Palm trees of the Amazon and their uses

This species can hardly be distinguished from the Œnocarpus baccába when young. In the full-grown plant, however, the leaves preserve their regularity, the leaflets spreading out regularly in one plane and having a very beautiful appearance. The stem in old trees is fifty or sixty feet high and quite smooth, but in those growing in the shade of the forest, and in all young trees, the stem is completely hidden by the persistent bases of the decayed and fallen leaves. I have figured a tree in this state (Plate XI.).

The sheathing bases of the petioles give out from their margins numerous long spinous processes of a very singular character. They are from eighteen inches to three feet long, of a black colour, flattish, and generally broken or fibrous at the point. They are much sought after by the Indians, who use them to make arrows for their “gravatánas” or blow-pipes. One of these arrows is here represented with the wicker quiver in which they are carried. They are about fifteen or eighteen inches long, sharply pointed at the end, which is covered with “curarí” poison for three or four inches down, and notched so as to break off in the wound. Near the bottom a little of the soft down of the silk-cotton-tree is twisted round into a smooth spindle-haped mass, and carefully secured with a fibre of a “bromelia.” The cotton just fits easily into the tube, offering a light resisting body for the breath to act upon.

The fruit of this species is very similar to that of the Baccába, and is said to be of even superior flavour.

The Patawá is found in the whole of the Amazon and Rio Negro in the virgin forest, though apparently nowhere very abundant. Specimens are now growing in the Palm House at Kew.

The fruit is represented on Pl. X. of the natural size.

Œnocarpus minor, Martius.
Baccába miri, Lingoa Geral.

This is a small species common on the upper Rio Negro. The stem is not half so thick as in the Œ. baccába, and the leaves are in proportion. The fruit is also very small, but is very fleshy and fine-flavoured, and ripens at a different time of year from the larger kind. It grows in the dry virgin forest. My drawing of this tree was unfortunately lost on my voyage home.

This is the species known as the Baccába at Pará, where the Œ. baccába is not found. It is quite distinct from the allied species by the leaves being distichous, or arranged nearly in one plane on each side of the stem, which gives it a very peculiar aspect, unlike any other Palm.

On my return to Pará from the interior, I was suffering so much from ague, as to be unable to go in search of a specimen of this tree to figure as I had intended.

This, like all other species of the genus, grows in dry and rather elevated forest land.

Female flowers few, interspersed among the males, bracteate. Spathe membranous, incomplete. Male flowers with from twelve to fifty stamens and the rudiments of a pistil. Female flowers with three sessile stigmas.

These singular and beautiful Palms have lofty, smooth, cylindrical or ventricose stems, very faintly ringed. The roots grow more or less above ground. The leaves are terminal and pinnate, and the leaflets are somewhat triangular, notched, often twisted or curled, and have radiating nerves. The sheathing bases form a column as in Euterpe. The spadices grow from beneath the leaves and are simply branched and drooping. The spathes vary in number and size; they are membranous, and fall off before the fruit ripens. The fruit is oval, of moderate size, generally of a red or yellow colour, and the pulpy part is bitter and uneatable. The stems of this genus increase in thickness within certain limits, differing from most other palms, which, when the stem is once formed, only increase in height.

Nine species of this genus are known, all natives of South America. Four of them occur in the Amazon district, three in Bolivia, one in Venezuela, and one near Bogotá, reaching a height above the sea of 5000 to 8000 feet.