Palm trees of the Amazon and their uses

The stem of this tree is about forty feet high, strong, smooth and ringed. The leaves are rather large, terminal and drooping. The leaflets are long and narrow, and spread irregularly from the midrib, every part of which is very spiny. The sheathing bases of the leaf-talks are persistent on the upper part of the stem, and in young trees clothe it down to the ground.

The spadices grow from among the leaves, erect or somewhat drooping, and are simply branched. The spathes are woody, persistent and clothed with spines. The fruit is the size of an apricot, globular, and of a greenish olive colour, and has a thin layer of firm edible pulp of an orange colour covering the seed.

This species is common in the neighbourhood of Pará, where its nearly globular crown of drooping feathery leaves is very ornamental. The fruit, though oily and bitter, is very much esteemed and is eagerly sought after. It grows on dry soil about Pará and the Lower Amazon, but it is quite unknown in the interior.

Several young plants of this and a species closely resembling it, the A. sclerocarpa, are growing in the Palm House at Kew, and in the Museum at the same place are specimens of the stem and fruit sent by Mr. Bates and myself from Pará.

Martius mentions the A. sclerocarpa only as being found at Pará, but his description of the other species agrees best with the tree here figured. The two, however, seem very closely allied, if they are really distinct species.

A fruit is represented on the Plate of the natural size.

Female flowers few in number, situated beneath the males on the same spadix. Spathe complete, woody. Male flowers with six stamens and a rudimentary pistil. Female flowers with three stigmas and a rudimentary ring of stamens.

In this genus the stems are generally lofty and thickly set with rings of spines, but some species are stemless. The leaves are large and pinnate, the leaflets elongate and linear, and as well as the petioles very prickly. The spadices are simply branched, and the fruits are ovate or globose, with a fibrous or fleshy covering, sometimes eatable.

Sixteen species of these Palms are known, inhabiting Mexico, Brazil, and other parts of South America, but not extending higher up the mountains than 2000 feet above the sea. They have rather a repulsive aspect, from almost every part,—stem, leaves, fruit-stalk and spathe, being armed with acute spines in some cases a foot long.