The Princes Of Vegetation

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Title:     The Princes Of Vegetation
Author: Juliana Horatia Ewing [More Titles by Ewing]

This fanciful and high-sounding title was given by the great Swedish botanist, Linnaeus, to a race of plants which are in reality by no means distantly allied to a very humble family--the family of Rushes.

The great race of Palms puzzled the learned Swede. He did not know where to put them in his system; so he gave them an appendix all to themselves, and called them the Princes of Vegetation.

The appendix cannot have been a small one, for the Order of Palms is very large. About five hundred different species are known and named, but there are probably many more.

They are a very beautiful order of plants; indeed, the striking elegance of their forms has secured them a prominence in pictures, poetry, and proverbs, which makes them little less familiar to those who live in countries too cold for them to grow in, than to those whose home, like theirs, is in the tropics. The name Palm (Latin, _Palma_) is supposed to have been applied to them from a likeness in the growth of their branches to the outspread palm of the hand; and the fronds of some of the fan-palms are certainly not unlike the human hand, as commonly drawn by street-boys upon doors and walls.

So beautiful a tree, when it flourished in the symbol-loving East, was sure to be invested with poetical and emblematical significance. Conquerors were crowned with wreaths of palm, which is said to have been chosen as a symbol of victory, because of the elasticity with which it rises after the pressure of the heaviest weight--an explanation, perhaps, more appropriate to it as the emblem of spiritual triumphs--the Palm of Martyrdom and the Palms of the Blessed.

But as a religious symbol it is not confined to the Church triumphant. Not only is the "great multitude which no man can number" represented to us as "clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands"--the word "palmer" records the fact that he who returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was known, not only by the cockle-shell on his gown, but by the staff of palm on which he leant. St. Gregory also alludes to the palm-tree as an accepted emblem of the life of the righteous, and adds that it may well be so, since it is rough and bare below, and expands above into greenness and beauty.

The palm here alluded to is evidently the date palm (_Phoenix dactylifera_). This is pre-eminently the palm-tree of the Bible, and was in ancient times abundant in the Holy Land, though, curiously enough, it is now comparatively rare. Jericho was known as "the city of palm-trees" in the time of Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 3). It is alluded to again in the times of the Judges (Judges i. 11; iii. 13), and it bore the same title in the days of Ahaz (2 Chron. xxviii. 15). Josephus speaks of it as still famous for its palm-groves in his day, but it is said that a few years ago only one tree remained, which is now gone.

It was under a palm that Deborah the prophetess sat when all Israel came up to her for judgment; and to an audience under the shadow of this tree, which bore her name, that she summoned Barak out of Kedesh-naphtali. Bethany means "the House of Dates," and the branches of palm which the crowd cut down to strew before our Lord as He rode into Jerusalem were no doubt of this particular species.

Women--as well as places--were often named after the Princes of Vegetation, whose graceful and stately forms approved them to lovers and poets as fit types of feminine beauty.

Usefulness, however, even more than ornament, is the marked characteristic of the tribe. "From this order (_Palmae_)," says one writer, "are obtained wine, oil, wax, flour, sugar, salt, thread, utensils, weapons, habitations, and food"--a goodly list of the necessaries of life, to which one may add many smaller uses, such as that of "vegetable ivory" for a variety of purposes, and the materials for walking-sticks, canework, marine soap, &c., &c.

The Princes of Vegetation are to be found in all parts of the world where the climate is adapted to the tropical tastes of their Royal Highnesses.

They have come into our art, our literature, and our familiar knowledge from the East; but they abound in the tropics of the West, and some species are now common in South America whose original home was in India.

The cocoa-nut palm (_Cocos nucifera_) is an Indian and South Sea Islands Prince; but his sway extends now over all tropical countries. The cocoa-nut palm begins to bear fruit in from seven to eight years after planting, and it bears on for no less than seventy to eighty years.

Length of days, you see, as well as beauty and beneficence, mark this royal race which Linnaeus placed alone!

Cocoa-nuts are useful in many ways. The milk is pleasant, and in hot and thirsty countries is no doubt often a great boon. The white flesh--a familiar school-boy dainty--is eaten raw and cooked. It produces oil, and is used in the manufacture of stearine candles. It is also used to make _marine soap_, which will lather in salt water. The wood of the palm is used for ornamental joinery, the leaves for thatch and basket-work, the fibre for cordage and cocoa-nut matting, and the husk for fuel and brushes.

Cocoa and chocolate come from another palm (_Theobroma cacao_), which is cultivated largely in South America and the West Indies.

Sago and tapioca are made from the starch yielded by several species of palm. The little round balls of sago are formed from a white powder (sago flour, as it is called), just as homoeopathic pillules are formed from sugar. It is possible to see chemists make pills from boluses to globules, but the Malay Indians are said jealously to keep the process of "pearling" sago a trade secret. Tapioca is only another form of sago starch. Sago flour is now imported into England in considerable quantities. It is used for "dressing" calicoes.

Among those products of the palm which we import most liberally is "vegetable ivory."

Vegetable ivory is the kernel of the fruit of one of the most beautiful of palms (_Phytelephas macrocarpa_).

This Prince of Vegetation is a native of South America. "It is short-stemmed and procumbent, but has a magnificent crown of light green ostrich-feather-like leaves, which rise from thirty to forty feet high." The fruit is as big as a man's head. Two or three millions of the nuts are imported by us every year, and applied to all the purposes of use and ornament for which real ivory is available.

The Coquilla-nut palm (_Attalea funifera_), whose fruit is about the size of an ostrich-egg, also supplies a kind of vegetable ivory.

Our ideas of palm-trees are so much derived from the date palm of Judaea, that an erect and stately growth is probably inseparably connected in our minds with the Princes of Vegetation. But some of the most beautiful are short-stemmed and creeping; whilst others fling giant arms from tree to tree of the tropical forests, now drooping to the ground, and then climbing up again in very luxuriance of growth. Many of the rattan palms (_Calamus_) are of this character. They wind in and out, hanging in festoons from the branches, on which they lean in princely condescension, with stems upwards of a thousand feet in length.

There is something comical in having to add that these clinging rattan stems, which cannot support their own weight, have a proverbial fame, and are in great request for the manufacture of walking-sticks. They are also largely imported into Great Britain for canework.

Another very striking genus (_Astrocaryum_) is remarkable for being clothed in every part--stem, leaves, and spathe--with sharp spines, which are sometimes twelve inches long. _Astrocaryum murumura_ is edible. The pulp of the fruit is said to be like that of a melon, and it has a musky odour. It is a native of tropical America, and abundant on the Amazon. Cattle wander about the forests in search of it, and pigs fatten on the nut, which they crunch with their teeth, though it is exceedingly hard.

The date palm yields a wine called toddy, or palm wine, and from the Princes of Vegetation is also distilled a strong spirit called arrack.

And speaking again of the Judaean palms, I must here say a word of those which we associate with Palm Sunday--the willow palms--for which we used to hunt when we were children.

It is hardly necessary to state that these willow branches, with their soft silvery catkins, the crown of the earliest spring nosegays which the hedges afford, are not even distantly related to the Princes of Vegetation, though we call them palms. They are called palms simply from having taken the place of real palm-branches in the ceremonies of the Sunday of our Lord's Entry into Jerusalem, where these do not grow.

A very old writer, speaking of the Jews strewing palm-branches before Christ, says: "And thus we take palm and flowers in procession as they did ... in the worship and mind of Him that was done on the cross, worshipping and welcoming Him with song into the Church, as the people did our Lord into the city of Jerusalem. It is called Palm Sunday for because the palm betokeneth victory; wherefore all Christian people should bear palm in procession, in token that He hath foughten with the fiend our enemy, and hath the victory of hym."

A curious old Scotch custom is recorded in Lanark, as "kept by the boys of the Grammar-school, beyond all memory in regard to date, on the Saturday before Palm Sunday. They then parade the streets with a palm, or its substitute, a large tree of the willow kind (_Salix caprea_), in blossom, ornamented with daffodils, mezereon, and box-tree. This day is called Palm Saturday, and the custom is certainly a popish relic of very ancient standing."

But to return to palms proper. Before taking leave of them, there is one more word to be said in their praise which may endear this noble race to eyes which will never be permitted to see the wonders of tropical forests.

As pot-plants they are not less remarkable for the picturesqueness of their forms, than for the patience with which they endure those vicissitudes of stuffiness and chill, dryness, dust, and gas, which prove fatal to so many inmates of the flower-stand or the window-sill. Pot-palms may be bought of any good nurseryman at prices varying from two or three shillings to two or three pounds. _Latania borbonica_ and _Phoenix reclinata_ are good and cheap. Sandy-peaty soil, with a little leaf-mould, is what they like, and this should be renewed (with a larger pot) every second year. Thus, with the most moderate care, and an occasional sponging, or a stand-out in a soft shower, the exiled Princes of Vegetation, whose shoots in their native forests would have been of giant luxuriance, will live for years, patiently adapting themselves by slow growth to the rooms which they adorn, easier of management than the next fern you dig up on your rambles, and, in the incomparable beauty of their forms, the perpetual delight of an artistic eye.

[The end]
Juliana Horatia G Ewing's short story: Princes Of Vegetation

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