Garden and forest [Volume 7, Issue 307]

Garden and Forest.

man, that it has every appearance of being indigenous on
the shores of east tropical America.
The Cocoanut Palm is a magnificent plant, well named
"a prince of the vegetable kingdom," with tall slender
columnar stem eighty or a hundred feet high, and rich
pale yellow-green leaves which are thirty or forty feetlong
and flutter and rustle with every breath of wind.
The Cocoanut grows only near the shore, where its roots
penetrating the sandy soil may drink freely from clear
underground springs. Of all trees it is the most useful to
man, furnishing food, shelter and employment to hundreds
of thousands of the human race. In tropical countries,
especially in southern India and in Malaya, the Cocoanut
supplies to whole communities the chief necessities of life.
Every part is useful; the roots are considered a remedy
against fevers; from the trunk houses, boats and furniture
are made; the leaves furnish the thatch for houses and the
material from which baskets, hats, mats and innumerable
other articles are made; the network of fibres at their base
is used for sieves and is woven into cloth; from the young
flower-stalks a Palm-wine, called toddy, is obtained, from
which arrak, a fiery alcoholic drink, is distilled. The value
of the fruit is well known. From the husk, which is called
coir, commercially, cordage, bedding, mats, brushes and
other articles are manufactured. In the tropics, lamps,
drinking-vessels and spoons are made from the hard shells.
The albumen of the seed contains large quantities of oil,
used in the east for cooking and in illuminating; in Europe
and the United States it is often made into soap and candles, yielding, after the oil is extracted, a refuse valuable
as food for cattle, or as a fertilizer. In some parts of the
tropics the kernel of the seed forms the chief food of the
inhabitants. The cool, milky fluid which fills the cavity
of the fruit when the nut is young, affords an agreeable
beverage, and the albumen of the young nut, which is soft
and jelly-like, is nutritious and of a delicate flavor.
As might be expected in the case of a plant of such value,
it is often carefully and extensively cultivated in many
countries, and numerous varieties, differing in the size,
shape and quality of the fruit, are now known. The Cocoanut is propagated by seeds; the nuts are sown in nursery-beds, and at the end of six or eight months the
seedlings are large enough to plant. The plants are usually
set twenty-five feet apart each way in carefully prepared
beds filled with rich surface-soil. Once established, a plantation of Cocoanuts requires little care beyond watering,
which is necessary in its early years to ensure a rapid and
vigorous growth. In good soil the trees usually begin to
flower at the end of five or six years, and may be expected
to be in full bearing in from eight to twelve years. Thirty
nuts from a tree is considered a fair average yield, although
individual trees have been known to produce an average of three hundred nuts during a period of ten years.
An application of manure increases the yield of the trees,
although, probably, the value of the additional crop obtained in this way is hardly large enough to justify much
expenditure.
In recent years the Cocoanut has been cultivated on a
very large scale in British Honduras, Jamaica and other
parts of Central America, as well as on the northern
coast of South America and the West Indies. The consumption of cocoanuts in the United States has become very
large, as many as twenty millions being imported to this
country every year. They are brought largely in steamers
with other cargoes, although there are sailing vessels engaged in this trade exclusively, and last month two
schooners discharged in this city, respectively, I70,0oo
and 260,000 nuts. Those which come from San Blas are
considered the most desirable, since they shell more

easily, while the meat is richer in oil and retains its
flavor longer than others. Those from Baracoa are
larger, but they lack oil and flavor, and cost less. After
they are unloaded the nuts are sorted here and divided into three grades, according to size. The present
price for select nuts from San Bias is $28.00o a thousand,

from Jamaica $25.00, and from Baracoa $20.00, while the
other grades are correspondingly lower; the lowest class,
known to the trade as "eggs," brings only $Io.oo a thousand. More than one-half of all the cocoanuts imported
are bought by the confectioners, a single firm in New
York using as many as forty thousand a month, and it is
possible to fill this large standing order because importations are made all the year round. Of the remainder the
larger portion goes to the desiccating establishments, while
only a few are now sold in the stores in their natural condition.
The Mexican Ash.
(F the beautiful Mexican Ash, Fraxinus Berlandieriana,
Mr. C. G. Pringle, who has lately returned to his
home in Vermont from another successful Mexican journey,
chiefly devoted to exploring the flora of the state of
Jalisco, writes:
In October I visited Michoacan once more, and made a
longer tour than ever before through the mountainous regions
beyond Patzenaro. There, at last, I found the Mexican Ash in
its native habitat. It was nowhere abundant, but widely scattered over the hills and in various situations, quite in the way
of Fraxinus Americana on the hills of Vermont. Similar conditions to these in which I found the Ash extend eastward
from Michoacan through the states of Mexico and Puebla and
Hidalgo on the left-hand, and Guerrero and Oaxaca on the
right; and, without doubt, the range of this species extends
through the highlands of all these states. As might be expected, its size when growing in natural conditions was not
very large.
In the cities of the Mexican table-lands, excepting in Chihuahua, no species is so much planted in parks, plazas and
avenues as this Ash. Along streams beyond the city limits it
is to be found, probably disseminated from the town-planted
trees. It is worthy of being so generally used in plantations,
for it attains noble dimensions and presents a broad head of
dense dark green foliage. The color of the bark is darker
than that of Fraxinus Americana; it is hard, only an inch or
an inch and a half thick even on the oldest trees, and its furrows are shallow, interrupted and about an inch apart. Tihe
largest specimen I have seen overshadows half the plaza in
the city of Guadalajara; it is about fifty feet tall, and the trunk,
five feet above the surface of the soil, has a circumference of
I73 feet. The trunks of two specimens which form part of a
long avenue of venerable trees in the same city measure respectively I33 feet and II,2 feet in circumference.
It is this Ash which visitors through the valley in which
stands the city of Mexico always admire, and which they
speak of as one of the most beautiful of shade-trees.
Foreign Correspondence.
London Letter.
VITIS COIGNETIm. -Considerable interest in this plant has
been aroused in England since it became known that it is
the same as a vine which has been in the collection of Mr.
Anthony Waterer, at Knap Hill, many years, and which,
while it has delighted every one who has seen it in its
brilliant autumn colors, has persistently refused to be
propagated. The Knap Hill plant is an enormous specimen, and clambers over a building and an old tree-trunk,
and the brilliant red of its thousands of large leathery
leaves in September or October is worth going a long way
to see. A well-known English amateur who had lately
seen the plant at Knap Hill came to Kew to inquire about
it, for, to use his own language, he "could not sleep since
he saw the plant and was informed that he could not obtain
a specimen of it." The information recently published in
GARDEN AND FOREST concerning V. Coignetife has this week
been copied into the Gardeners' Chronicle. The plant is
certain to become a favorite here.

PUERARIA THUNBERGIANA.-The magnificent specimen of
this plant represented in the picture in GARDEN AND FOREST,
vol. vi., p. 505, is likely to call the attention of horticulturists to its value as a hardy climber. I have known the
plant about ten years, but never saw it except at Kew,

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[NUMBER 307.