouted and have
produced roots. Then when they fall, the roots sink to the muddy
bottom of the swamp or lagoon and at once anchor the young
plants firmly.
Perhaps you wonder why these plants do not drown if their roots
are always under water. Old Mother Nature attended to that detail
too. If you should examine the curved, crooked and arched
root-girders that support the trees above water you would find a
great number of little filaments which you might easily mistake
for tiny roots or tendrils, but these are really breathing devices
consisting of countless minute tubes leading to the underwater
roots and supplying them with the essential air.
Finally these truly wonderful trees produce roots from their
branches, and these growing downward, anchor themselves to the
mud and become new trees. By means of these aerial roots and
their seeds the mangroves spread rapidly in every direction and
form dense, almost impenetrable jungles. This habit makes them
most useful plants, for silt and rubbish, dead leaves and twigs,
become lodged against the countless sprawling roots and form
solid land. Tens of thousands of acres of land are yearly added to
the coast lines of Florida and other shores where the mangroves
grow, and as the new land forms the mud-loving trees go
marching seaward supported on their root-stilts and constantly
leaving more land behind them. Even when dead the mangroves
serve a useful purpose, for their bark is one of the best of all tan
barks and hundreds of tons are used for transforming hides to
leather to provide us with shoes, straps, suit-cases, and other
articles.
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Many species of grass are land-builders and win land from the
sea. The marram grass or sand-reed has been widely used to
protect shores from erosion by the sea or the waters of large
lakes, and to form new land. Not only do the roots grow to great
depth anchoring the grass firmly to solid ground beneath the
shifting sands, but they also send out countless small roots which
mat and bind the sand together. In addition to this, the roots suck
up immense quantities of water, and being continually damp
cause the grains of sand to adhere to them.
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Chapter XVI
PLANT PUBLIC ENEMIES
JUST what do we mean when we speak of a weed? That little
four-letter word is most difficult to define. In fact it is capable of
several definitions, not one of which is strictly correct or even
wholly explanatory.
We might say that a weed is a wild plant that is a nuisance. But
there are many weeds that are cultivated plants, just as there are
many wild plants that are not nuisances. Neither would we be
explicit if we should state that weeds are plants that grow where
they are not wanted or plants that interfere with the cultivation of
desirable plants. A great many weeds, as we call them, grow on
vacant lots, rubbish piles, and similar unsightly places and hence
should be desirable, while fully as many rarely or never interfere
with cultivation. If we state that weeds are plants which are
neither useful nor ornamental we would be wrong, for a great
number of our worst weeds are either useful or ornamental or
both, as for example the black-eyed Susans, the white or ox-eyed
daisies, the goldenrods and asters, jimson-weed and tansy
yarrow, and chicory and many other plants. Moreover, plants
which are considered bad weeds in one locality or in one country
may be regarded as most desirable and valuable plants in another
place. We cultivate the scarlet salvia, the portulacca, the poppy
and various other flowering plants
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and think them most desirable, yet in their native lands these
plants are looked upon as obnoxious weeds.
On the other hand plants which we consider bad weeds, such as
the dandelion, mullen, wild asters, goldenrod, white daisies and
others are highly prized as cultivated plants in other countries.
In fact the question, "What is a weed?" is about as difficult to
answer as the senseless query, "How old was Ann?''
But there are certain plants which are universally considered
weeds, real public enemies of the plant population. Among them
there are gangsters, racketeers, hijackers, robbers, thugs,
murderers, kidnappers, and prototypes of practically every class
of human criminals. And like human scoundrels and outlaws
these plant rascals are constantly quarreling and fighting among
themselves. There is no more honor among plant thieves than
among human thieves, despite the old adage to the contrary. They
are tough guys, too, and can certainly "take it," for harsh
treatment and injuries that would kill most plants leave these
plant public enemies apparently unharmed and quite able to carry
on their nefarious careers. Even when we think we have killed
them they often come to life, recover, and are soon back at their
old tricks. The death and destruction of their fellows does not
deter them in the least and is as ineffective in results as the
imprisonment or execution of human criminals.
Only by ruthlessly slaughtering them, and by destroying their
offspring, can we prevent them from gaining the upper hand and
wiping out the desirable and law-abiding members of the plant
community.
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This, however, is as difficult an undertaking as to apprehend and
eliminate any other criminal. Some are brazen villains and make
no attempt to conceal their identity. They are like the old "bad
men" of the wild and woolly West and trust to their offensive and
defensive weapons for safety. Among these are the
Nettle (1/2)
thistles with their armament of sharp spines, the stinging nettles,
the cat-briars with their thorns, the sneezeweed, the nightshades
and jimson-weed with their poison gases, the cockle-burs with
their prickly irritating seed-cases and many others.
On the other hand some plant outlaws wear disguises and pretend
to be something else hoping to escape detection in this manner.
Others sneak about ever striving to make themselves
inconspicuous while carrying on their nefarious activities. Such
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are the root-rot fungoid plants, the mildews and molds, the
various rusts and smuts. Still others follow the custom of the
more intelligent, and also the more dangerous, human criminals
who wear stylish, expensive clothing, drive costly cars, and to
use a slang expression "put on a front," hoping that because of
their appearance they will be mistaken for honest well-to-do
citizens.
The bluff works out as well in the plant world as among human
beings and many a bad weed "gets by " and is spared because of
its attractive appearance or beautiful flowers. Among these weeds
who trust for safety to their "glad rags" are the daisies and asters,
the goldenrods and wild coreopsis, the buttercups and sweet
briars, the poppies and many other flowering plants. But by far
the greatest number of plant public enemies rely upon being
"tough." The common dandelion makes no attempt to hide away
or to conceal its identity, but develops a root so long, and
penetrating so deeply into the earth, that nine times out of ten
when the weed is dug up a portion of the root is left and a new
plant soon sprouts from this. The same is true of the mullen, the
obnoxious plantain and numerous other weeds. The hawkweed
sends runners in every direction just beneath the surface of the
earth, and if a fragment of these is left, new plants will spring as
if by magic from it. The witch-grass safeguards itself and also
spreads by means of surface roots or shoots which creep in every
direction, anchoring themselves securely as they travel over the
ground, and sending
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up new plants from the joints. We may tear up and destroy vast
numbers of these plants, but unless every cruising, creeping stem
and every clinging root is eliminated the weeds will soon be as
numerous as ever. Some weeds are so "tough" that even a leaf or
a bit of the stalk dropped upon the earth will produce a new plant,
while others outwit their human enemies by developing seeds
which ripen so rapidly and so early in the season that before the
plants become conspicuous or threatening their seeds have
already been scattered far and wide. Moreover, many of these
most insidious weeds produce seeds so similar to those of the
desirable plants among which they live that they can only be
detected by a skilled botanist using a microscope. And when the
agriculturist sows his seeds he unconsciously plants thousands of
weed seeds along with the others. A single pound of clover seed
has been found to contain fourteen thousand weed seeds
representing four different species of plant public enemies.
Fortunately for our farmers only a very small portion of seeds
germinate and grow, for if all those fourteen thousand weed
seeds in a pound of clover seeds should develop into weed plants,
the poor farmer would stand small chances of freeing his fields of
the plant racketeers. For that matter, even as it is, our
hard-working farmers and our gardeners would wage a losing
battle against their plant enemies were it not for the assistance of
Nature's "G-men" and police. The most efficient of these are the
birds, for countless species of birds dine only on seeds and many
prefer weeds' seeds to all others. The cheery little American
goldfinch is commonly known as "thistle bird" owing to its
well-known fondness
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for the seeds of thistles. Yet many farmers kill or drive off these
birds merely because they occasionally vary their diet by eating
the seeds of carrots, beets, or other cultivated plants. All
members of the sparrow and finch families depend upon seeds
for a living and prefer weed seeds, while the common Carolina or
mourning-doves and the little ground doves of our southern states
are most voracious consumers of weed seeds, as are the
bob-whites and other quails and many members of the starling
family such as the red-winged and rusty blackbirds, the
bob-o'-links, the meadow-larks and the cow-buntings. Few
farmers or others appreciate the tremendous service rendered by
birds in keeping weeds under control. Examinations of the
stomach contents of one bob-white revealed 1,700 weed seeds
while another had recently swallowed 5,000 seeds of common
weeds. The stomachs of a pair of mourning-doves contained
7,500 seeds of sorrel and 9,200 seeds of pigeon grass. When we
consider that these were merely the seeds which the birds had
swallowed within the space of a few hours, and that many more
had been digested, and that there are vast numbers of these birds
steadily consuming an equal number of seeds from sunrise until
sunset every day, we begin to realize what an incalculable service
the seed-eating birds render.
Even insects play an important part as weed-destroyers. Many of
our commonest caterpillars-the larvae of moths and
butterflies-feed only upon certain noxious weeds. Not only do
they devour the leaves, but some species burrow into the stalks
and others dwell within the seed-pods and dine on the immature
seeds, while still others prefer a diet of the weeds' flowers.
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The larvae of many beetles devour the roots and bore into the
stems of weeds and weeds only. And the little froghoppers who
produce the frothy masses of "spittle" seen on plant-stems in the
spring, feed mainly on the sap of various weeds. Moreover, as
there are a dozen weeds to every valuable or cultivated plant,
even the omnivorous insects that feed on both wild and cultivated
plants serve a very valuable purpose by eating the weeds, even if
they may be pests in our gardens. Many of these, such as the
rickets, certain aphids, and beetles, prefer the weeds, as any one
may prove by gathering an equal number of weeds and garden
plants and counting the number of insects found in each
group.
Probably the average farmer or gardener would scoff at the idea
of our commonest and worst weeds having a commercial value.
But it is a case of ignorance being bliss, for many of these plant
outlaws and public enemies are worth as much or even more,
pound for pound, than the crops raised with so much care and
trouble by the agriculturist. I admit that it does sound
preposterous and ridiculous to state that dandelions, witch-grass
and other detested weeds have any real monetary value, but such
is the case, for many of our commonest weeds possess medicinal
qualities and are in constant demand, and when carefully and
properly prepared or dried bring high prices, a number of them
being worth several dollars a pound.
Among the most important and commonest of these valuable
weeds are the following:
Yarrow. Used as a tonic and an infusion for indigestion.
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American senna. The mature leaves and seeds are dried and an
infusion of these is used as a laxative.
Boneset. Dried leaves and flowers are made into a tea which is a
laxative-tonic when taken cold and is excellent for sore throat
and malaria when hot.
Pennyroyal. Used as a cure for colic and other bowel troubles.
Dittany. A tea made from the leaves is a mild stimulant and
relieves fevers.
Gumplant. This sunflower of the Middle West is the source of the
"Grindelia" of our drug stores and is used as a medicine for
affections of the throat, lungs and blood.
Jimson-weed. The dried leaves when burned emit a pungent
smoke which is one of the few known remedies for asthma. In the
drug stores this well-known, abundant, poisonous weed is sold
under the scientific name, Stramonium.
Burdock. The roots are widely used as a blood purifier.
Witch-grass. couch grass. Roots of these noxious weeds are
highly esteemed as medicine.
Pokeweed. This is the "Phytolacca" of the drug stores and is used
as a remedy for skin and blood diseases.
Mullen. Both leaves and dried flowers are employed
in medicine being used in the treatment of colds, catarrh and
nervous affections.
Tansy. Sold as "Tanacetum" in the stores it is a well-known
medicine.
Dandelion. One of the most popular of the old "herbs
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and simples," the dandelion still holds its own as a simple and
excellent tonic and blood-purifier.
Considering the superabundance of these and other useful weeds,
it seems strange indeed that we should be obliged to depend upon
other lands to supply the demand. Yet such is the case and each
year we import more than 25 tons of burdock, 60 tons of
dandelion, 125 tons of witch-grass, 15 tons of tansy, 75 tons of
jimson-weed (or Jamestown-weed as it should be called) and
many tons of boneset, hoarhound, dittany, pennyroyal, senna,
yarrow, and other common weeds. Yet every year our farmers
throw away, burn, and otherwise destroy thousands of tons of
these same weeds. Surely we cannot blame other nations if they
consider Americans a most wasteful lot.
Moreover, there are countless weeds which have an industrial
value other than for medicinal purposes. Among the most
important of these are the plants used as dyes. To be sure, the
invention and widespread use of the cheap aniline dyes have
played havoc with vegetable dyes, but many of the arts and crafts
guilds which have been and are constantly being established
throughout the country, use vegetable dyes only.
A complete list of the common wild plants and weeds which are
employed in dying would fill many pages, but among the
commonest which may properly be included among the weeds
are the pokeweed which may be used for dying pink, rose, red, or
purple. The berries of cahosh, viburnum, and the elders which
give blue dyes. The leaves of St.-John's-wort and the roots and
stalks of sorrel from which red dyes are made. Wild
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madder is used for dying orange and crimson, while yellow dyes
are made from wild sunflowers, goldenrod, yellow-wood,
barberry roots, burdock, cockle-burs, dock root, vetch,
meadow-rue, nettle flowers, teasels, jewel-weed, and many other
weeds.
Just as police records prove that the majority of human criminals
are aliens or naturalized citizens, so we find the worst and most
numerous of our plant enemies are undesirable aliens. It is true
that we have an abundance of native American weeds, but the
immigrants are the most objectionable and dangerous. They are
true hijackers of the plant world and "muscle in" on the native
plant-gangsters, force them to take second place, and become the
"big shots" of the weed criminals. In their home lands they had
many natural enemies to keep them from increasing beyond all
bounds, but when they emigrated to the New World they left
their foes behind them and hence have a great advantage over the
true American weeds who are beset by countless natural enemies
who serve to keep them partly under control.
One of the most insidious of these undesirable aliens is the wild
carrot, or Queen Anne's lace. Like the majority of our foreign
weeds, it was a stowaway and entered the country by sneaking
past the Customs and the Immigration officials in the form of
seeds hiding among those of desirable plants. But once on
American soil it spread like magic, relentlessly crowding out
every plant that stood in its way, taking possession of fields and
pastures, and traveling north, south, east, and west. Many of our
states passed laws providing penalties for farmers and others who
permitted the
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wild carrots to grow on their properties. But the authorities might
just as well have tried to penalize the husbandmen for permitting
swallows to wing their way across the farmlands. To destroy
these weeds was as hopeless an undertaking as to push back the
sea or to carry water in a sieve. The weed grew and spread faster
than it could be destroyed, and to-day one sees broad fields white
with the lacelike flowers of this alien plant criminal, utterly
ruined and abandoned, worthless even as pasturage, for the wild
carrot is poisonous to cattle. Almost as abundant as the Queen
Anne's lace, and one of the first plant-outlaws to stowaway and
reach America by stealth is the common white or ox-eye daisy,
known in England as the marguerite. In its own borne on the
other side of the Atlantic the plant is not much of a nuisance, for
it has countless natural enemies who serve as police to keep it
under control to a reasonable extent. But it is almost free from
insect enemies in our country and has spread far and wide. In a
way it is a true paradox, for while it is a bad weed and plays
havoc with pastures and fields, it is such a pretty cheery flower
that every one loves it. Our summer landscapes would seem dull
and bare indeed were it not for the fields of daisies, and if by
some miracle this alien weed were completely exterminated it
would be a sad loss to the public at large, even if a blessing to the
farmers.
Another immigrant from Europe is the chicory. But this alien can
scarcely be classed among the plant public enemies or criminals,
for it is rather a harmless sort of vagabond, a plant-hobo which
prefers the open road to fields and gardens. Typically a tramp
with its ragged, dust-covered leaves, its half-starved,
ill-nourished
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appearance, the chicory is a happy-go-lucky bum and to offset its
unattractive foliage adds a note of beauty to the by-ways with its
handsome sky-blue flowers. Moreover, it is one of the useful
weeds, for its root is edible and nourishing although it is more
familiar as an adulterant of coffee than as food-plant.
Chicory, however, is not the only common weed which is edible,
although comparatively few persons are aware of the fact. The
thick fleshy roots of the common burdock are excellent and are
highly esteemed in Japan. Tender young shoots of the milkweeds
are fully equal to asparagus. Young shoots of the common nettle
are also excellent. Purslane and pigweed greens are as good as
spinach and, of course, dandelion greens are famous. The
marsh-mariqolds or cowslips are another source of "greens,"
while the so-called Jerusalem artichokes or sunroots are the
tubers of a wild sunflower.
The flowers of milkweed, gathered in the early morning
when still damp with dew, bruised and boiled, yield a sweet
syrup with a fine flavor. The roots of the bull brier are used as a
basis for root-beer in many sections of the country. When dried
and ground into meal they may be used in combination with
cornmeal for hot
cakes. The chipped roots of the more southerly china brier or
coontie are a favorite article of food among the Indians. Mixed
with water they form a red sediment which is strained and dried.
This is used like flour and when mixed with warm water and
honey it forms a beautiful jelly.
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Many weed-seeds may be used as meal or cereals, one of the best
being the seeds of the common pigweed, while the Indians
consume quantities of coarse flour
made from the seeds of wild oats, squaw-grass, and sand-grass
which is the stand-by of the Zunis and is known as "Indian
millet." The wild leeks and wild onions, which sometimes
become bad weeds, are all edible, as are the bulbs of many other
members of the lily family which are weeds in certain sections.
The Indian potato or sego lily of our western states is a weed in
many places, although in the east it is prized for its handsome
flowers and is known as the Mariposa tulip. The bulbs are
excellent eating, as are the roots of the wild sego. This is the state
flower of Utah and its tubers formed the first diet of the
Mormons when they reached the vicinity of Great Salt Lake. The
roots, roasted in ashes or steamed, are fine-flavored and
nutritious. The same is true of the roots of the wild California
hyacinth, while the roots of the camas or quamash are fully equal
to potatoes when boiled, roasted or steamed.
One of the most abundant weeds of the west is the mesquite
which bears beans which are highly nutritious and are used as
meal by the Indians, while the goat nut, known also as sheep-nut
and jojoba, of California, has nuts which are not only edible but
contain an oil which is credited with being a marvelous hair
grower, especially for the eyebrows. Then there is the weed
known as chocolate root or Indian chocolate which
really should be included among the Magic Plants (see
Chapter XIII), for the Indians believe that those who
cut the root or drink the beverage made from it, are able to
converse in whispers with others many miles away.
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Even if we do not expect to dine on weeds, and are perfectly
satisfied with our more familiar vegetable foods, it is a good plan to bear in mind which weeds and wild
plants are edible in case of necessity. A knowledge of edible wild
plants has saved many a man from starvation when lost in the
woods or on deserts or cast away on some remote island. When
John Colter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition escaped from the
Blackfeet Indians by whom he had been captured, he would have
starved to death had he not known of the Indian bread-root plant
which was his only food for more than a week.
I have mentioned only a few of the better known and commoner
weeds which may be used as food, and there are many others,
some of which are widely distributed while others are quite local.
In fact a book might be written on the subject of edible wild
plants of our country if it were not confined to those which may
be classed as weeds or plant-enemies, for our woods, fields,
swamps, and prairies are filled with plants which will serve to
sustain human life and many of which are fully equal or superior
to some of our most popular everyday vegetable foods.
As I have already said, nearly all types of criminals are to be
found among the army of plant public enemies. There are even
kidnappers, and just as some human kidnappers hold their
victims for ransom and release them when the ransom has been
paid, while others murder their victims, so among the plant
kidnappers we find those who eventually allow their victims to
depart unharmed, while others destroy them.
But in one respect these plant-kidnappers are far less despicable
than their human prototypes, for their
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lives depend upon kidnapping and were they to reform and
abandon their criminal careers their species would soon vanish
from the face of the earth. Some kidnap insects in order to force
these creatures to pollinate or fertilize the flowers, while others
require more animal matter than they can secure from the soil,
and having kidnapped an insect they absorb its life-giving
chemicals.
One of the commonest of plant-kidnappers is the aristolochia
vine or Dutchman's pipe so widely used as a shade vine to cover
our porches. When a bee or other insect enters the pipe-shaped
flower of this vine it little dreams that it is walking into a most
wonderfully designed trap and will be doomed to remain a
prisoner until the plant sees fit to release him. As the insect
crawls down the tubular flower, attracted by the sweet nectar
below, he pays no attention to the countless stiff hairs that,
bending inward, form no obstruction to his passage. But when,
having dined, he prepares to leave, it is a very different matter,
for the hairs over which he passed with no trouble now present a
barrier of daggerlike points barring his way more effectually than
a barbed-wire fence. He may buzz and fume, but there he must
remain a prisoner until the pollen has ripened and he has dusted
himself thoroughly with the golden powder. Then at last the stiff,
sharp hairs wither, and the angry bee goes forth to blunder into
another flower and fertilize it with the pollen he has accumulated.
Perhaps it seems strange that the bees do not learn by experience
to avoid these tricky flowers. But after all, why should they?
They may be involuntary captives for a few days, but they are
unharmed and there is an
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abundance of food in the shape of nectar to be had for the eating.
Some of the milkweed plants have a very different method of
kidnapping insects in order to hold them until the flowers have
been fertilized. These plants seize the insects in their powerful
jawlike anthers, but release the creatures unharmed when
fertilization is assured. Sometimes plants discriminate and kidnap
or imprison, or for that matter arrest, try, condemn and execute,
rascally insects which come to rob them.
The common catchfly or fire-pink is one of these. Its gorgeous
scarlet flowers attract hosts of insects, but it desires only those
who will serve to fertilize its blossoms, and to protect these from
marauders such as honey loving ants who crawl up plant-stems,
the fire-pink covers its flower-stalks with a sticky fly-paperlike
compound which holds the ants helpless until they perish. The
starry campion, which is another member of the pink family,
accomplishes the same results in a different manner. To protect
the honey drops within the tubes of its white flowers, this plant
spreads a sticky trap on its calyxes and pedicels, and no crawling
insect ever succeeds in passing these "no trespass" areas. One of
the worst of plant-kidnappers is our old friend,
Jack-in-the-pulpit. Moreover, Master Jack is one of those
despicable kidnappers who not only lures his victims into his
clutches but relentlessly puts them to death. Examine the interior
of one of these woodland flowers and you will find the lining is
very smooth and slippery. Any insect that attempts to crawl
within the pulpit and sets foot on this precipitous slide is lost, for
down it goes to the bottom of the pitfall. Yet other
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insects that come buzzing to the flower spathe of "Jack" have no
difficulty in leaving when they choose. At the bottom of any
flower of this plant you will find the dead bodies of many of
Jack's victims, but not digested as are the bodies of insects
captured by the carnivorous pitcher-plants, sundews, and other
insect-eaters, for the Jack-in-the-pulpit merely absorbs the
chemicals of the decomposing corpses of its victims. Perhaps, in
days to come, our friend Jack may become a truly carnivorous
plant.
Undoubtedly that happened with the true insect catching forms
whose ancestors were in all probability quite satisfied with food
they obtained from the soil and the air. To-day we may see the
same transition taking place in various plants other than the
Jack-in-the-pulpit. One of these is the common teazel or gypsy
combs which is oftentimes a bad weed but was formerly a useful
plant, for its spiny seed-coverings were used for carding wool in
the days of hand-looms. The teazel is only beginning to learn to
catch or kidnap insects, for you may examine a number of the
plants before you come upon a kidnapper. You will recognize it
at once, for you will notice that the lower portion of some of the
leaves high on the stalk have drawn themselves together to form
little tanks filled with water, and the chances are that these little
death-pools will contain the dead bodies of numerous insects.
Like the Jack-in-the-pulpit, the teazel merely absorbs the juices
or chemicals of the insects which are extracted by the water as
the bodies decompose. But unlike Master Jack, the teazel cannot
claim the latter's excuse for its kidnapping by arguing that it does
so to protect its flowers.
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It has merely acquired a taste for animal food and in ages to
come, its leaves may develop into traps as cleverly designed for
capturing insects as are those of the sundew or Venus's fly-trap.
Many plants smother or strangle their victims, and very often
these murderous criminals of the plant-world are very lovely
things and appear innocent and harmless. The goldenrods and
asters, the milkweeds, and daisies, the ragweeds, burdocks, and
common docks, depend upon smothering their weaker neighbors
by shutting off the sunlight and taking possession of the soil. But
the bindweed, with its pretty pink flowers, the cat-briers, the
spiny wild cucumbers, the wild peas and many other
plant-outlaws are stranglers and vicious thugs who murder their
victims by twining their ropelike stems about stalks and leaves.
Even worse than these, and the most insidious of all
plant-criminals, are the vampires who fatten themselves upon
other plants, and secure their nourishment by sucking the life
-blood of their victims. Like the feminine "vampires" of fiction
and the movies, these plant-parasites are often very beautiful.
Nothing about their outward appearance would arouse the least
suspicion as to their true characters, and many display gorgeous
flowers. Such is the painted cup' of our meadows, although in the
case of this parasite that feeds on roots of other plants, the scarlet
tip responsible for its common name, is not the true flower, but
the leaves or bracts surrounding the cluster of small yellowish
blossoms. In this respect it is similar to the poinsettia which also
flaunts gaudy leaves of scarlet or crimson, like an aureole about
its inconspicuous flowers.
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Far worse than these vampires, and a murderous strangler as well
as a blood-sucker, is the common dodder. Like the majority of
parasitic plants, the dodder has no chlorophyl in its system and
hence cannot secure nutriment from air and soil, and is compelled
by Nature to suck the blood of other plants. Yet in infancy the
dodder is innocent enough and sprouts from the soil in the
manner of ordinary plants. But no sooner does its yellow
snakelike stalk touch another plant than it sends out suckers and
begins its nefarious career. As soon as it has secured a firm grasp
on its neighbors it withers away and breaks off near the earth,
and thereafter crawls, twists, writhes, and wanders over the tops
of other plants, binding them together, holding them fast in its
suckers, and subsisting on their sap. Although the devil's thread,
as it is often called, has no leaves, but merely a slender yellow
stem, yet it bears clusters of little bell-shaped white flowers.
Once the dodder secures a good start it is practically impossible
to check it. Its writhing, yellow stems may be twenty feet or more
in length, and as the seeds ripen and fall and new plants spring up
and take to the aerial parasitic life, they soon conquer everything
within reach of their deadly suckers. In our southern states, as
well as in the Bahama Islands and elsewhere in warm countries,
it is not unusual to see acres of brush or weeds or even cultivated
plants completely hidden under the mat of tangled, twisted,
yellow cords of the devil's thread. Who would ever suspect that
this snaky, strangling vampire was a first cousin of the lordly
cypress trees of our southern swamps?
Very different from the flamboyant plant-parasites
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with their gaudy flowers, are the sickly-looking vampires which
have the appearance of drug addicts. Some are almost colorless
and are ghostly, goulish things, while others, such as the
Indian-pipe and beech-drops, are very attractive in a bizarre sort
of way and are delicately tinted with pink and pale orange.
These parasites scarcely can be considered weeds, for they keep
under cover and hide away in woodland and forests where they
draw sustenance from the roots of the various trees. The same is
true of the parasitic fungi, the mushrooms, and so-called
"toadstools," for even if some species do disfigure our lawns and
shade trees they rarely become a menace.
Many persons think of the orchid and air-plants as parasites, but
strictly speaking this is not the case, and if charged with the
crime of being vampires they could plead "not guilty" with
perfect truth. As a matter of fact, they are merely squatters or
perhaps better, "moochers," who take up their abodes on other
plants, yet draw their sustenance from the air and from the
decaying vegetable matter and debris about their roots, without
attempting to harm their involuntary hosts. In fact they thrive just
as well on a section of a dead limb or a piece of bark as on a
living tree, while many of them are as much at home on lifeless
rocks, the roofs of buildings or on telegraph wires as on other
plants.
Many orchids also kidnap insects and hold them prisoners until
the flowers have been thoroughly fertilized. Even the familiar
gray Spanish moss which, drapes the trees of our southern states
will thrive on lifeless objects, and the injuries it inflicts upon
trees are caused by the plant stifling or smothering the branches
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with its dense masses and countless clinging adhesive roots,
rather than to vampirish habits. Also, it is interesting to note that
this picturesque plant is not a moss but is a member of the
bromeliad family and is a first cousin of the luscious pineapple.
But it should not be confused with the somewhat similar old
man's beard which drapes cedars and other trees in our northern
forests and swamps. This is a very different sort of plant and is a
member of the lichen family and its correct name is usnea.
While we are on the subject of plant-vampires and plant-parasites
we must not forget the parasitic giants of tropical lands-the lianas
and the wild fig-trees. Not only do these strange plants attach
themselves to other plants but pitilessly strangle the trees which
have afforded them homes and a livelihood. We may quite
fittingly compare the writhing, twisting lianas to giant serpents,
and the fig-trees to loathsome octopi. And woe to the tree
encircled by the coils of a huge liana or seized in the woody
tentacles of the fig-tree, which by the way is not a tree that bears
the edible fruits, but one of the rubber trees.
Unlike true serpents and octopi, these constricting plant-giants
are devoid of intelligence, even if they do appear to act with
malice and forethought and to commit murder deliberately. No
boa constrictor, anaconda or other snake would ever make the
mistake of wrapping its coils about its own body and squeezing
itself to death, and no octopus would be so lacking in common
sense as to encircle itself with its tentacles and relentlessly
destroy its own body. Yet this is precisely what the lianas and the
fig-trees do. It is a very common
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thing to find enormous lianas, great vines six or eight inches or
more in diameter, strangled to death by their own ropelike
branches or tendrils which have tightened their grip about the
parent stalk so tightly that they are buried almost out of sight in
the body whence they sprouted. Neither is it unusual to find a
dead or dying wild fig-tree that has committed suicide in this
way. These trees are very tenacious of life and the upper portions
will continue to grow long after the lower portions have been
completely killed. We might suppose that even a plant would
know enough to cease squeezing itself to death under such
conditions. But it doesn't.
A number of years ago when I was residing in Georgetown,
British Guiana, Professor Harrison, who was in charge of the
wonderful Botanic Station, called my attention to a wild fig-tree
that was slowly committing suicide. For years, he told me, he had
been watching the big tree fighting with itself. Slowly,
relentlessly the struggle of the tree to live and the struggle of its
tentacle like aerial roots to destroy their parent had been
progressing beneath the eyes of the naturalist who was deeply
interested-I might say fascinated by the weird battle between two
portions of a single plant. When I first saw the tree many of its
upper branches were healthy and covered with leaves, but the
lower portion of the trunk and the maze of huge intertwined roots
were dead and partly decayed. It was a truly remarkable
experience to watch -this strange struggle as it proceeded day by
day. As if the living top of the tree were aware of its peril it
would send aerial roots from its branches, and these descending
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would grasp the larger strangling roots and endeavor to choke
these in turn. But it was a hopeless battle. The older larger roots
always won. Little by little the signs of life decreased and at the
end of two years the suicidal tree was a bare dead skeleton, a
victim of its own deadly habits, its lifeless roots still clinging to
the body of the victim it had destroyed in order to live.
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Chapter XVII
WONDER PLANTS OF COMMERCE AND
INDUSTRY
ONE of the most wonderful features of plants is the important
part they play in our commerce and industries, as well as in our
daily lives.
This book, for example, would not be possible were it not for
plants. Even if the paper upon which it is printed had been made
from old rags it would still be a plant product, for the rags used
would have been cotton or linen cloth made from plant fibers.
The same plants have supplied the thread with which the leaves
have been stitched together. The ink used in printing was made of
carbon which came from burning wood, and the glue and paste
used in making the cardboard covers and attaching the binding to
the leaves were probably manufactured from gums or juices of
plants, perhaps even from the stalks of maize. And even if the
adhesives were wholly or partly animal glue, they would not
have been possible without plants which provided food for the
creatures whose hoofs, horns, and hides supplied the glue.
Until one gives serious thought to the matter and looks about at
the innumerable things upon which we depend, one does not
realize the extent to which we employ plants to supply both the
necessities and luxuries of life. It is not even necessary to trace
back
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various substances and materials to their original plant sources,
or to argue that by doing so all animal life is dependent upon
plants. So let us confine ourselves to materials obtained directly
from plants.
Among the most important and valuable plants of commerce and
industry are those which supply us with fibers. Moreover, there is
a vast number of these fiber producing plants, some of which are
very familar to every one and serve us every-where every day.
Others are strange to most persons, even though their fibers are
commonly used, while others are seldom used except by the
natives of the lands where they occur. Yet some of these little
known fiber-plants are superior to many of our own and deserve
to be much more widely used than they are.
Probably the most familiar of all plant fibers is linen which is
made from the leaf and stem fibers of the flax plant, and cotton
from the seed-coverings of the cotton plant. Next in importance
in our everyday life are hemp, Manilla, jute, and sisal. An entire
volume might
Flax (1/2)
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he written about these alone, and a very romantic and interesting
story it would be, for these four fibers come from widely
separated parts of the world and are grown and gathered by
strange races amid strange surroundings.
Hemp, as I have already mentioned (see Chapter XIV), is
obtained from the hemp plant which is a native of India and its
vicinity. Manilla or Manilla hemp, which is the source of the best
cordage and ropes, especially for use on shipboard, is obtained
from a very different plant, a variety of the banana which is a
native of the Philippines and the East Indies. Jute is another
Oriental fiber derived from an East Indian annual plant with tall
stalks and yellow flowers. Although one of the most important
and valuable of fibers it is not very strong and hence is not
suitable for high grade cordage. But it is fine, silky, easily woven
and serves a multitude of purposes. Great quantities are used in
making sunny sacks or burlap bags. Immense amounts in the
form of "tow" are employed for caulking the seams of vessels,
for making coarse and cheap papers, for fiber carpets, rugs,
seat-covers, curtains, draperies, and "art" fabrics, while the finer
grades are used in place of hair on wigs for actors. For the world
at large, jute is a blessing, but to many a poor devil in prison it is
a terrible curse, for "picking tow" is the principal task allotted the
convicts in many penal institutions, especially in England.
Sisal comes mainly from Mexico, Central and South America,
the West Indies, Hawaii, and South Africa. This well-known
fiber is obtained from the leaves of the hennequin, a species of
agave or "century plant" which
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Hennequin
(greatly reduced) is a native of Mexico and Yucatan. Although the hennequin had
been cultivated and the sisal fiber had been used by the Indians
for countless centuries, yet it was not until comparatively
recently that it came into general use by the white races. It is a
rather coarse fiber, harsh and somewhat brittle, and much inferior
to hemp
or Manilla for cordage, especially when wet. But some one
discovered that it was the best of all fibers for bindertwine used
for tying sheaves of grain, and instantly sisal became one of the,
world's most important and valuable fibers. Where only a few of
the stiff-leaved hennequin plants had been cultivated by the
native farmers, vast plantations sprang into existence. The crop
increased from a few hundred to tens of thousands of tons of sisal
yearly. Railways were built to transport the countless bales of
fiber from the inland Plantations to the seacoast. Tiny towns that
had been forgotten by the world became transformed to busy
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important seaports. Where only an occasional sailing vessel or
coasting steamer had been moored beside ramshackle wharves,
scores of great wall-sided iron freight steamships lay alongside
concrete and steel docks. Planters who had found it hard to make
both ends meet became millionaires, stupendous sums were
invested in planting more and more land with hennequin and in
erecting mills and factories for manufacturing sisal twine and
other products, and from Yucatan the hennequin industry spread
to Hawaii, the West Indies, South America, Egypt and the Orient.
Probably no other plant of industry and commerce has had such a
meteoric career or has risen so rapidly in importance and value as
the hennequin or sisal.
Another very important fiber known to the trade as coir is made
from the outer husks of the cocoanut. In the Pacific Islands and
many other tropical lands, coir or cocoanut fiber is used for
ropes, twine, and other cordage, but to us it is most familiar in the
form of door-mats and coarse heavy carpeting.
Then there is the ramie fiber prepared from the inner bark of an
Oriental nettle known as the grass-cloth plant.
Perhaps it seems strange that a strong, fine silky fiber used in
textile manufacture should be obtained from a nettle plant. But all
these stinging weeds possess a fibrous inner bark. Our American
Indians wove fine and beautiful fabrics from the fibers of our
common nettles, and even used the fibers for making their
bowstrings, for nettle fiber is almost as strong as flax. Nettles,
however are not the only common wild plants and weeds which
supply strong and useful fibers.
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Milkweed fiber was widely used by the Indians, as was the fiber
of bulrushes or cattails, wild peas, cedar bark and yucca or
"Spanish bayonet" plants. Even the common eel-grass which
grows in shallow water along our coast yields a splendid fiber
which is used extensively in making certain kinds of cloth and
toweling.
In the Philippines and the East Indies the natives weave beautiful
fine silky cloth from the fibers of pineapple leaves, which is also
used to some extent in our textile mills, while in other Oriental
countries mulberry fiber is an important product. The
well-known raffia fiber used in art work and for making baskets
and hand-bags, is the fibrous bark of a palm-tree, while another
palm-tree supplies the strong, pliable material used in weaving
the famous Panama hats.
At one time the pita-hemp fiber of South America was one of the
most valuable of all, but for some reason. probably because it
was more expensive than Manilla or other fibers, it almost
disappeared. To-day pita-hemp plantations are being established
in various tropical countries and the fiber is again in demand. But
by far the strongest and finest of all fibers have never come into
general use and the plants from which they are obtained have
never been cultivated except on a small scale by the natives. One
of these is the snakedagger, a West Indian plant with long,
sword-shaped, stiff, fleshy leaves curiously mottled with
pale-green and white. It is often grown as a house plant because
of its marbled leaves, some of the cultivated varieties being
handsomely variegated with brilliant yellow. Throughout the
West Indies and elsewhere in the
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tropics, this plant is an abundant weed and grows luxuriantly on
old stone walls, about ruined buildings and beside the roadways.
When fully grown the leaves are frequently five feet in length
and are filled with long, soft silken fibers of great strength.
Quantities of
Snake-dagger plant( 1/12 ) this fiber are used by the natives, but it has never become of
commercial importance.
An even superior fiber is that of the so-called silk grass or arrow
grass of South America, which is a plant related to the cannas of
our gardens. Unlike the agaves which thrive only in the blazing
sunshine in dry soils, this plant grows only in the deep shadows
of the forests where the earth is saturated with moisture. The
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fiber, obtained from the fleshy stalks, is finer than silk, stronger
than the best flax, and is from five to eight feet in length. To the
native Indians of the jungles it is a most important plant, for its
strong soft, fine fibers serve as fishing-lines, bowstrings, cords,
and twine. They are also used for securing the heads and feathers
to the arrows, hence the common name, and are woven into nets,
bags, and textiles.
Even more important in some ways than are the fiber plants used
for cordage and textiles, are those which make it possible for us
to publish books, print newspapers, or write letters. Without
paper we would be sadly handicapped indeed. Imagine what a
task it would be to write a novel such as Anthony Adverse on clay
tablets or to compile a dictionary by inscribing the letters on
stone. And think of the size of the library that would be needed to
house thousands upon thousands of clay or stone or even metal
volumes. For that matter, try to visualize the occupants of a
crowded subway train all carrying morning papers of baked clay
or made of metal sheets. And how could our post-offices ever
hope to handle millions of letters written on bricks?
What a vast relief it must have been to the people who first
discovered paper to be able to scrap their clay and stone writings
once and forever.
No one really knows what race was the first to make that epochal
discovery, for paper of some sort or another was used by several
races in widely separated parts of the world in very remote times.
The ancient Egyptians used excellent paper made from the
papyrus plant and from the lotus. The Chinese, thousands of
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years ago, used paper made of rice straw, and in the New World
the Aztecs and Mayas had been using splendid parchment like
paper made from the agave or maguey plants for untold centuries
before the arrival of the Spaniards.
Moreover, the Aztecs and Mayas, as well as the Chinese and the
Egyptians, had learned to write, or at least to record events, ideas,
and other matters on their paper, and had large books or codices
which were kept in regular libraries. Unlike our books, these
Indian volumes consisted of sheets pasted together to form long
strips which were folded back and forth much in the manner of a
modern motor-highway map. On the other hand, the Egyptians
rolled their manuscripts on wooden holders, while the Chinese
made books very similar to our own. Although, as I have said,
these ancient races had learned to write on paper they had not
discovered how to simplify matters by using letters instead of
pictures to express words, for the so-called Chinese letters are
really characters made up of highly conventionalized pictures.
But if the Spaniards had not arrived to destroy the Aztec
civilization the Mexicans would soon have possessed a true
written language, for at the time of the conquest they had already
begun to substitute ideographs and symbols of sounds for the
pictographs on their codices. Surely if spirits are capable of
emotions, those of the old Aztec and Maya scribes must have felt
greatly pleased and elated when the Mexican Government
recently decreed that henceforth all Mexican legal and official
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documents must be written and printed on paper made of maguey
fiber, thus
perpetuating the memory of the Aztec paper makers and their
codices.
To-day a vast number of plants are employed in making paper.
Bamboo, banana leaves, palm fibers, seaweeds, cotton, hemp,
jute, Manilla, reeds, mulberry, bulrushes, straw and countless
other fiber-plants are ground to pulp and passed between massive
rollers to come forth as sheets of paper. But by far the greatest
quantity of paper is made from forest trees. Spruce, poplar, fir,
cedar, and many other woods may be used for paper-making, but
the best of all "pulp" trees, especially for the cheap newspaper
stock, are the spruces. Whole forests have been leveled to supply
our people with their daily papers, and few persons have any
conception of the almost incredible quantities of pulp wood that
are consumed in this way.
Merely to supply the paper for a single edition of one of the big
New York newspapers necessitates the complete annihilation of
eighty acres of forest. Multiply that by the number of similar
papers of the metropolis, and multiply the result by 365 and we
will get some vague idea of the almost inconceivable numbers of
trees which are annually felled and converted into paper-pulp. I
say "vague" idea, for big as they are, the papers published in New
York City are only a very small fraction of the total number of
papers published daily throughout our country. More than
14,000,000 cords of wood are required to supply the paper needs
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of the United States annually. The United States and Canadian
newspapers print annually enough paper to encircle the world
with a belt fifty miles wide. If this paper was in the form of the
standard roll with a width
of 73 inches, it would be 13,000,000 miles in length. Moreover,
vast quantities of trees are used in making cardboard, various
composition substitutes for lumber and for crates, boxes, and
other purposes, while whole forests are felled to supply the tens
of thousands of cords of wood needed to manufacture
matchsticks.
Sumac, leaves and fruit
Considering all this we can surely class our fiber- plants as plant
wonders.
But even when the fiber-plants have supplied us with cloth for
our garments and fabrics for our homes, they would be drab and
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monotonous unless colored, and to give them various tints we
again turn to the plants for help.
As I have said, mineral and chemical dyes have taken the places
of many plant-dyes, yet there are certain
dye-plants which are still in demand, and which have never yet
been replaced by artificial substitutes.
Although the use of indigo has decreased until very little of the
once important dye-plant is cultivated, yet no one has ever
discovered an artificial indigo that can equal that of the plant for
color and fadeless quality. Fustic from the big forest trees of
South and Central America is still used in enormous quantities,
for it is the best and most durable of khaki dyes. Gamboge, the
gum of East Indian trees, is extensively used, both as a dye and a
pigment, for no other yellow has the same brilliant transparent
color. Another dye or pigment which is of great commercial and
industrial importance is the so-called "dragon's-blood" which is
made from the sap of various trees found in the East and West
Indies, tropical America, and the Pacific Islands. When we use
butter or eat Chili con carne as well as other foods, we swallow a
dye made from the seed-coverings of a tropical American tree.
This is the anotto or achiote, and as the orange-red dye or
pigment is harmless and even contains a certain amount of
nutriment, it is perfectly adapted to coloring foods. In its raw
state it is a vivid red and is used by the Indians for painting their
faces and bodies, but when diluted it imparts a deep yellow color.
Its principal use is for coloring butter, hence it has become
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generally known under the trade name of "butter color." For
staining leather and wood and for dyes of certain shades there is
nothing to equal the red sanders and Brazil woods which are the
chipped woods of jungle trees of South America and the Orient,
while hundreds of thousands of tons of logwood are still used
every year.
Formerly our own native trees supplied many world famous dyes.
Butternut-brown was widely used and became famous as the
color of the uniforms of the Confederate soldiers during our Civil
War. But to-day it has no real commercial value, and the same is
true of our yellow or quercitron oak which furnishes a wonderful
yellow dye. At one time hundreds of tons of the chipped oak bark
were exported to Europe, but to-day its use as a dye has been
almost forgotten.
Oddly enough although nearly every color of the rainbow may be
obtained by the use of plant-dyes, and in many instances red,
yellow and blue dyes may be made from the same plant, yet there
is no known species of plant which bears both red, yellow, and
blue flowers. By that I do not mean an individual plant, but the
entire species including its several color varieties. We have red
and yellow roses but nobody ever saw a blue rose. Blue and
yellow violets are both common but a red violet is unknown.
There are zinnias with flowers of every imaginable shade of red
and yellow, but no horticulturist has ever been able to produce a
really blue zinnia. Probably the columbines and the pansies come
the nearest to being exceptions to the rule, for there are so-called
red columbines as well as blue and yellowish varieties, but the
red flowers are not actually red nor are the blue blossoms a true
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blue, but rather a purple or lavender. It is the same with the
pansies, there are true blue and true yellow pansies but the
nearest approach to red is a reddish-purple or orange yellow. Just
why this should be so no one knows. It is just another of the
wonders of wonderful plants.
Even when plants have supplied us with wood for
our houses and furniture and fabrics for our garments, our
carpets, our draperies and the upholstery on our chairs and
couches, and other plants have yielded the stains, dyes, and
pigments with which to color them, we still need oils, varnish,
and wax with which to finish the woodwork. And when it comes
to these important and essential substances we are compelled to
rely on plants to supply them. There is no substitute for
linseed-oil except other vegetable oils. No one has been able to
manufacture a synthetic varnish to compare with those made
from copal, couri, or other plant gums and saps. Turpentine and
resin from pine trees still hold their own against all competitors
made from petroleum or other chemicals, while tung oil is the
basis of all our finest quick-drying lacquers, enamels, and
varnishes.
It is the same with the various kinds of vegetable wax. Who
wouldn't prefer a bayberry wax candle made from the aromatic
berries of the seaside bayberry bush to a paraffin or tallow
candle? What would scientists do without oil of cloves for use in
microscopy and Canada balsam from the fir trees for mounting
their slides and cementing the lenses of their instruments?
Palm-oil and palm-wax have never given way to synthetic
products of the laboratory. And finally there is the oil from the
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castor-bean plant. No doubt many a youngster wishes the
broad-leafed tropical plant had never been discovered, but the
thick white oil from the plants' mottled seeds has many other uses
besides that of medicine and possesses properties unlike those of
any other oil. It never thickens, no matter how cold it may be; it
never becomes thin even under the terrific heat of
high-speed motors when used as a lubricant, in which respect it
exceeds all other oils, and it is practically non-inflammable. But
it has one important use which few persons suspect, for it is
castor oil that makes sticky fly-paper remain sticky and prevents
the combination of resin and gum from drying up.
To the ladies there are many plants which are of tremendous
importance, for they supply the feminine population of the world
with scents and perfumes, hair tonics and washes, face powders
and toilet soaps, creams and other aids to beauty-even with their
lip-sticks and eyebrow pencils, and mascara. Quite aside from the
innumerable flowers used in manufacturing perfumery there are
many other plants vital to the industry. The leaves of the West
Indian bay-trees supply bay-oil from which bay-rum is made.
The seed of a South American tree, soaked in rum and dried is
the tonka bean which imparts such a delightful odor to garments
when placed in a drawer or chest with them. Orris, so widely
used for sachets, to impart a delicate odor to face and
tooth-powders and many similar purposes, is the pulverized roots
of an iris or fleur-de-lis plant. Lavender and sandalwood are both
well-known plant perfumes, while the West Indian rose-apple
seeds give out a rich enduring odor fully equal to perfumes made
of attar of roses. Myrrh, which is used to impart a pleasant
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aromatic taste to mouth-washes, is the gum of an Arabian shrub,
while frankincense is made from the gum of an Oriental tree of
the same name.
To us, all of these plants have pleasing odors, but tastes in scents
and perfumes differ as much as tastes
in food and drink and people of other lands often prefer odors
which we would find most unpleasant. In Ethiopia, the people
think the odor of the mouse-plant is the most delightful and
alluring of perfumes, and the dusky ladies are never really happy
unless they smell like much-used mouse-traps. It may seem
strange indeed for human beings to like the odor of the little
rodents, but it is far more amazing that any people should desire
the taste of mice in their food. Yet in China there is a variety of
rice which tastes and smells like mice and is considered the most
desirable of all rice by the Chinese.
On one occasion when I was visiting a tribe of primitive Indians
in the South American jungles, the women and girls gathered
about my camp-fire chatting and sniffing the air as Sam, my
black camp-boy, prepared my dinner. Presently, having peeled
and sliced an onion, he tossed aside the waste. Instantly there was
a wild scramble among the brown-skinned belles followed by
squeals of delight as the lucky ones smeared the fragments of
odorous bulbs over their faces and naked bodies. That gave me
an idea. I was short of trade goods, especially beads and knives,
and had been unable to secure many of the ornaments and other
ethnologic specimens I desired for my collections. But the
women's fondness for onion perfume solved the problem, and for
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the next thirty minutes or so I did a rushing business doling out
sections of onions in exchange for weapons and implements,
musical instruments and feather work, bead aprons and jaguar
teeth necklaces. But our stock of the bulbs was soon exhausted
and there were still many objects I wished to acquire, while
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many of the Indians were still minus a supply of the perfume they
so greatly desired.
"Can't you dig up any more onions, Sam?'' I asked while the
Indians stood about laden with possessions they wished to trade.
"Perhaps some got into the potato bag by accident."
The Negro dumped out the contents of bags and boxes and
searched diligently. "No, sir, Chief," he replied at last. "Ah 'spec'
they complete finish. But Ah come 'pon little garlic, Chief, an'
they sure do smell a-plenty."
The little bulbs certainly did "smell a-plenty" and how those
Indians did clamor for them! To them the odor of garlic
compared to that of onions was as delightful and desirable as
attar of roses compared to the cheapest rose-water would be to
any white woman. They were willing and anxious to exchange
anything or everything they owned for a mere fragment of garlic,
and had I possessed a few pounds of the bulbs I could easily have
purchased the entire village with all it contained-including the
entire feminine population-had I so desired. Taking all things into
consideration, perhaps it was just as well that our supply of garlic
was so very limited.
It may seem astonishing that Indian women should have been so
fascinated by the odor of onions that they were perfectly willing
to give anything and everything they owned for a fragment of
garlic. But after all is it any more remarkable or
incomprehensible than the fact that many a well-to-do white
woman of our own race will willingly pay twenty-five dollars or
even more for a tiny phial of some new or stylish perfume which,
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together with the ornamental container and velvet or satin box,
may possibly have cost the manufacturer a dollar or two?
Moreover, we must bear in mind that the original and primary
reason for using perfumery was to conceal the odor of the body.
Surely for this purpose garlic and onions are far superior to the
most delicate and costly perfumes ever concocted in the
laboratories of Grasse.
Almost if not fully as strange as the Indians' garlic odor complex
is the custom of the women of certain African tribes to chew the
Kilakilolo wood. The resinous, volatile oil in the wood permeates
the entire body and exudes from the pores of the skin, causing the
women to reek with the odor of cedar.
There are few persons who will not agree that the scent of cedar
is preferable to the odor of garlic. In fact, if taken in reasonable
doses, the odor of cedar is very agreeable and delightful,
although it is most repugnant or even fatal to certain insects,
hence the use of cedar-chests to protect woolen fabrics from
moths. But enough is enough, and who wants to smell like a
cedar-chest anyway? Yet, come to think of it, these African
belles may have hit upon a really good thing. Perhaps by
transforming themselves to living cedar' chests they keep
pestiferous insects at a respectful distance.
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Chapter XVIII
THE FIRST OF ALL CALENDARS
No one knows what race was the first to invent a calendar or to
divide time into years, months and days or days into hours, for
many very ancient races in various parts of the world possessed
excellent and accurate calendrical systems thousands of years
ago. Our own calendar is fairly recent, for it dates only from
1582 when the old calendar was revised by Pope Gregory. But
ages before then the Mayas had devised a calendar even more
accurate than our own, the Aztecs had a very exact calendar, and
the Incans and pre Incans of Peru had an equally good system of
measuring time.
Yet all of these calendars devised by human beings, ancient as
they may be, were very modern and new compared to the
calendar which has been used by plants for millions of years.
It may not seem strange that plants should know and recognize
the seasons or that they should know the difference between day
and night or even between bright sunshine and cloudy weather.
But it is truly remarkable that many plants should be able to tell
the time almost as accurately as a clock or a watch. Yet many
plants do this and if you watch the plants in a garden and note the
time when certain plants open their flowers and the time when
others close, you will find
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that they are seldom "slow" or "fast." In fact it is quite simple to
have a floral clock such as that devised by the great naturalist,
Linnaeus. Of course, the "time" as told by these flowers, will
vary according to the location, just as there is a difference in our
time in various places, and a plant, which in its customary
location opens at a certain hour, may be fooled and may open
earlier or later if grown farther north, south, east or west than
where it belongs. But once it gets the "hang" of its new
environment, it will vary only slightly in its time-keeping. Do not
expect your flower timepieces to adopt daylight-saving time
during the summer, for like the railways they keep to "standard"
time throughout the year.
If you are an early bird, and providing you live in the latitude of
our Central Atlantic states or southern New England, you will
find the dandelions waking up and opening their yellow eyes
almost on the stroke of four. An hour later the poppies, day-lilies,
and several other plants decide it is time to begin the day, and
between five and six o'clock the morning-glory flowers will
open. Promptly at seven the lettuce plants and African marigolds
unfold their blossoms. Various pinks think eight is early enough
and the lazy wild marigolds stay in bed until nine. Between nine
and ten dozens of plants decide that day has come at last, but the
star-of-Bethlehem waits until eleven, and the common ice-plant
doesn't tumble out of bed until high noon. By this time many of
the early risers are ready to call it a day and quit work. The
dandelions, hawkweeds, pinks and some of the thistles fold their
bright blankets and go to sleep between twelve and two o'clock,
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although a few more wakeful and energetic individuals may
remain open for hours after their fellows. But by mid-afternoon
practically all of the early rising flowers have closed, while the
nasturtiums, clovers and various other plants retire for the night
about six o'clock. The day-lily doesn't become sleepy until an
hour or an hour and a half later, while the little chickweed is as
bright and wakeful as ever until nine or ten. But that does not
mean that all members of the plant community have gone to bed.
The lazy four-o'-clocks didn't appear on the scene until their
appointed hour. The evening primroses waited until sundown
before waking, while the jimson-weeds and moon-flowers, the
cereus and other cacti and a host of other plants are real
night-hawks and wait until after dark before blooming. Of
course, plants are not infallible as timekeepers. Even our railway
trains are often late, and human beings often oversleep, or retire
ahead of their customary hours. Moreover, the plants keep "sun
time" and may be deceived by dull or cloudy weather or by
unusually cold or unusually warm mornings or evenings. In the
autumn the morning-glory vines often wait until the sun is well
up before opening their flowers, which then remain open
throughout the greater part of the day. And on very dull dark
days or when the heavy black clouds of a thunderstorm turn
daylight into twilight, the primroses, jimson-weeds and others
frequently think the sun has set and open their flowers.
But on the whole they keep wonderfully good time and vary little
in their hours of opening and closing.
Every one knows that certain plants bloom at certain seasons of
the year. No one would expect to find
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wood-anemones starring the woodlands in the autumn, nor
goldenrods and asters in blossom in April and May, and while
certain flowers may blossom from spring until frost, while others
may overlap or a few individuals may hang on long after their
fellows have gone to seed, the great majority abide quite strictly
by the calendar. But even if we all know the flowers we may
expect to find in spring, summer, and autumn or even during
certain months, how many of us realize that we can determine the
seasons by the colors of the wild flowers? Yet if we stop to
consider the matter we will find that certain colors predominate
at certain times of the year. In the early spring we have mostly
white or palecolored flowers-anemones, saxifrage, liverworts,
bloodroot, white daisies, spring beauties, wild
lilies-of-the-valley, azaleas, laurel, shade-trees and others. A little
later the blue and yellow flowers predominate and we have the
violets and gentians, the Robert daisies and forget-me-nots, and
the blue flags together with the soft pinks of wild geraniums, the
arbutus and moccasin flowers, and the golden buttercups and
cowslips and the wild pinks. As late spring emerges into summer
the wild flowers assume richer, more voluptuous hues. Fields
glow with the orange-yellow, rudbeckias or black-eyed Susans
and the flaming orange meadow lilies. Cardinal flowers gleam
like living coals beside woodland streams, poppies fairly blaze in
the hot sunshine, fireweed and butterfly-weeds flaunt their
intense colors, and scarlet painted cups and burnt orange devil's
paint brushes gleam in the meadows. Then as summer wanes, the
purple asters and the goldenrods drape the countryside in royal
robes, and we know winter will soon be here.
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But even winter has its plant colors, for we all know that the
glossy green leaves and scarlet berries of the holly, and the soft
green of princess pine, are symbolical of the season of ice and
snow and Christmas cheer.
Not only do the plants maintain a calendar of their own, but they
record the events of their lives with greater accuracy than will be
found in our written histories. Human historians may err, they
may disagree as to important events and important dates, and
they are all too often biased and make little of certain incidents
and exaggerate others. But the plants never err, they record each
event as it occurs and do not rely upon others or upon hearsay
evidence, and they are absolutely impartial.
Every school-child knows that the age of a tree may be
determined by counting the rings of growth visible on a cross
section of the trunk. But the rings that tell us the tree's age do far
more than this, for they reveal a complete history of the major
events which have taken place during the life of the tree. Every
severe storm, each period of drought or floods, even unusually
severe winters or abnormally hot summers are indelibly recorded
by means of these records. Hence scientists or others who are
skilled in interpreting the tree's diary may unravel the entire
detailed story of its life and of the conditions of the locality
where it grew for hundreds, even thousands of years past.
By this means, too, scientists have been able to establish the age
of ancient ruins of cliff dwellings and pueblos in the southwest
and elsewhere. How do they accomplish this feat of seeming
legerdemain? Quite simply and easily. By carefully measuring
the rings of
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a newly felled tree and making enlarged graphs of the variations
in growth indicating weather conditions recorded by the tree, and
by comparing these with the growth-rings on timbers from the
ancient ruins, they can link the two tree histories and so
determine just when the ancient timbers were cut. For example, if
a living tree is found with rings plainly recording a flood or a
drought eight hundred years ago, and if a section of an ancient
timber from the ruined village shows identical records, it is a
simple matter to count the rings indicating the years that the
ancient tree recorded between the time of the flood or drought
and the time it was cut. Thus if it is found that the timber was cut
two hundred years after the momentous event occurred, then we
may be certain that the Indians felled the tree to be used in their
building six hundred years ago.
But far more remarkable than the fact that trees are the most
accurate of all historians, and that by means of their records we
can determine just what weather and meteorological conditions
existed thousands of years ago, is the fact that some plants are
weather prophets. Moreover, there are certain plants that foretell
the weather so accurately that even meteorological experts in
weather bureaus find them most valuable assistants. This may
sound incredible, yet at the Kew Gardens near London, England,
there is an established weather-plant observatory which, on
several occasions, has foretold weather, as well as other events,
more accurately and further in advance than the scientists in the
government Weather Bureau. Although this amazing plant
weather bureau contains a great
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many species of weather-wise plants gathered from all parts of
the world, yet the chief of the plant observatory is a native of
India known to botanists as Abrus precatorius which means an
Abrus used in prayers. This is more appropriate than its common
name Indian licorice, for in India its scarlet and black seeds are
made into prayer-beads or rosaries. They are also used as weights
and another interesting bit of romance is added to the remarkable
plant because the famous Kohinoor diamond was weighed by
means of these pretty seeds.
Although the East Indians have long known of the seemingly
mystic powers of the plant, its amazing ability to foretell weather,
electrical disturbances, and even catastrophes, yet it was not
known to the outside world until about fifty years ago when
Professor Nowack, the Austrian scientist, astonished his fellow
scientists by proving that the magic plant could predict weather
two days in advance. His demonstration was so convincing and
was considered of so much importance that the Prince of Wales
(later King Edward VII of England) arranged for Baron Nowack
to go to England and establish the strange plant weather bureau at
Kew.
It would be astonishing enough if this little vine did nothing more
than to foretell weather, but it is extremely sensitive to magnetic
and electrical conditions, even when at a great distance, and any
approach of atmospheric or other disturbances is indicated by the
movements of the leaves of the plant. Again and again Professor
Nowack "beat" the trained meteorological experts by means of
his weather-plants, even predicting cyclonic disturbances and
earthquakes. But the greatest
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feat of the astounding plant was its forecast of a catastrophe
which no human weather prophet could have foretold, for the
plants at Kew actually predicted a fire-damp explosion in British
mines which caused the loss of many lives.
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Chapter XIX
THE MOST WONDERFUL PLANTS
OF all the wonder plants which are the most wonderful? Are
they the plants which supply us with our clothing, our homes, our
dyes and the thousand-and-one necessities and luxuries of life?
Are they the plants which make possible our letters, our books
and magazines, our libraries and our daily newspapers? Are the
most wonderful plants those which appear to possess real
intelligence or those which capture insects in cleverly designed
traps? Perhaps you feel that the plants which are used as
medicines or those which supply us with food and drink should
be considered the most wonderful of all. But none of these, not
even the plant giants that have lived for thousands of years and
tower hundreds of feet in the air, are the most wonderful. On the
contrary the most wonderful of all plants are the smallest of all
plants, real plant pygmies so minute that they are invisible to the
unaided human eye, so inconceivably small that a thousand of the
plants could find lodgment upon the head of a common pin with
room to spare; so immeasurably tiny that they can be detected
only by means of the microscope and very powerful microscopes
at that. Not only are they the smallest of all plants, but they are
also the most numerous and most widely distributed, for they are
everywhere. They swarm by millions in every square inch
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of earth, they teem in every drop of water in every stream, lake,
pond, swamp, and in the sea. They float by myriads in the air we
breathe and they inhabit the fluids and the tissues of our bodies,
the bodies of all living creatures and all other plants. Moreover,
they are by far the most important and valuable of all plants, for
without them there would be no life on earth, nothing to eat,
nothing to drink, no vegetation. Yet on the other hand they cause
sickness, disaster, pestilence, and death. Probably by now you
have guessed that the most wonderful of all plants are those
known as Bacteria, man's greatest, most useful friends as well as
his deadliest enemies.
Without bacteria many of our important industries would be as
impossible as would life itself. Butter, cheese, vinegar, yeast,
bread, alcohol, tobacco, cocoa, beer, wine, liquors, and countless
other useful and essential substances, foods and beverages are all
made possible by the minute bacteria plants. How do they
produce these? By breaking down chemical and atomic
combinations and rebuilding them to produce new and totally
different combinations and forms. Just how they accomplish such
seeming miracles we do not know, for even our greatest scientists
with all their modern instruments and appliances have never been
able to duplicate much of the work of these minute plants. And in
many cases when chemists and others have succeeded, their
success was the result of calling upon other bacteria to aid them.
When an animal dies it soon decomposes, but what we call
decomposition is the activity of millions of tiny plants busily
absorbing or devouring the animal tissues,
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separating the chemicals of which the creature was composed,
and rearranging them to produce useful fertile soil for the benefit
of plants. And when these plants fade and wither and die and
"rot" as we express it, the ever-busy bacteria plants are merely
working their magic and are giving back to the earth and the air
the chemicals which the dead plant absorbed and used in life.
Were it not for the army of industrious microscopic plants, the
rubbish of our homes and cities would overwhelm us. But almost
as fast as the offal and waste accumulates it is broken down and
transformed to useful soil and to essential chemicals by the
trillions of bacteria. To be sure, there are certain substances
which even these wonderful plants cannot destroy. Glass,
bakelite, iron, brass, and other metals resist these minute plants,
for bacteria are impotent when it comes to breaking down the
chemical combinations of many materials made by man. But
there are no natural objects or substances which do not give way
to their activities. Even the enduring rocks fall to their attacks
and crumble away to form soil. But if they cannot unaided
destroy iron and steel they can employ their chemical allies to do
so. Bury a piece of iron in the earth or place it under decaying
vegetation and it soon becomes eaten away and vanishes,
although a piece of the same metal exposed to the open air may
merely rust and may remain fairly well preserved for years after
the buried portions have vanished. Why? Because the bacteria in
the soil and vegetation have been working steadily in their
laboratories and have released chemicals-gases and acids-which
have eaten away and destroyed the metal.
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In fact the greatest services these microscopic plants render us
are their activities as chemists. Plants require nitrogen and this is
supplied by countless bacteria which possess the power of
absorbing the vital chemical and distributing it in the soil. All
farmers know that by planting a crop of beans, alfalfa, or peas on
exhausted land they enrich the soil, but it was not until quite
recently that the "whys and wherefores" of this were learned. The
puzzle was solved when scientists discovered that certain
nitrogen-absorbing bacteria thrived upon the roots of leguminous
plants, forming little clusters, and that it was these minute
funguslike plants which by releasing nitrogen enriched the soil
where legumes were grown.
As every one knows, animals breathe oxygen and exhale
carbon-dioxide, whereas plants absorb carbon dioxide and give
off oxygen. But there is only a definite amount of oxygen and
carbon-dioxide in the air, water, and earth, and if these gases had
not been restored and used over and over again, the supply would
have been exhausted and all animal and plant life would have
vanished from earth ages ago. How has this restoration been
accomplished? By the wonderful bacteria plants.
Swarming on dead vegetation they break down the tissues,
extract the chemicals of which the plants were composed and
return them to the earth and air, thus providing the
carbon-dioxide ready to be absorbed and transformed to carbon
by the plants, and to release the oxygen essential to animal life.
Moreover, during this process the busy bacteria release quantities
of "marsh gas" which decomposes substances containing sulphur,
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thus preparing them for the activities of other bacteria who
transform them to sulphates.
Numerous forms of the wonder-working plants absorb light and
cause the phosphorescent glow known as "fox fire," while others
produce the heat which we so often find in compost heaps and
the interior of hay stacks. At times these plants even produce fire
by spontaneous combustion. But the damage they cause in this
way is more than offset by the benefit man derives from their
heat-making powers.
Tobacco is made fit for use by means of these bacteria whose
heating powers are used in the tobacco "sweating" process.
Others serve a similar purpose in sweating the cacao beans and
various other products. Still others produce brilliant colors, some
of which are of great value to man, while many more constantly
wage a war of extermination with their fellow bacteria which
cause diseases and death.
Perhaps you wonder what these truly wonderful Plant pygmies
are like, whether they have roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and
seeds. Some do have seeds or properly speaking, spores, which
under favorable conditions sprout or germinate very rapidly, and
under unfavorable conditions will remain dormant but alive for
years. The majority, however, increase by dividing or splitting,
each half then becoming an independent plant which in turn splits
in half forming two more plants. In this way they increase with
almost incredible speed. Under normal conditions one of these
tiny plants will reach maturity and split in thirty minutes, and
within twenty-four hours this single bacteria will have produced
billions of new plants.
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In appearance they bear little resemblance to other members of
the plant world for they are simple things despite their amazing
powers and importance. Some are straight and rod like and are
known to scientists as "bacilli." Others are round or globular and
are called "cocci," while still others are curled or twisted and are
referred to as "spirella." Many are fixed or rooted like ordinary
plants, but there are many kinds of bacteria which move freely
about in liquids by means of countless vibratory hairs or "cilia."
Moreover, they move with incredible speed in proportion to their
size. It is not unusual for them to travel a distance of four inches
in fifteen minutes or sixteen inches an hour. That may seem
almost a snail's pace, but remember that the little traveler is
scarcely one fifteen-thousandths of an inch in length. In other
words it covers sixty-thousand times its own length in moving
four inches, or at the rate of about four thousand times its own
length per minute. Who says that isn't speeding? If human beings
could run at that speed they would travel over four miles a
minute or about three hundred miles an hour. Imagine being able
to hot-foot it from New York to San Francisco between breakfast
and dinner!
Just as some ordinary plants are tender, delicate things and wither
and die unless they have just the proper amount of moisture and
the right temperature, while others are tough and hardy and will
grow anywhere and will endure blazing sunshine and bitterly
cold winters, so we find both tender and hardy members of the
bacteria plant family. Some can only exist where it is damp, dark,
and cool. Others prefer dry open spots and brilliant light. Some
are very sensitive to heat while
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others are killed by cold. But on the other hand there are many of
these minute plants whose spores will survive the most intense
cold and terrific heat. They will germinate and produce more
bacteria even after being frozen in liquid air at a temperature of
over four hundred degrees below zero, and they are equally
unharmed by being subjected to a bath in boiling water. But most
remarkable of all is the fact that members of this amazing group
of plants have actually been found in meteorites. That does sound
absolutely impossible, for it would mean that they had withstood
the searing terrible heat of molten metal. How is it possible for
any organic substance to resist combustion under such
temperatures? But reputable scientists have claimed more than
once that they had discovered traces of bacteria in these
fragments of celestial bodies. In that case these plants have the
right to be considered the most wonderful plants in the entire
universe for they are the only ones ever to have traveled from
other worlds to ours.
But even if the scientists have made a mistake and bacteria have
never occurred in meteorites, they certainly are the most
wonderful plants on earth, for without them no other plants
would be possible.
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INDEX Acacia. and ants, 118, 119, Aster, wild, 229 120 Atropine. 63 Acacia trees 633 224 Achiote, 264 Aconite, 63 Bachelor's button, 221 African marigold, 272 Bacteria. 3. 280 Agave, fiber. 261 Balsam fir, 266 Air-cabbage, 220 Balsa wood. 137 Air-plants, 105. 220 249 Balsas, 137 Alder, 186 Bamboo. 28. 83 Algae 5 Banana, 20, 46-50 Allspice, 150 Banyan, 76 Almond. 153 Baobab, 76, 202 American senna. 236 Barberry, 239 Andean corn. 156 Barley, 153 Anotto, 264 Barrel cactus. 17.1 Ant farmers. 121 palm, 39, 40 Ant tree of Java, 8 Basswood, 217 Ants 15, 118, 119, 120, 122 Batchelor's button, 222 Apa-Apa, 81 "Batata.", 145 Apocynum cannabium, 206 Bearberry, 20,1 Apple, 149, 153, 186 Beech drops, 4, 249 "Arrete le neg," 120 Beenas, 184 Arrow grass, 293 259 Beggars' lice, 211 Arrow-head, 79 Beggars' ticks, 211 Artichoke. Jerusalem. 2,11 Belladonna, 63 Arum, giant, 80 Bergamont, oil of, 196 Asafetida, 189 Bhang, 205 Ash 217 Bindweed, 247 Aster 211, 2151 231 Birch-bark canoes, 131
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INDEX
Bitter cassava. 66 Bitter-root, 55 Black drink, of Cherokees, 170 Black-Jack. 224 Blackberries. 153 Bladder-nut, 221 Bladderwort, 128 Boneset, 236 Brazil wood, 261 Bread-root, Indian, 243 Broma, 168 Buckeye. 191 Bulrushes, 258 Bull-briar, 241 Bullet-tree. 136 Burdock. 211. 236, 239 Bur-marigold, 211 Burr-grass, 211 Bush ropes. 136 Buttercups. 231 Butterwort, 126 Cabbage-palm, 26 "Cacahua," M Cacao. 163. 161 Cacao plant. 161 "Cacaoquahtl," 161 Cacti, 2, 533 174
giant, 83. 84, 173 Saguaro. 81. 173
Caffein, 174 Cahosh, 238 Calabash, 30 Caladiums, 184 California hyacinths, 242 Calisaya, 59 Camas, 242 Camelia, 168
Camote, 1,17 Camphor, 199 Canal Zone, water-hyacinths in. 111 Cannabis. 200. 206 Cannon-ball tree, 30 Capsicum, 149 Carolina tea, 170 Carrot, wild, 239 Cashew nuts 65. 66 Cassareep, 67 Cassava, 66. 176 Cassiri, 176 Castor-oil bean, 198, 266 Cat-briar. 230. 247 Catchfly, 246 Catnip, 196 Cattails. 258 Cayenne pepper. 150 Cecropia tree, 134, 136 Cedar bark. 258 Cedar of Lebanon. 75 Ceiba, 202, 216 Centipede tree, 99 Century-plant. 23, 176 Cereus. 16, 273 Chaulmoogra tree, 63 Cherokee black drink, 170 Cherry pits, 217 Chestnut, horse-, 188 Chicha, 176 Chickweed. 273 Chicle, 25 Chicory, 240 Chili pepper. 150 China brier. 211
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INDEX Chincona, 57, 59 Cocoanut fiber, 257 "Chocalatl," 164 palms, 24, 32, 33, 77, 160 "Chocli," 156 twin, 42 Chocolate. 163. 161 Cow-tree, 22 Indian, 242 Crab-tree, 198 root, 242 Cucumber. wild, 21,7 Cicely, sweet, 188 Curare poison, 64 Cigarette tree, 26 Cypress. 75 Citronella, 198 giant, 174 Clematis, wild, 215 Cypress of Chapultepec, 71 Clover, 273 Cypress trees of Mexico, 74 Cloves, oil of, 266 Club-moss, is Coffee, 161 Daisies, 231 Java, 218 ox-eye, 240 Coir, 257 white, 229 Cola nut, 178 Dandelion, 281. 236, 272 Columbine, 265 greens. 241 Coontee, 241 Dasheen, 81 Copal, 201, 266 Date-palm. 40 Coreopsis, wild, 231 Day-lilies, 272 Corn, 157 Deadly nightshade, 63, 143 Indian, 153 Devil-doer. 174 Spanish, 259 Devil's anchors. 211 Syrian, 157 thread, 218 Cotton, 19, 216, 254 Diatoms, 2, 8 Couri gum, 266 Digitalis, 63 Cowslip, 241 Dittany, 236 Cow-tree. 22 Divinini reds, 186 Cocaine. 60. 62 Dock, 224 Coca leaves, 60 Dock root, 239 Plant. 61 Dodder, 218 Cockle-bur, 211, 230, 239 Dogwood, poison, 65 Coco, 168 "Dragon's blood," 264 Cocoa, 163, 161 Dugout canoes, 133, 131 butter, 168 Dutchman's breeches, 179 shells, 168 Dutchman's pipe, 179, 244 Cocoa nuts. 164 Dwarf trees, 86
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INDEX
Eddoes, 179, 238 Gatun lake, 105 Edible fungus, 3 Goat-nut. 242 Eel-grass, 258 Goldenrod, 211, 229, 231, Egyptian corn, 157 239 Elephant's ears, 81, 179 Gomier trees, 25 flower, 179 Goofahs, 131 foot 179 Gooseberry, 186 Elm 217 Gourd plant. 170 Etah palm. 26. 103 Giant arum, 80 Eucalytpus, 16, 93 cacti, 83, 84, 173 Euphorbia, 194 cypress trees, 74 Evening primrose, 16, 278 fig trees, 75, 76 Everglades, water-hyacinths junipers of Virginia, 75 in. 11 lilies of Guiana, 88 redwood trees, 76 tree cactus, 173 Fan-palms, 27, 41 Grass. marram. 227 "Farine," 67 pigeon, 234 Ferns. 2. 133 149 247 883 204, sand-, 212 223 silk, 259 Fig trees. 75. 76 squaw-, 242 giant, 75, 76 Grass-cloth plant, 257 wild, 250 Grapes, 159 Fire-pink, 245 Greenheart, 186 Flag, sweet, 183 Grugru palm. go. 39 Flax, 19. 254 worms, 39 Floating islands, 101-113 Guarana', 174 Four-leaf clover. 186 Gulfweed, 8 Four o'clock, 16. 273 Gumbo, 17 Foxglove, 63 Gum-ellemi, 25, 201 Frankincense, 267 Gumplant, 236 Fungi, 2, 8, 5, 11 Gunnera, 82 Fungus, 12 Gypsy combs. 246 raised by ants. 122 1 Hammamelis, 186 Gamboge. 264 Hashish. 205 Ganja, 205 Hawkweed, 2313 272
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INDEX
Haws, 217 Hawthorn. 186 Hazel, 186 Heather, white, 188 Heliotrope trees, 79 Hemlock, poison, 6,1 Hemp, Indian, 205, 296
Manilla, 29, 46, 132, 255 Oriental, 205 pita, 158 plants, 205, 255
Henbane. 63 Hennequin, 255 Hibiscus, 216 Holly, 98, 170 Hop vines, 168 Horse-chestnut, 188 Houseleek, 222 Hurricane trees, 131, 136 Hyacinths, 108-112 Hydroidea, 3 Hydroids, 2, 16, 17, 18 Hyoscyamine, 63 Iceland moss. 13 Ice-plant, 272 llex, 170 Indian bread-root, 243
chocolate, 242 corn. 153 hemp, 205, 296 licorice. 277 millet, 242 pipe, 4, 249 potatoes, 242 turnip, 65
Indigo, 264 Insect powder, 199 Irish cobbler, 189
moss, 8 potatoes, 143-146
Ivory-nut palm, 41 Ivy, poison, 64 Jack-in-the-pulpit, 65, 245 Java coffee, 218 Jellyfish, 17 Jerusalem artichoke, 241 Jewel-weed, 221, 239 jimson-weed, 63, 230, 236, 273 Jojoba, 242 Juniper. 159
giant. 75 Kapok. 19, 189 Kelp, 8 Khat, 173 Kilakilolo, 270 Kinnikinnick, 204 Kite tree 31 Krakatoa, 12 Lace-bark tree, 23 Lady's slipper, 181 Laudanum, 63 Lavender, 196, 267 Leaf-carrying ants, 122 Leek, house, 222
wild, 242 Legumes, 3 Letter-wood, 186
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INDEX Lianas, 20. 22, 136, 250 Mary's hand, 63 Lichens, 10. 11, 12, 153 88 Mazetta tree, 194 Licorice, Indian, 277 Meadow-rue. 239 Life-leaf plant, 222 Mealies, 157 Lilies. giant. 88 Medicinal plants, 56 Sego, 242 Mesquite, 242 Linden seeds, 217 "Metapee," 66 Litmus, 13 Mildews, 231 Lizard tree. 2. 99 Milkweed, 213, 21,1 Locust seeds. 224 fiber, 258 Logwood, 261 Milkwort, 222 Lotus, 260 Millet, Indian, 242 Love apples, 149 Mistletoe. 185, 186 Moccasin flower, 181 Molds, 231 Macutos, 41 slime, 4 Madder, wild, 239 Moon-flower, 273 Maguey, 176 Morning glories 16, 87, 146, fiber, 261 227 Maidenhair ferns, 1,1, 88 Morphine, 63 Mai Yang tree. 201 Mosses, 8, 10, 11, 13, 249 Maize, 153 "Mountain cabbage," 38 Manchineel tree. 65 Mouse plant, 268 Mandrake, 183 Mucanyoko tree, 194 Man-eating plants. 129 Mulberry fiber, 258 Mangroves. 224 Mullen, 191, 229, 231, 236 Manioc, 66, 143 Mushrooms, 2, 3, 5, 249 Manilla hemp, 29, 46, 132, Musk. 196 255 Myrrh, 267 Maple-tree seeds, 217 Marguerite. 240 Marigold, marsh-, 241 Nasturtiums. 273 wild. 272 Nettles, 230 Mariposa tulip, 243 fiber. 257, Marjoram, 188 flowers, 239 Marram grass,. 227 New Jersey tea, 170 Marsh-marigold, 241 Night-blooming cereus, 16, Mate, 170 273
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INDEX Nightshade. 230 Paraguay tea, 170 Nux vomica, 63 Peach palm, 39 Peaches. 153 Peanut, 151, 152 Oak. Quercitron, 265 Peas. wild, 2473 258 Oak-trees and mistletoe, 186 Pejibaye palm, 39 Oats, 153 Pennyroyal, 236 wild, 242 "Pepper pot," 67 Oil of cloves, 266 Peppers, 149 Okra, 217 red, 150 Old man's beard. 250 sweet, 149 Onions, 199 Persian insect-powder plant, wild 9.42 199 Opium, 204 Peruvian bark, 57 Orange, Osage, 198 Pickerel weed, 79 Orchids 15, 88, 105, 115, Pigeon grass, 234 179, 219 Pigweed, 211 Oriental poppy, 201 Pimento, 150 hemp, 205 Pimiento, 151 Orris, 267 Pine, 275 Osage orange, 198 Pineapple, 69 Ox-eye daisy, 240 fiber, 258 Pita hemp, 258 Pitcher-plants, 128, 125 Paddle tree, 28 "Pits", 217 Painted cup, 217 Piva palm, 26 Paiwarie, 68. 176 Plantain. 231 Palm cabbage, 33, 88 wild, 15, 27 Palmetto, 30 Plants 'spread by whalers, Palms, 13, 20, 25, 26, 33, 38, 132 39, 42, 43-45, 77, 78 Plasmodium, 5 Panama hats, 258 Poinsettia, 247 Pansies, 221 Poison dogwood, 65 Pansy tree, 79 hemlock, 6,1 Papas, 14,1 ivy, 64 Paper, 260 sumac, 65 Paprika, 150 Pokeweed, 236, 288 Papyrus, 260 Poplar, 216
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INDEX Poppy, 63, 281, 272 Resin, 266 Oriental, 204 Resurrection plants, 52 white, 201 Rhodium, 196 Potato "balls," 147 Rice, 158 Potatoes. Indian, 212 Rice straw. 261 Irish or white, 143, 146 Rockweed, 8 sweet, 143. 146, 148 Ruse-apples, 267 Primrose, evening, 16, 273 Rose of Jericho, 52 Princess pine, 275 Roses, 153 Protoplasm, 5 Royal palms, 33, 38, 77 "Pulp" trees, 262 Rubber-trees, 22 Pulque, 176 Rue, meadow-, 239 Purple-heart tree, 28 Rusts, 231 Purslane, 241 Rye, 153 Pyrethrum, 199 St. John's wort, 87, 238 Quamash, 242 Sandalwood, 267 Queen Anne's lace, 239 tree, 201 Quercitron oak, 265 Sand-box tree, 222 Quarries, 57 Sand-grass, 212 Quinine, 57, 59 Sand-reed, 227 Sanders, red, 264 "Sara," 156 Raffia, 258 Saguaro brandy, 86 Rafflesia flower, so cactus, 84, 173 Ramie, 257 Sassafras tea, 170 Raspberries, 153 Saw-palmetto, 33 Rattan, 21 Seaweeds, 6 Red buckeye, 194 Seda virgen, 23 pepper, 150 Sego, wild, 242 sanders. 26,1 Sego lily, 242 Sea, 6 Sensitive plants, 91, 98 snow, 6 Sequoia trees 72 willow, 204 Sheep-nut, 242 Redwood trees, giant, 75 Shrew-tree, 191 Reed boats, 187 Silk-cotton tree, 188 Reindeer moss, 18 Silk grass, 259
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INDEX Silky cornel, 204 cicely, 188 Sisal, 255 fern, 201 Slime molds, 4 flag, 183 Sloths, 6 peppers, 149 Smuts, 231 potatoes. 146. 148 Soap-bark tree, 29 Syrian corn, 157 Soap-berry bush, 29 Soap-plant, 191 Soap-vine, 29 ''Tagua," 41 Soredia, 11 Talipot palm, 43-45 Sorrel. 221. 238 Tanier, 81 seeds, 234 Tansy, 236 Snake-dagger. 258 Tapioca, 67 Spanish bayonet, 258 Taro, 179 corn, 157 Tea, grades of, 169 moss, 249 New Jersey, 170 Sphagnum, 10 of Gauchos, 173 Spruces, 262 Paraguay, 170 Spuds,143 sassafras, 170 Squaw-grass, 242 Tea plant, 168 Star of Bethlehem. 272 Teasel, 239, 241 Starry campion, 245 Tefeldi tree. 202 Sticktight, 213 Thistles, 215, 230, 272 Stop the Negro, 120 Toadstools, 64, 249 Strawberries. 153 Tobacco, 19, 202, 209 Strychnine, 63 Tomatoes. 148. 149 Sugar-cane, 153. 159 Tortoise plant, 179 Sumac berries, 204 Touch-me-not, 221 poison. 65 Travelers' palm, 20 Sun-bittern, 14 Tree cactus, 173 Sundews, 88, 126, 128 Tree-ferns, 11, 21 "Sun" flowers, 16 Trefoil, 188 Sunflowers. wild, 239 Trumpet-creeper, 90 Sunroot, 241 Tulip tree, 217 Swamp moss, 10 Tumbleweeds, 187, 219 Sweating cacao, 166 "Tuk-eya-heya," 26 Sweet briar, 231 Turkey mullen, 194 cassava, 66 Turkish wheat, 157
WonderPlants and Plant Wonders
© Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005 Page 297
INDEX Turnip, Indian, 65 White daisies, 229 Twin cocoanut, 42 heather, 188 poppy, 201 Willows, 51 Umbrella ants, 122 red, 201 weeping. 51 Witch-apples, 187 Vanilla bean orchid, 115 Witch-balls, 187 Venus's fly-trap, 125 Witches'-besom, 187 Verbena tree, 79 Witch-broom, 187 Vetch, 239 Witch-alder, 187 Viburnum, 238 Witch-elm, 187 Victoria Regia, 80 Witch-grass, 231, 236 Vines, hop, 158 Witch-hazel, 186 north and south of equator, Wood sorrel, 221 90, 913 92 Worcestershire sauce, 67 soap, 29 Wurali poison, 61 Violet trees., 79 Violets, 221 Yams, 148 Virgin's bower, 215 Yaretta, 200 Yarrow, 235 Yaupon, 170 Walking fern. 2, 228 Yantias, 81, 179 Walking leaves, 4 Yeast plants. 158 Walking-stick insects, 1 Yellow-wood, 239 Water-hyacinth, 108-112 Yerba mate, 170 Wax-palms, 25, 42 Yucca, 29 Weeping willow, 61 Whale-boats. 132 Wheat. 153 Zinnias, 265