A Valuable Tree for California [pp. 73-77]

A4 Valuable Tree for Californiia.
A VALUABLE TREE FOR CALIFORNIA.
"To him the palm is a gift divine
Wherein all uses of man combine,
Hlouse and raiment and food and wine."
Hi~~,~o~~ X C E P T
.- P Ad ~~~~gra ss es,
the palm to man is the
most important vegeta -^< >, ble growth on the face of
the globe. All its parts
are of service, and the
'~ / tree supplies a greater
/ ~ ~:~ ~number
of people
.~. -dJ~',~'with the
j? ~~~~~necessi ~.'F~~~~ ~ties of life
~vt~~ ~than any
other plant or tree. We recognize in full
the immense value of the olive, the apple, the orange, the fig, and the vine.
We would not in the least detract from
their merits or their usefulness to the
human race, but simply wish to point
out how indispensable to millions of people is this prince of the plant kingdom.
The palm is the characteristic tree of a
vast portion of the globe. It lifts its high
and lofty plumage above the sands of the
African deserts so conspicuously as to
be almost the only tree mentioned by
travelers in Egypt, Nubia, Morocco, Tunis, and the great Sahara. It covers
the islands of the Pacific and the Indian
Oceans. It is among the grandest forms
of plant life in South and Central America, and is one of the most useful in
south-western Asia.
In its form and structure the palm is
eminently adapted to the tropical parts
of the earth. Its fibres are so elastic
and flexible that the tree bends like a
reed to the tornado where our northern
forests would be swept flat to the earth.
The wood of the palm has been aptly
compared to artificial whalebone consisting of horse-hairs glued and pressed together. In some varieties, as the peach
palm of Venezuela and Guiana, the wood
is so hard as to notch or turn the edge
of the best ax. The palm assumes an
infinite variety of forms, from the lofty
tree with its tufted plumage to creeping
vines over a thousand feet in length. Its
leaves vary from the merest needles to
the most gigantic leaf production in the
world. The leaves of the Talipat palm
will easily shelter ten persons at once.
Navigators on the upper Nile set up a
single leaf of the Delip palm to shelter
a boat-load of people. The leaves of the
Sabal and Palmyra palms are from twelve
to fifteen feet in breadth. The immense
leaves of the Jupati palm of Brazil are
sixty feet in height, or taller than many
of our ordinary forest trees.
The footstalk that holds these gigantic productions is as large as the massive
limb of the oak.
"From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed,
And a palm thatch shields from the sun aloft."
Among the curious palms is the Peruvian wax plant. It is entirely covered
with a whitish wax. A single stem of
this will sometimes yield twenty five
pounds of wax. This is scraped from
the stem and mixed with tallow for candles. Among the most famous palms is
the cocoanut tree supplying to the South
Sea Islanders almost all the necessities
of life. Sir Samuel Baker says of the
1890.]
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