Wonder Plants

WONDER PLANTS AND PLANT WONDERS
A. Hyatt Verrill
With foreword by Rod Turner
WonderPlants and Plant Wonders
FOREWORD
The first thing that grabbed me about this book was simply its title. Wonder Plants and Plant Wonders. I had a little knowledge about some strange plants, as gardening and nature is my passion, but I soon found what little that was. Plants DRIVE life on earth. What do I mean by this?
Well, the plant leaf is the only place on the entire planet where truly new substance is created. This new stuff is made with the energy of the SUN. With the exception of nuclear fission, all other energy consumed on this planet comes from the energy of the sun, and food for all animal life starts with the new substance created by the plant.
So in my mind plants are pretty wonderful already. But the great title got me in and what I found was that plants are even more wonderful than I ever knew. The diversity of different plants on this planet is nothing short of amazing. What is even more amazing is what these plants do, how they live, how they have made special niches for themselves. How they depend on others and how others depend on them. How some plants can even tell the difference between two humans and react accordingly. The many and varied ways of ensuring their survival, sometimes through some rather extreme behaviour, really makes you wonder about that evolution theory!
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On the other side of the coin is how mankind has depended on plants for the advancement of civilisation and obviously for food. The myriad of amazing ways that man has found uses for these plants products is a testament to the inventiveness of all civilisations and their inventiveness to produce alcohol from just about anything is also a rather common theme! What also really got me was how the hell people found out how to prepare poisonous plants to make them safe or even how to process them into some of our most delicious and sought after delicacies. Sort of like turning lead into gold really.
Now this tome was written quite a few years ago and some of the amazing uses of some of our wonderful plants have fallen by the wayside due to our petrochemical age, but when the oil runs out. youll know what to do. Anyway, we can thank the existence of our oil deposits to, you guessed it, plant wonders of the past.
After reading this book you are left with a great respect for plants and the strange workings nature and I trust that you will be empowered to try in your own small way to halt the sensless destruction of the very life on earth that we depend on for our own survival.
I hope you are also as gob smacked with this book as much as I am.
Rod Turner August 2005
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INTRODUCTION PLANTS are the oldest form of life on our planet. Millions of years before the first animal life appeared on earth or in the sea there were plants of many forms, and ages before the great dinosaurs existed, the mountains and plains, the valleys and the swamps were hidden under a wealth of plant life. There were great trees, giant ferns, tangled vines, immense flowers and countless strange forms of plant life which vanished millions of years ago, yet we may still see them to-day, for like the monsters of the past many of the ancient plants were preserved in the form of fossils.
Had there been no plants on our earth in those far distant times there would have been no animals, for as every school-child knows plants are essential to animal life. Not only do they give off oxygen which animals breathe, and consume the poisonous carbon dioxide gas which animals exhale and which is produced by our coal, gas, and fuels, but they also provide food for innumerable creatures from insects to mankind. In fact, in some ways, plants are the most important things on earth. And although we may not realize it, there are plants everywhere. There are plants on barren deserts and bare rocks; plants amid the eternal snows and plants in steaming geysers and volcanic pools; plants in the sea and plants in the air, and plants in our food. For that matter there are plants in our own bodies, for
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INTRODUCTION many of the diseases of human beings are caused by plant growths, and plants in yeast are what cause our bread to rise. Our most important and valuable foods are made from plants; plants furnish us with most of our clothing, our buildings, our furniture, and our fuel. The gasoline we use in our automobiles, the oil we use to lubricate them, and the oil we burn in our furnaces, our locomotives, and our steamships; the coal we use, our paper, and countless other necessities and luxuries are all derived from plants. We are so accustomed to plants that we seldom stop to think what very remarkable things they are. We see a spreading oak- or elm-tree and welcome its shade or admire its beauty, but seldom do we marvel at its growth or think of the story the tree could tell if it could only speak of the scenes it has witnessed, the historical events that have transpired since it was a tiny seedling struggling for life among the weeds. Yet many of our everyday trees were good-sized saplings when Columbus sailed westward from Spain in search of the New World, while the enormous trees of California were venerable giants when Julius Caesar was conquering the Gauls. When we eat potatoes or corn or drink a cup of cocoa or nibble a chocolate-candy how many of us realize that these familiar foods have strange fascinating stories as romantic and interesting as any tale of fiction? We may think that the life of plants is dull and lacking in thrills, interest or adventure, but if the plants, even in our gardens, could tell us their stories we would
INTRODUCTION
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find their lives are filled with most exciting adventures, hairbreadth escapes, wars and battles, tragedies and drama, accidents and disease, hunger and thirst, luxuries and privations, almost everything that enters into the lives of human beings. And we would learn that every plant is a hero, that in order to survive it has battled and struggled against countless foes, against terrific odds, and that for every plant that has been victorious thousands of others have died. We may think that plants are lacking in intelligence, that they merely live or die, flower and fruit, in their allotted way. But there we make a grave mistake. Practically all plants possess certain senses: the sense of touch or feeling, the sense of hunger and thirst, the sense of taste and often the senses of smell and hearing. Indeed, some scientists believe that certain plants can feel pain, that they can recognize certain persons, that they appreciate kindness and care. And it is certain that some plants possess intelligence and learn to profit by experience. In fact, the story of plants is one of the most fascinating of all tales and the best part of it is that the stories of no two plants are the same. The tiny marine plant that makes the Red Sea red, the plants that cause our bread to rise, the plants we cultivate for our food, the plants we know as trees, the plants that cure our ills, the plants that sting or poison us, the plants whose flowers give us pleasure - all have their own stories and their own histories, and many of these are strange almost beyond belief. It would require many books -- or a book larger than the largest dictionary-to tell the stories of all the
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INTRODUCTION plants or for that matter the stories of strange or remarkable plants. But there are plants with such very strange habits or which are so remarkable in other ways that they deserve a place in the "Who's Who" of the plant world. In this book I have tried to tell the stories of some of these strangest of strange plants as well as the stories of other plants which are interesting and remarkable for various reasons.
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CONTENTS Page
FOREWORD. . . . . . . . . INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . I. WHAT IS A PLANT? . . . . . II. THE PLANT DEPARTMENT STORE . . III. THE MOST USEFUL TREES . . . . IV. TREES THAT GROW WHILE YOU WAIT V. PLANTS THAT CURE AND KILL . . . VI. PLANT GIANTS . . . . . . . . VII. INTELLIGENT PLANTS . . . . . . VIII. PLANTS THAT BUILD RAFTS . . . . IX. STRANGE PARTNERS . . . . . . X. PLANTS THAT SAIL SEAS . . . . . Xl. PLANTS THAT WE EAT . . . . . . XII. WONDER PLANTS THAT WE DRINK . XIII. MAGIC PLANTS . . . . . . . . XIV. PLANTS WITH STRANGE USES . . . . XV. PLANT TRAVELERS . . . . . . XVI. PLANT PUBLIC ENEMIES . . . . . XVII. WONDER PLANTS OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY . . . . . . . . XVIII. THE FIRST of ALL CALENDARS . . . XIX. THE MOST WONDERFUL PLANTS . . .
ii iv 1 19 33 46 56 71 89 102 114 180 110 158 179 192 211 228
253 271 279
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . .
287
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Chapter I WHAT IS A PLANT? Do you know a plant when you see it? That may sound like a very foolish question, for most of us are quite sure we can easily recognize a plant.
But can we?
How can we identify a plant? For that matter, what is a plant? What are its earmarks, its characteristics which are infallible proof that it is a plant and not an animal.
Why, that's easy, you may exclaim. In the first place, plants grew in one spot, they are fixed and cannot move about at will, whereas animals do move about and are not rooted to the ground. In the second place, plants grow and spread by means of seeds, roots, and shoots, whereas animals increase by means of eggs, or young born alive. In the third place, plants have foliage and flowers which sprout from roots or stems, whereas animals retain their same forms and merely increase or expand in size. Finally, plants obtain their food from chemicals in the soil and gases in the air, whereas animals feed upon other animals or upon plants. And, you may add, plants are provided with the substance known m chlorophyll which makes them green and enables them to absorb energy from the sun, whereas animals lack chlorophyll but obtain energy from animal or plant food.
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All very well, but not one of these means of identifying plants is infallible. Many animals are as fixed or rooted as are plants, as for example the corals, gorgonias (sea-fans and searods) bryozoa, sponges, and others. And many plants possess the power of independent movement. The lizard tree (see Chapter VII), walking ferns, and many other plants travel far from the original plant, while there are plants such as the diatom
Diatom (greatly magnified)
and many bacteria which swim freely in the water or other liquids. Not all plants spread by means of seeds, roots, or shoots. Many forms of plant life increase by means of spores which are a form of egg, and there are animals such as the hydroids which propagate by shoots or buds. When it comes to a matter of foliage and flowers there are countless plants, such as the fungi or mushrooms, as well as cacti and other plants, which do not
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possess foliage, while the fungi and certain other plants do not have flowers. On the other hand there are forms of animal life, such as the hydroidea, which spread about by branches and shoots and produce buds or flowers which become free animals.
As far as food is concerned, how about the carnivorous plants, the plants that devour insects, the parasitic plants that secure sustenance from other plants living or dead? And there are many plants which feed upon living creatures. One such is a fungus that infests the
Edible fungus on grub
grubs or larvae of a beetle in the Pacific Islands. These queer rodlike vegetable growths that spring from the head of the grub and devour its tissues are deemed a great delicacy by the natives. And there are innumerable plants which feed upon our own tissues and those of various other animals. Moles, many skin diseases, the well-known athlete's foot, and many ulcers are the result of tiny plants which infest our persons and may even cause death. Then there are the legumes, the peas, beans, clovers, and so on which depend upon other plants known as bacteria to supply them with nitrates which the bacteria manufacture from nitrogen obtained from the air, while their hosts repay them for this service by providing carbon foods which the bacteria cannot make for themselves. It is true that the majority of the larger,
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better known plants do contain chlorophyl, but many plants such as fungi, bacteria, and the well-known Inthan pipe or beech drops lack this substance. On the other hand there are animals which are also provided with chlorophyl. The grasshoppers, katydids, many larvae, the funny walking-sticks and the remarkable walking leaves all contain chlorophyl, as do certain marine animals. Even more strange is the fact that just as green chlorophyl of plants becomes "ripe" and turns red or yellow in autumn or on ripening fruits, so the insects provided with this sun-energy-absorbing material "ripen" and become red or yellow in autumn or under certain conditions.
Now then can we distinguish a plant from an animal? The answer is that we can't, that is, not always. Even the most scientific of scientists cannot say definitely whether certain forms of growth belong in the vegetable or the animal kingdom.
Every one who has been in the woods must have noticed the patches of moist slimy growths which occur on dead trees, stamps, logs, decaying leaves, under stones, or on damp black soil. Some of these are white, others greyish, while many are most gorgeously colored with yellow, orange, or red; and they vary in size from tiny specks to masses covering areas of a square foot or more. Probably you have passed them by as some sort of fungus and of little interest. But the slime-molds, as they are called, are among the mast remarkable growths and are, perhaps, the greatest of all puzzles in Nature, for they belong between the plants and animals and scientists have never decided which they are. Ordinarily the slime-molds are merely masses of naked protoplasm
called
"plasmodium"
and
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crawl or move about like giant amoeba but very often they may come to a halt, cease traveling and produce very complex and beautiful spore-cases very similar to those of some of the mosses. Perhaps you may think that such slime-molds and the fungi are the very lowest forms of plant life. But there you are wrong. If the slime-molds are truly plants then they are high in the
Slime-molds (1/2)
plant world, for they embody many animal characteristics.
Just where the fungi or mushrooms belong is a mooted question, for these strange plants, as well as the bacteria, are laws unto themselves and follow none of the accepted rules of plant life as a whole.
But aside from these outlaws of the plant world the lowest forms of plants are the algae, or so-called seaweeds This popular name is far from appropriate, for many algae are freshwater plants, and
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Various form of fungi (1/3)
there are various algae which thrive on land or elsewhere instead of in water.
Among these are the tiny scarlet plants which live upon snow and cause the "red snow" which often arouses fear of calamities among ignorant or superstitious people. The color of the Red Sea is also caused by algae. Other minute forms of these plants produce the lovely blue and turquoise colors of tropical seas, while another alga lives on the hair of sloths and protects the creatures by its green color.
Few plants vary more greatly in form, size, and cater than do the algae. Many are so minute that they are scarcely visible to the naked eye, while others, such
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as the deep sea kelps, are gigantic with leaves one hundred and fifty feet or more in length. Some are long, slender, rodlike; others have broad leaves like lettuce or cabbage; some have branches and foliage, others are as delicate as ferns, or are mosslike. The rockweed, so common on our coasts, is provided with countless air bladders which serve as floats to the dense-growing masses, thus preventing them from becoming matted together and insuring a circulation of clear water among the plants, while the sargassum or gulfweed is buoyed up by miniature pontoons, and drifts about on the surface of the sea. Every color of the rainbow and countless shades and combinations of color may be found on the algae or seaweeds. Many are dull brown or olive, others are vivid scarlet or crimson; some are bright green, other blue, yellow, or purple, while many, such as the common dulse or Irish moss, gleam and scintillate with iridescent metallic hues. And while most seaweeds have roots and grow like normal everyday plants, there are forms which swim about freely. Among these are the tiny but indescribably beautiful diatoms which are provided with hard flinty shells or coverings of marvellous design, often resembling the finest of filigree work.
Next in order on the plants' family tree are the mosses. Most mosses and lichens are so small that even if we admire their velvety greenness or their soft grays and lavender tints we do not appreciate their true beauty or their strange manner of growth. To really know the mosses as they are we should be the size of ants or flies. It would be a most fascinating experience to wander about in a jungle of mosses higher than our
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heads, but we can obtain some idea of how they must appear to tiny insects by examining them under a powerful lens or a reading glass. If you have never studied mosses in this way you will be astonished to find what lovely things they are. No flower garden ever showed wore delicate blossoms, richer foliage, or more varied colors. Many are covered with beautiful flowers resembling daisies, marigolds, dahlias or peonies of various hues. Some send up slender stalks bearing gorgeous orange, yellow or crimson "fruits." There are mosses which look like fields of ripening wheat, others composed of miniature branching evergreen trees, and still others that are tangled jungles, while many are beds of delicate plumelike ferns. In addition to being beautiful plants the mosses are very useful and beneficial. The common swamp moss or sphagnum is a most useful moss. Florists find it the best of all substances for packing plants and flowers, for its spongelike structure retains dampness for a long time. It is also very valuable material for dressing wounds, for when dry it absorbs liquids with amazing rapidity, and during the World War great quantities were employed by the surgeons and many a man owes his life to the humble moss. Finally, this useful moss provides heat and does the cooking for thousands of persons, for the peat used as fuel in some lands is mainly semi-fossilized sphagnum from ancient swamps and bogs. Were it not for the mosses, most of our earth would be bare of all plant and animal life, for animals cannot exist without plants and the first plants to find roothold on barren spots are the mosses and lichens.
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As these plants die their stems, roots, and leaves decay and form "leaf mold" in which other higher forms of plants take root. Thus the lowly mosses pave the way for the grasslands and shrubbery, the forests, and the jungles. But even before the mosses appear the lichens blaze the trail that plant life follows. Although most persons confuse mosses and lichens, the two are very different and are quite distinct. Useful and beautiful as are the mosses with their five thousand and more species, the lichens are of much greater interest to scientists, for they are not single plants but combinations of two separate plants of different orders. There are few if any stranger combinations in the entire plant world than this, for every lichen consists of a fungus and an alga living together on such intimate terms that they appear to be a single plant. The greater portion of the lichen consists of the fungus which forms the "body" of the plant with countless, minute threads in the meshes of which dwell the little algae. Strangely enough, the fungoid plants which form lichens are almost never found growing by themselves, while the algae are common when growing free and quite independently. Perhaps you wonder how these lichens spread if the fungus cannot live by itself. But old Mother Nature has attended to this detail in most remarkable manner. If you have ever examined lichen you may have noticed the dusty appearance and "feel" of the strange dry plants. This is caused by countless numbers of minute granules known as "soredia" which are made up of a few cells of the alga surrounded by the threads of the fungus host. Then when a passing breeze wafts the dust away the offspring of the two plants travel together to a new spot where they continue to grow like
Siamese twins.
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Just why two such widely different forms of plants should always join forces to get on in life is not definitely known. But the beneficial results of the arrangement are obvious. The fungus cannot absorb energy from the sun, for it does not contain chlorophyl which the algae does possess, while the algae living upon the spongelike fungus is protected from drying up and hence can survive and prosper where otherwise it could not exist. The result is a mutual benefit association which can thrive where neither plant could live alone, and where few if any other forms of plant life could exist. The last of all plants to endure the bitter cold of farthest north and farthest south are lichens. The last vestiges of plant life on the highest mountains are the lichens. No desert, no desolate rock, no cinder pile or lava flow from a volcano is too bare or repellent for lichens to find a roothold. As if by magic, as if materialized from thin air, the minute "dust" of the plants finds lodgement and soon the lichens cover rocks or sand and commence their task of reparation.
When the Island of Krakatoa in the East Indies was blasted to bits by the terrific eruption of 1883, not a visible trace of plant or animal life remained upon the stricken, devastated spot. But presently dust from lichens somewhere reached the island. Soon lichens spread over the bare forbidding lava and shattered rocks. Little by little the strange combination plants formed minute quantities of soil and mosses arrived. As a result, the island now bears a growth of green
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jungle in which insects chirp and trill and birds twitter and sing.
Lichens are useful in other ways also. They provide us with dyes, the most important of which is litmus, which is used on litmus paper for determining whether a substance is acid or alkaline. And, strange as it may seem, some of the lichens are edible. The dry gray reindeer moss and Iceland moss that thrive on bare rocks and ledges are lichens and appear about the least promising of plants that one would choose for a meal. Yet reindeer moss if properly cooked is palatable and nutritious.
If you have examined mosses closely or have studied them under a lens you will have noticed how fernlike many of them appear. And no wonder, for mosses are the ancestors of the ferns. Ages and ages ago, before any form of animal life existed on earth, the mosses grew to gigantic size and could we have seen them we would at once have called them ferns. Some continued to go onward and upward to finally become true ferns, while others were content to remain small and obscure mosses.
Even to-day it is sometimes very difficult to feel certain whether a plant is a fern or a moss, particularly in the tropical jungles. Here one sees palm-trees covered with rich green moss, each plumelike leaf several inches in length, and giving the effect of green feather mantles wrapped about the trees. But have a care if you attempt to secure a specimen or examine it closely, for the palm is armed with countless encircling bands of close-set six-inch poisonous spikes hidden beneath the attractive innocent-appearing giant moss. Beside a
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rotting fallen monarch of the forest is a mass of maidenhair ferns higher than ones head, and with each fragile, delicate leaf-stem armed with needle pointed spines. Upon another log we see a great patch of yellow gleaming in the shadowy light like a sheet of beaten gold. But if we break off a bit of the gorgeous lichen our nostrils will he assailed by the stench of putrid flesh. Then we catch a glimpse of another lichen -a cup-shaped growth of bluish-gray and soft fawn upon the rind of an upturned tree. As we approach it closely we halt and stare. A portion of the lichen has come suddenly to life, and from a snakelike head bright eyes are gazing at us and we discover that we are looking at a sun-bittern upon her nest. A beautiful thing it is, like the nest of a gigantic humming-bird and, like the home of the hummingbird, covered with lichens which are so similar to the bird's plumage in colors and markings that it is almost impossible to determine how much is bittern and how much is nest.
Near at hand is a group of great hairy, brown trunks and glancing upward we find that, instead of being palms as we supposed, they are titanic ferns, tree-ferns with lacelike fronds thirty feet in length. We notice another tree whose trunk is half hidden under a growth of green, and we step closer to examine the strange moss, only to find that it is a dense growth of tiny ferns with fronds scarcely an inch in length. Our feet sink knee-deep in a miniature jungle of clubmoss and we pass through a dim aisle where enormous ferns form a green archway overhead. But instead of the ferns seeming gigantic and the mosses appearing as if viewed through a microscope, we feel as if we had
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been suddenly transformed to tiny pygmies, insect like beings in a normal-sized forest.
At every step we make some novel and astonishing discovery, and find some incredibly strange or bizarre form of plant life. We brush against a tuft of grass and find its slender green blades cut through our garments and slash our flesh like a keen-edged razor. Pluck a magnificent orchid and instantly the flower will be cast aside as myriads of ants are conjured from leaves and stem and bury their burning jaws in fingers and hands. A six-inch shaft of silvery gray sapling is in the path and with keen-edged machete a blow is aimed at the obstacle. The steel blade shears through it as if it were composed of wax and crimson blood pours from the severed trunk. A little farther on an even slenderer sapling bars the way, and again the useful machete comes into play. But this time the steel makes no more impression upon the little shaft than if it were a bar of iron. If we should light a camp-fire we would find that certain sticks flared up as if soaked in gasoline, while others placed amid the flames, remained untouched by the fire, barely scorched, as fire-proof as though composed of concrete. We might come upon the dead and decaying body of some creature with ghostly- looking, livid growths sprouting from the rotting carcass and spreading finger like branches oozing viscid slime. We would be sure to find wild plantains with rigid stalks of orange and crimson flowers like shafts of living flame, and if we examined these we would discover that each cuplike blossom was a miniature charnel house, a recess containing liquid filled with the dead bodies of innumerable insects. We would see plants
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which at first sight we mistook for gorgeous butterflies, fuzzy bees or huge caterpillars, and we would find insects so perfectly disguised as leaves, twigs and flowers that unless we should attempt to pluck them we would never suspect they were living creatures.
But strange plants and their ways are not confined to the jungles of the tropics. Many of our commonest and most familiar plants have strange and remarkable traits which few suspect. We all know that the sunflowers turn their faces towards the sun, that the "four O'clock" flowers do not open until afternoon, that the morning-glories bloom and fade before the day is many hours old, that the evening primroses and the cereus cactus blossom only at night. But how many know that the clover, the beans and peas and other plants of their family, fold their leaves and "go to sleep" when the sun sets and darkness falls? Even this is not so strange as the habit of many trees, such for example of the eucalyptus, which turn their leaves edgewise to the sun if there is too much light. On the other hand, if trees require more sunshine they will turn and twist and bend trunks and branches to avoid the shade of leaves above, and many scientists claim that the forms of leaves are dependent upon the amount of light required. But to return to the question of "What is a plant?" If the slime-molds prove a puzzle to scientists there are other forms of life which might well prove a far greater puzzle to persons other than scientists. These are the hydroids, which live in the sea and in fresh water where any one not a scientist would mistake them for seaweeds or algae and would consider them true
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plants. No one could be blamed for doing so, for their delicate slender stalks sprouting from crevices or rocks, from dead sea-shells, from the sandy bottom, from piles of wharves or elsewhere are covered with delicate branches and clusters of buds and flowers. Many are very beautiful, being scarlet, yellow, purple, or green, and some species bear numbers of white flowers with red centers looking like tiny daisies. No one not in the know would ever suspect that these pretty sea growths had any connection with the jellyfishes swimming aimlessly about, yet the hydroids are the jellyfishes' parents. No wonder you are surprised, for few of Nature's marvels are more wonderful and amazing than the life history of the jellyfish-hydroids. The swimming jellyfish lays eggs and these, instead of hatching into other jellyfish, find lodgement on the bottom of the sea or on some favorable spot and, taking root, sprout like seeds of plants, and produce hydroids. As these hollow stemmed growths increase in size, buds appear upon the stems and branches. But although they have the appearance of plant buds and open and unfold flowerlike petals, yet the hydroids' blossoms are really living creatures. Each is composed of thirteen layers, and presently, as the lowest layer develops and expands, the upper portion breaks away and, lo and behold! it goes swimming off a true jellyfish. One after another thirteen phantasmal, transparent, free-swimming animals are born from the hydroid flower. But that is not all, for while some of the jellyfishes' eggs sprout and grow into plant like hydroids, which in turn bud and blossom into jellyfish, there are other eggs which never produce
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Hydroid and jellyfish (X 3)
hydroids but swim about and hatch directly into jellyfish like their parents.
That a plantlike hydroid should blossom into jellyfishes is as amazing as it would be if some shrub or vine should bud and blossom into butterflies.
But in the case of the hydroids there is no question that they are animals and not plants. Perhaps, far back in the dim and distant past, millions of years ago, the hydroids' ancestors were true plants, for scientists tell us that certain plants developed into animals. And it seems quite fitting that we should find these strange creatures still dwelling in the sea, for the sea was the cradle of life, and all living things, both animals and plants, came from ancestors who dwelt in the sea.
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Chapter II THE PLANT DEPARTMENT STORE We all know that plants provide us with many of our everyday needs, our luxuries, and our necessities. The cotton and flax plants furnish us with cloth, we eat many kinds of vegetables at our meals and drink tea, coffee, or cocoa. If we smoke we use the leaves of the tobacco plant and the rice or wheat plants supply the paper for the cigarette, while trees furnish the wood for the pipe. Most of our furniture is made of wood and plants are used for the cane or fiber seats to our chairs, the kapok that fills some of our cushions, pillows, and mattresses. Plants give us the rugs and carpets on our floors, the draperies and curtains of our windows and doors. We ride in automobiles with tires made from plants and motors driven and lubricated by fuel and oil that have come from plants. If we are ill the chances are that we will take medicines derived from plants. If the weather is hot and we eat an ice-cream cone the flavors we enjoy are those of plants, and in winter time we heat our homes with coal or oil which ancient plants have given us. We read newspapers, magazines, and books printed on the prepared fibers of plants and in a thousand and one other ways we call upon plants in order to live and to be comfortable.
But most of these things bear little resemblance to the original plants which have gone through long processes
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of preparation and manufacture in order to adapt them to our needs. Just think what a saving it would be and how convenient if we could go out in the woods or into our gardens and pick our garments from one plant, our cigarettes from another, our foods from others, and the toys for the children from still other plants. That sounds ridiculous and impossible, yet it is quite possible, for there are plants and trees which supply all these articles and more ready made. In fact, if they were all found in the same locality they would form a real plant department store where one could find almost anything needed to enable one to live quite comfortably.
If you should be thirsty while in a tropical forest and no drinking water was near you could slake your thirst at a plant drinking-fountain. One of these is the travelers' palm of Madagascar which has been introduced to many tropical lands. This tree is not really a palm but is closely related to the banana tree. The trunk resembles that of the banana, but the leaves are borne at the tips of long stiff stems that grow alternately from either side of the trunk and form a broad, flat, fan-shaped crown The base of each leaf-stem is enlarged and forms a sort of closed trough and always contains a quart or more of clear sweet water. All that one has to do in order to secure a drink is to make an incision at the base of a leaf-stem. But even if you were in some spot where there were none of these strange trees you would not have to go thirsty. In the tropical jungles the trees are everywhere hung and draped with vines known as lianas, of all sizes, some as fine as threads, others larger than the biggest of ships' cables.
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Many of these are very useful plants and are true ready-made cords and ropes and are used as fish-lines, ropes and twine by the natives. They are as strong or stronger than real ropes and have the advantage that they do not stretch, do not shrink when wet and am not injured by remaining for a long time in water. Other
(about 20 feet high)
lianas when dried are known as rattan and are widely used for making furniture, seats of chairs, and other purposes. Some contain deadly poisons, others have great medicinal value. But there are a number of the lianas which are true vegetable drinking-fountains. If you examine the end of a piece of rattan you will see a number of tiny holes or pores. These are really small
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tubes extending the entire length of the vine and serve as pipes or veins through which the sap flows when the vine is alive. If you cut off a living liana a steady stream of liquid will run or drip from these tubes. Usually the fluid is white or yellowish and quickly hardens or coagulates to form a coating or scab across the injured end---exactly as the blood of a human being or an animal heals a cut in the flesh. Very often the sap is bitter or sour or peppery, but many kinds of lianas have sap which is as clear, as cool, and as refreshing as the purest spring water. But if you should wish to take a drink from these plant-faucets be sure to cut the vine in two places and use the section you cut off for your drinking cup, for otherwise you will secure only a few drops of water before the sap ceases to flow. Of course, a three or four foot section of the vine will not contain a great deal of water, but the supply is unlimited and the thirsty traveller can cut as many pieces as he pleases.
If you prefer milk to water it is there in the forest ready and waiting in the cow-tree. Don't expect to find a tree that looks like a cow, for strange as it is the cow- tree isn't as strange as all that. In fact it isn't at all strange in appearance, and looks much like an ordinary rubber tree. But unlike the "milk" of the rubber tree, the white juice that issues from a cut in the cow-tree is sweet and really delicious and tastes much like real milk. It must be used right away, however, fresh from the plant-cow as we might say, for like the sap of the rubber tree it coagulates and becomes gummy and sticky very soon after it is exposed to the air.
Perhaps, as you have been moving about, you may

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have torn your clothes. If so you may be able to find a needle and thread growing on a plant ready to use. The thread and needle plants are agaves or, as we usually call them, century-plants. Each of the thick stiff leaves of these plants has a very hard sharp spine at the tip. Cut off a leaf near the base, pound away the pulp by beating it between two stones or pieces of wood, and you will find the sharp spine needle attached to a number of long fine threads as strong as linen. To the Mexican and Central American Indians these
thread-and-needle-plants ate as useful as the reindeer to the Laplander. The juice when fresh is a delicious beverage known as pulque, and when fermented it becomes the fiery intoxicating mescal. The roots are edible and when dried and ground make a coarse but nutritious flour, the leaves are used for thatching the Indians' houses, for making mats and other furnishings for the Indians' homes, the fibers are used as twine, thread, and rope and are woven on looms to form a fine, strong cloth which may be sewed into garments by means of the thread and needles from the plant's leaves. If your garments are so badly torn or worn that you require new clothing the plant department store can supply your wants. All you need do is find a lace-bark tree or "seda virgen" as the Spanish-speaking people call it. This is one of strangest and most interesting of trees, for the pith of the smaller branches when unrolled appears like broad sheets of beautiful white lace, while that of the larger limbs and the trunk is tough, strong, finely woven cloth. In lands where this tree grows the ready-made cloth and lace are used for a multitude of purposes. The girls and women use the finer sheets of
Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005 Page 23
lace for shawls, mantillas, and other articles of apparel. The heavier clothlike sheets are used for clothing, mats, carpets, bags, draperies, and is so strong and fibrous that it is twisted and braided into whips, ropes, cables, and harness. The finest portions make splendid surgical bandages, being soft and absorbent, and until unrolled is always in a gem-proof package.
It is also made into fans and other utensils. When dyed in ornamental designs it is very beautiful, resembling the tapa cloth of the South Seas. It is so abundant and so easily gathered and prepared that the natives who wear lace-bark garments seldom bother to wash their clothes, but as soon as they are soiled cast them aside and visit the plant-department-store clothing counter and get a new outfit for nothing.
Even serviceable hats may be secured all ready to wear from trees. But you will have to climb or cut down a cocoanut tree (cocoa-palm) to secure one---or hire a native to get it for you, for the ready-made hat is the soft brown, loosely woven covering of the young flower buds of palm-trees. They are about two feet in length, cylindrical in shape, with a pointed tip, and when removed from the trees are only two or three inches in diameter, but they may be stretched to a surprising extent and slipped over one's head to form a cap something like those on pictured pirates.
It is much easier to obtain shoes than hats from the strange plants. Tree-ferns are always abundant in tropical forests and are real shoe-trees. The trunks of
these giant ferns are very tough and hard and are covered with an interwoven mass of fibers in place of the usual bark. By cutting off a slice of the trunk with the fiber bands in place, one secures a very serviceable pair of sandals. All that one has to do is to trim the pieces to the size of one's foot, separate the fibers and cut away those not needed. Then, by thrusting one's toes under the fibers at one end of the piece of treefern trunk and tying those at the other extremity about one's ankles, one is shod with light durable shoes that will outwear shoes of leather. If medicine is needed there is the plant drag counter with any number of remedies-quinine, calisaya, ipecacuanha, cascara, palmetto berries, and many others. If you wish a torch to light your way at night the gomier or gum-ellemi tree will supply great gobs of partly dry gum which, tied in a dry plantain or palm leaf, will burn with a brilliant white flame in the rainiest or windiest weather and will give off clouds of dark colored smoke with the odor of incense. In fact most of the incense used in churches consists of this gum with sandalwood and other materials added. The gum of the gomier tree makes an excellent adhesive and when smeared on sticks serves as birdlime with which the natives capture many live birds, but the gum of the sapodilla or chicle tree is much better. This is the basis of our chewing-gum and was used as such by the ancient Mayas and Aztecs countless centuries before a white man ever thought of chewing-gum. If instead of a torch we wished a candle, there are plants where our want can be filled. These are the waxpalms, and so rich in oil are the fruits of some of these
that a wick inserted in the greasy fruit will burn with a clear bright flame for several hours. Another palm known as the piva would supply us with butter merely by boiling the fruit and skimming off the fat that rises to the surface, while the flower buds of the same tree would serve as a ready-to-eat breakfast cereal. For a fine and tasty salad there is nothing to equal the crisp white heart of a cabbage-palm and by stripping the bark from the etah palm and suspending it between two trees we would have a ready-made luxurious hammock in which to loll.
Most persons enjoy an after-dinner smoke and feel quite miserable when they find themselves in a jungle far from civilization with no tobacco or cigarettes. But it isn't necessary for a smoker to go without cigarettes in the South American jungles, for all of the makings are there to be had for the trouble of taking. Just ask the Indians and you'll be surprised. Slipping into the forest an Indian will presently reappear and hand you half a dozen or more cigarettes ready-made. Moreover, they will have a much better flavor than many a factory-made cigarette though they are not put up in cellophane-wrapped packages or advertised over the radio. Where does the Indian get them? From the cigarette tree, of course. To be sure the Indian doesn't know it by that name but calls it "Tuk-eya-heya" which amounts to the same thing for in his language that means the "tree that is good to smoke." Neither does he pick the cigarettes neatly rolled and ready to light from the branches of the tree, but scrapes away the outer bark, peels off thin papery sheets of the inner bark, and shredding the intervening fiber for filler
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rolls it in the natural wrapper which he secures in place by a winding of threadlike aerial roots from the same tree.
If one wishes a shelter to keep off the rain or the sun there are the broad six-foot leaves of the scarlet flowered wild plantains which only need to be laid like shingles on a framework of bamboos or light poles; or the leaves of fan-palms which are equally good for
Wild plantain (1/5)
the purpose. If we are caught in a shower or even in a torrential tropical downpour and there are banana or plantain-trees near we can quickly secure an umbrella that will serve much better than any manufactured umbrella we could purchase in a real department store. Many of the leaves are eight or ten feet in length and two feet in width, and if we secure a new leaf, untorn
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by the wind, it is all we need, for by holding this on the end of a sharpened stick or the point of a machete the green roof with its eaves projecting beyond our shoulders will keep us dry in the heaviest downpour.
Sometimes when traveling in the jungles one comes to a stream too wide or deep to ford, or the traveler may wish to navigate one of the jungle rivers. Without a boat or canoe or even a raft how can he manage it? Just leave that to the Indians. In almost no time they will cut and wedge a big cylinder of bark from a purple-heart tree. Then with lianas or bush ropes they will wrap and lash each end of the bark cylinder until smaller than the rest of the piece. Cutting a few strong sticks they will force them between the sides of the bark and presto! they have a light, buoyant canoe known as a "woodskin." But they need paddles with which to propel the craft, and paddles don't grow on trees. Oh, yes they do---in the South American jungles -for the trunk of the paddle tree grows outward in the form of numerous hips or flanges a foot or more in width and barely an inch in thickness. It doesn't take long for an Indian with a machete to cut off a portion of one of these flanges and hew it into form and thus provide himself with a perfectly good paddle. And if he needs a spear the Indian secures the strong, straight light midrib of a palm leaf, fits a razor-edged piece of bamboo to one end and has a most deadly and efficient weapon. If by chance he should lose or break his powerful six-foot bow he can quickly secure a substitute in this great plant department store. Splitting a stem of bamboo lengthwise, he turns the two pieces end for end,
shaves them to a taper each side of the center, lashes and binds them together with wrappings of strips of fibrous bark or split rattan and has a bow that will serve his purpose. But he needs a string for it and this he secures from a clump of pita hemp or arrow grass, the tall straight stems of which make excellent arrows, while the long fibers in the leaves when twisted together are stronger than the famous Manilla hemp. Perhaps you think that by now we have exhausted the possibilities of the plant storehouse. Do you wish a shave? If so there are razors growing on plants all ready to use. These are the seeds of a species of climbing grass and if you are not very careful you will cut your fingers badly, for each seed is provided with two tiny blades as keen as any steel razor blade. By grasping a seed by the "beard"- which is much like that of wheat- and drawing it across your skin, the tiny blades will shave off the hairs as well as any razor ever made. But they lose their edges quickly and a number of seeds must be used in order to secure a clean shave. Of course they do pull some if they are used dry, but that isn't necessary even if you have no shaving or other soap. Just pick a handful of the yellow tendrils and the green leaves of the soap-vine and moisten them and rub them on your face and you'll have a lather as good as any one could wish. If there are no soap-vines with their buff and black flowers perhaps there will he a soap-berry bash or a soap-bark tree which will do just as well, and if there are any Spanish bayonet or yucca plants near, their roots rubbed with water will furnish excellent soap. You can even obtain a ready-made brush and comb
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if you wish. The leaf stem of a palmetto with the end pounded and frayed will make a fine stiff hair-brush, and the stem of a grugru-palm with the leaflets cut off an inch from the stem will prove a very good comb.
If you require a bowl in which to wash your hands or a dish for your food or a drinking vessel there are the hard-shelled fruits of the calabash tree needing only to be emptied of their contents.
In fact there is almost no end to the needful things
Cannonball tree of the West Indies (1/16)
ready to use with little or no preparation. For that matter, you may be speechless with astonishment to come upon cannonballs growing on trees. To be sure I cannot imagine any one having any use for cannon balls when in the jungle, but there they are if any one wants them. As rusty as if made of iron long exposed to the weather, as round and almost as hard and heavy as the genuine article, they lie piled about the foot of
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a large tree. If we examine them more closely we will find that they are the fruits of the tree and are borne on short stems sprouting directly from the bark of the trunk and branches. Some are fully grown and have ripened and fallen to the earth while others of all sizes are still attached to their stalks among the rather handsome purple-red flowers of the tree.
Finally there are the toys that grow on trees. When a youngster in the tropics wants to fly a kite he doesn't go to the nearest toy store and buy one, neither does he tinker with paper and paste and slender sticks and concoct a home-made affair that may or may not fly. In the first place there may not be a store of any sort within miles, in the second place he has no money with which to buy a kite even if there were a store, in the third place he possesses neither paper nor paste, and in the fourth place he knows where kites grow on trees. So he searches about until he finds a kite-tree with great broad oval leaves eighteen or twenty inches in length and seven or eight inches wide with stout strong midribs. A small liana no larger than trout-line provide the string, and a few minutes later the brown skinned youngster has his leaf kite soaring far up in the sky among dozens of other leaf kites of the other youngsters.
A toy boat made from a palm bud (1/8)
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And when he tires of kite flying and he and his playmates decide to have a toy-boat regatta they pick their boats off trees. Climbing like so many brown monkeys up the cocoanut palms they secure the hard woody spathes or coverings to the buds. With strong roots or pieces of liana string they sew the open ends of the spathes together, force little sticks between the sides and have perfect miniatures of their fathers' dug-out canoes. A bit of bark or wood cut to shape forms a rudder, a sliver of bamboo and one of the kite-tree leaves make mast and sail, and launching their plant-borne boats the boys laugh and squeal with delight in the little craft, catching the trade wind, go sailing swiftly out to sea. What if they are lost? They cost nothing and there are plenty more to he had for the taking and scores of the strange little boats go voyaging into the unknown before the boys tire of their fun.
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Chapter III
THE MOST USEFUL TREES
WHAT trees are the most useful to man? Pines, oaks, fruit trees? No, none of these familiar trees are so useful to mankind as are the palms. Practically every need of man can be obtained from the palm-trees. They supply food, drink, clothing, fuel, timber, thatch, nets, twine, cordage, oil, butter, vinegar, liquors, utensils, dishes, boats, fans, hats, shoes, combs, brushes, medicines, light, carpets, sails, bedding, sugar, syrup, dyes, and many other things besides. And no other group of trees can supply such a wide variety of articles useful to human beings.
Symbols of perpetual summer, soft skies and balmy trade-winds, the palms are the most familiar of all tropical trees. Indeed a landscape does not appear tropical without these graceful plumed trees. As a rule the palms we see so frequently in photographs and other pictures of tropical lands are the cocoanut and the royal palms, but these are only two species of the group which numbers many hundreds of species, each of which is the source of some useful or valuable product. Even the lowly saw-palmetto of our southern states is a useful tree. The young leaf bud is edible and delicious and is known as palm cabbage, the fiber of the tree is made into brooms, brushes, cordage, and other articles,
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the leaves are used for thatching buildings, and the roots are the source of a valuable medicine. The best known and probably the most useful and valuable of all the palm trees is the cocoanut palm. It is a striking and typical feature of every tropical shore and village throughout the world. Its original home is unknown, for cocoanuts enclosed within their tough, buoyant water-proof husks will float for months upon the surface of the sea and when cast ashore by the waves will sprout and grow, and thus have spread far and wide. Some scientists claim it originated in the East ladies, others say Africa, while many claim that the cocoanut palm is an American plant. The tree is perfectly designed to spread from land to land for it will thrive luxuriantly on sandy beaches where its ropelike roots are washed by the waves and its stiff, feathery leaves are thrashed and torn by every breeze. Even when the shores are lashed by hurricanes the majority of cocoanut palms survive, for old Mother Nature has fitted these trees to withstand these terrific devastating winds. The leaves are so formed that they offer little resistance to a gale, the fronds streaming out and the separate leaflets folding lengthwise when struck by the blast, while the tough, flexible, fibrous trunk will bend and give without breaking. And when the gale increases and the hurricane howls and roars at one hundred miles an hour or more, and great trees are snapped off like match-sticks, and housetops are carried bodily away and locomotives are toppled from the rails and stone buildings are mashed to bits, the short ropelike roots of the cocoanuts give way and the palm, still intact, falls to the earth. But the fact that
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it has bean uprooted and lies prostrate doesn't trouble the cocoanut palm in the least. Incredibly soon the roots have regained a hold in the sand, the upper portion of the stem turns upward, and the palm starts growing again, its truck flat upon the beach and its crown of feathery leaves waving triumphantly above it. There is a Hindu saying that "he who sees a straight cocoanut palm will go direct to heaven." No doubt he would, for a straight cocoanut palm-tree would be about the greatest of botanical rarities, a real freak. In fact it is doubtful if a really straight cocoanut palm exists anywhere on earth or ever did exist, for the cocoanut is a strict observer of the old adage: "as the twig is bent the tree is inclined." From the time the palm sprouts from the nut it struggles to lead an upright life while the wind strives with might and main to bend it to its will. The result is that the trees become bent and twisted into most strange and often astonishing shapes. Perhaps you may have wondered why the end of the dried cocoanuts have the three smooth roundish spots that form the "monkey face" on the surface of the nut. But if you should see a cocoanut sprouting you would understand their purpose, for the nut germinates while resting upon the surface of the ground, the roots pushing out through two of the "eyes" and the bud breaking through the other. When the leaves first expand they are whole and spear-shaped, but in a few hours slits appear along the sides of the leaves and the intervening materials become leaflets. Once the plant has obtained a good start it grows very rapidly and begins to blossom when from three to
ten years old. After that it bears continuously, year in and year out, regardless of seasons, for eighty to one hundred years. Although the dried nuts are the most familiar product of this palm, yet these are but one of many of the products of the tree and by no means the most important one. Perhaps the most important of cocoanut products is copra, the dried meat of the nut. This is the principal and in many places the only article of commerce of many of the South Sea and Pacific Islands. It is from copra, and to less extent the fresh meat, that cocoanut oil is obtained. When fresh the oil is sweet and has a pleasant odor and is widely used for cooking purposes. But it soon becomes rancid and its principal value is for making soap. Soap made from cocoanut oil will form a lather with salt water and is used extensively on board ships. Butter also is made from cocoanut oil and when properly prepared it is superior to ordinary butter made from milk. Persons whose health will not permit them to use animal butter find cocoanut butter a perfect substitute, while fresh milk of the nuts is widely used in place of cows' milk for making icecream, puddings, and other sweets. In the lands where the cocoanuts grow the milk of the dried nuts is never used as a beverage, the juice or milk of the green or "jelly" nuts being used to drink.
A green cocoanut contains more than twice as much milk as a dried or ripe nut and is totally different in flavor. Instead of being sickish or insipid and "dead" it is clear, cool, and refreshing with a peculiar and delightful tang to it. The meat of the dried cocoanuts as sold in our markets is thick, tough, and indigestible,
but the meat of the green cocoanut is a soft, thick, creamy jelly which may be scraped from the shell with a spoon.
The sap of the tree itself is another useful product of the cocoa-palm. Boiled down when freshly drawn it is used like syrup or molasses, and if allowed to ferment it serves as well as yeast in making bread. If fermentation is continued to a certain stage and it is then distilled the product is the fiery intoxicating liquor of the Orient known as arrack. Alcohol is also an important product of the sap and in the Philippines alone over thirty million gallons of sap are collected each year. Each gallon of sap contains a pound of sugar, yet very little sugar is made from the palm sap.
Wherever the cocoanut palms grow the natives find some useful purpose for every portion of the tree. The leaves are plaited together to form a tight rain-proof thatch for the houses. Dried and stripped they are woven into matting, rugs, curtains, and even sails for boats. The rough fibrous husks covering the nuts are retted in water and are the material from which our door-mats are made, while quantities of the husk fibers are twisted into the famous coir rope. The trunks of the trees make excellent timbers for buildings and are used as posts and fences. The wood, which is not true wood but is composed of pithy material filled with hard homy fibers, is used for a great variety of purposes. As I have already mentioned in Chapter II the netlike covering of the bud makes a nice cap, while the, spathes are used for toy canoes by the native boys. The hard shells of the nuts are made into
cups, dippers, jars, saucers, vases, spoons and other utensils, while the stiff
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sharp ribs of the leaflets serve as pins, forks, combs, toothpicks, and are even used as needles. No person who ever visits the tropics can fail to admire the royal palms. They are the most stately, majestic and beautiful of all palm-trees, as well as the largest. Unlike the cocoanut palms with their twisted crooked trunks, the trunks of the royal palms are as straight and symmetrical as though turned from granite upon a giant lathe. Although there are many species of these palms all are similar in appearance, all are beautiful and they are as useful as they are attractive. From the crater of the crowns of royal palms the best of all the palm cabbage is obtained. In the West Indies this is called "mountain cabbage." Every cabbage taken spells the doom of a magnificent palm-tree, for the choice white vegetable is the very heart of the tree, the immature leaves, and removing it kills the tree. Hundreds of the pitiful dead trunks of lordly palm-trees dot the hillsides in the Antilles, and so many trees have been destroyed for the sake of the cabbages that in Cuba and other islands there are strict laws prohibiting any one from taking palm cabbage. As timber and lumber the trunk of the royal palm is far superior to that of the cocoanut palm, and in the Dominican Republic and some other islands, there are scores of houses built entirely from products supplied by the royal palms. The timbers and rafters are of royal palm wood, the walls are made of the hard durable shell or bark of the palm buds, the roofs are thatched with palm leaves, the owners sleep on mats woven from leaves of the palm, and they eat the royal palm berries made into delicious preserves or pickled like olives.
Another useful palm which is related to the royal palms is the grugru or maho palm, abundant in the forests of the West Indies. Several species bear edible nuts, their buds provide excellent "cabbage" and the big fat white grubs or larvae of giant beetles which live in the decaying heart of the trees are considered great dainties by the natives. For that matter, I am very fond of these "grugru worms" myself. They are cooked by spitting them on a sliver of bamboo or palm leaf and toasting them over a fire. They swell up and pop open like roasted chestnuts which they resemble in flavor. Other species of these palms have edible nutritious fruits and many are exceedingly useful because of their tough and durable wood and for their leaves. From the leaves of these palms the Carib Indians weave their wonderful waterproof baskets. They are used by the natives for making fish traps, for making sieves, for thatching houses, for matting, and for many other purposes. Still another valuable and useful palm is the pejibaye or peach-palm of Mexico and Central America, for this palm-tree not only supplies useful wood and leaves, but in addition bears most delicious fruits. These are about the size of a crab-apple, rich orange or scarlet in color, and grow in immense clusters weighing as much as fifty pounds each. They contain more food value than the banana and in the cultivated variety are usually seedless. Although they may be eaten raw they are usually cooked like squash, and are also used in making jams, jellies, conserves, and the like, while many are fermented and are made into a splendid rich wine. Another very useful American palm is the barrel
palm of Cuba and other West Indian islands. This palm has a remarkable swollen trunk and by digging out the soft pith and fitting ends to a section of the trunk a one-piece, strong, and serviceable barrel is made.
Of all the fruit-bearing palms the most valuable and
Barrel palm Cuba (about 20 feet high)
important is the date-palm. Although not a native of America it has been introduced, and in Arizona and California it is the most valuable of all fruit trees, the date ranches of Arizona yielding the greatest profit per acre of any land in the world.
Still, dry, ragged, and far from handsome, the date palm is perhaps the least attractive of all palms, but when loaded with its enormous clusters of bright yellow
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or orange fruits it presents a most unusual and remarkable sight, Nearly every one is familiar with vegetable ivory, but not every one knows that the hard ivory like material is the nut of a South American palm-tree. There are several species of the ivory-nut palms but all are known as "tagua" in the countries when they grow. The seeds or nuts are more or less triangular in form, about twice the size of a big Brazil-nut, and are borne in hard thin outer shells. When young they are filled with a white milk, like that of the cocoanut, but as the nuts ripen this congeals and hardens to form a finegrained albuminous substance which for many purposes answers all the requirements of genuine ivory. All of the useful palms I have mentioned have long plume like leaves, but there are many useful palm-trees belonging to the fan-palm group. These are stout, usually bushy, palms with broad, fan-shaped leaves which in many places are transformed into a great variety of useful and important articles such as hats, baskets, trays, saddle-bags, panniers, and the familiar palm-leaf fans sold in our shops. Objects made from the leaves of fan-palms are strong, light and very durable and will withstand very rough usage. In the island of Haiti or more properly Hispaniola, the palm-leaf bags which are called "macutos" are in use as market bags, coffee-sacks, cacao-bags and even pocket-books. There is scarcely a school-child on the island who does not carry his or her books and pencils in a bright-colored handsomely woven macuto. Many of the products of tropical lands come to us in macuto bags and the strong sacks in which dates are shipped to us from
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Africa and Asia are made from the leaves of a fan palm,
Still another class of very useful and valuable palm is the wax-palm group of Brazil and the lower slopes of the Andes. These trees have the trunks, and often times the leaves also, coated with a secretion which is two-thirds resin and one-third wax. This is a very important article of commerce, for when melted and combined with a small amount of fat the palm wax forms a perfect substitute for tallow or paraffin and is extensively used in making candles and for other purposes. One remarkable feature of the palms is the fact that many species are peculiar to one country or even to a small area or to one tiny island. Among such isolated species of palms is the twin cocoanut palm of the Celebes Islands. For many years the strange double nuts were found floating upon the surface of the sea, but as no one had ever seen them growing on a tree on land, and as they were such weird strange things, they were believed to be the fruits of some submarine plant. But when the Celebes were at last visited and explored the remarkable nuts were found growing on palm-trees which were about as strange in appearance as are the nuts themselves. Unlike other palms which usually have tall or fairly tall trunks and bear fruit at the top just beneath the leaves, the twin-cocoanut palm has practically no trunk at all. The long feathery fronds sprout directly from the surface of the earth and the clusters of gigantic twin nuts actually rest upon the ground. These were only a few of the palms of which more
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than one thousand species are known, but among them all none is more curious or remarkable than the giant talipot palm. Imposing and handsome in appearance, with a stout rough trunk supporting a huge head of great fan-shaped leaves the talipot form a striking
Talipot palm in flower (about 40 feet high)
feature of the landscape. But its real claim to distinction is its amazing habit of growth and flowering which is not only unique but is one of the unsolved puzzles of Nature and which, to our minds, seems such a waste of time and material.
Being a slow-growing tree the talipot palm requires
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from thirty to thirty-five years to reach its full size, by which time its trunk is forty or fifty feet in height and its glossy green leaves are eight to ten feet in length by twelve to fourteen feet in width.
During all these years no sign of bud or blossom has appeared, which is in striking contrast to other palms that usually begin to bloom when quite young and continue to flower and fruit constantly as long as they live.
But at last, when at the end of thirty years or more the mighty talipot has reached maturity, a huge fleshy, naked stalk or spathe, looking like a gigantic stalk of asparagus, shoots upward from the center of the crown of great leaves. This remarkable bud makes up in its speed for the slow growth of the palm itself and in a few days towers high above the leaves and sends forth many fleshy branches, until at last it becomes transformed into an enormous vegetable candelabra rising more than twenty-five feet above the leafy crown of the tree. Then, eight weeks after the great bud has first appeared, it bursts into bloom. Like golden-yellow tassels the flowers drape the spreading branches until they cover the enormous candelabra-like structure with a solid mass of gold. Sweet and exquisitely scented, they attract scores of butterflies, and brilliant humming-birds hover by hundreds about the vast floral display. As soon as the flowers appear the leaves of the palm begin to wilt and droop, the lower leaves turn to a dreary faded brown and hang weakly down beside the trunk, as if weary with their long
efforts to produce the triumphant floral column rising so majestically
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above them. One by one the great leaves droop and die yet still hold tenaciously to the parent stem, until the only sign of vitality is that towering mass of golden bloom against the blue sky. But as the last of the huge leaves turn brown the flowers too begin to fade. Every passing breeze scatters the petals and stamens far and wide while purple and green seeds take their places and birds and insects desert the talipot feast for newer and more abundant riches.
For six months this slow death continues with little change other than the ever-increasing number of seeds. Then, when the last seeds have ripened, the enormous flower stalk bends gradually to one side, sways ominously and precariously in the wind and finally crashes down amid the dead leaves. There it hangs, like a broken spar, beside the sturdy trunk which has so bravely weathered the storms of thirty years in order to produce the flower which has brought about its death. Truly this is a plant that commits suicide.
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Chapter IV
TREES THAT GROW WHILE YOU WAIT
EVERY one knows the banana but very few know that the plant which supplies us with the luscious fruits is one of the strangest and most interesting of strange plants and serves many a purpose other than providing edible and nutritious fruit. In fact it is one of the most useful of all plants. The fibers of its stalks and leaves are used for twine and rope, the well known Manilla hemp, as we have said, being obtained from a species of banana plant, while its leaves are used as wrappings for bundles, for packing fragile goods, for thatching roofs of houses and other buildings, and even for umbrellas. In the tropics where banana trees grow, a native need never be drenched by a sudden shower. All he has to do is to cut a fresh banana leaf and hold it over his head and, Presto! he is protected from the rain by a broad green roof extending to below his shoulders.
From the fruit-which is used as a vegetable when green, eaten raw when ripe, or dried like figs---a vast number of useful products are obtained. Among these are sugar, starch, dyes, tannin, vinegar, syrup, and alcohol, as well as a very fine white flour, which is particularly valuable for invalids or persons who cannot eat ordinary white flour. Although in the North only the yellow and red bananas are seen, yet there are more
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than eight hundred varieties grown, and among these are fruits of every imaginable form and color, no, not quite every color, for I do not think there is any blue banana. But there are pale pink, purple, green, orange, scarlet, crimson, buff, cream, colored bananas; bananas that are streaked with mauve and green, bananas that are covered with leopardlike spots of red end yellow, green and black, orange and brown, and there are others beautifully variegated and marbled with contrasting colors. Some are tiny fruits barely three inches in length with skins as thin as paper and with sweet sugary flesh, others are giant fruits more than a font long and so lacking in flavor when ripe that they are used only when cooked as a vegetable. Some are short and almost melon-shaped, some are straight, some are curved in crescent form and others are long and slender, but all are alike in their manner of growth. All grew in bunches, each fruit turned upward, and when its single bunch of fruits has matured the parent tree dies.
When we see bunches of bananas hanging in our stores they are always upside down and are suspended by the end of the stalk where the bud and flowers are borne. If bunches of bananas were hung right side up, as they grow on the tree, the individual fruits would break off as they ripened, which is just what Mother Nature intended they should do, for while cultivated bananas are usually seedless and very rarely show more than traces of infertile seeds, the original wild bananas contained large seeds. We often hear people say how delicious a banana must be when picked ripe from the tree and not infrequently they express wonder that
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with modern refrigeration and transportation bunches of bananas are still picked and shipped when green instead of when ripe. But it is not a question of transportation or refrigeration which prevents this being done, for even in the lands where the bananas grow it is necessary to pick or rather cut the bunches when green, for if allowed to remain on the trees the fruits ripen and fall off one at a time or are eaten by birds, rats, bats, and other creatures as fast as they mature.
I have often wondered what becomes of the millions upon millions of bunches of bananas which are brought into the United States every week. More than sixty million bunches of the fruit are imported each year and each of these bunches contains nearly one hundred separate bananas. If every man, woman, and child in the United States should eat half a dozen bananas every week they could scarcely keep up with the flood of fruit pouring into our great ports from tropical lands. Yet bananas, popular as they are, are not eaten at every meal every day by every person able to digest solid food, so what does become of so many bananas? No one seems to be able to answer that question and neither can any one solve the mystery of the banana's past history. The plant has been cultivated for so many thousands of years in so many different countries by so many races that it abounds in all tropical lands and no botanist, no scientist, can name the native land of the banana or say who were the first people to make use of its fruit. By far the most remarkable feature of the banana is its rapid growth. For its size it is the most speedy of all known plants, for within a few months the tender
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green shoot pushing through the earth will develop into a big tree fifteen or twenty feet in height, with a trunk a foot in diameter at the base, with a crown of immense banner-like leaves and a huge bunch of fruit weighing a hundred pounds and more. Indeed so rapidly does the plant grow that under favorable conditions one may actually see it grow. I do not mean that you can sit down and watch a banana plant shoot upward like Jack's famous beanstalk, and blossom and bear fruit while you wait. On the contrary, if you wish to see a banana tree grow you will have to cut down a good sized tree. Unlike most trees which send out new branches from the bark or roots-when the main trunk has been cut off, the banana tree sends up a new shoot from the center of the severed trunk and this develops so swiftly that it may be seen to grow. A banana stalk which has just been severed, twenty minutes later was showing the new shoot beginning to appear in the center of the old trunk. In a few hours, the new shoot is nearly two feet in height while in a short time later it has raced upward for several feet and had spread four leaves. A month later the new tree was as large and as flourishing as before it had been cut down and three months later it produced a fine bunch of fruit.
The secret of this almost magical growth lies in the fact that the stalk of the banana tree is not a true trunk but is composed of undeveloped leaves rolled tightly together to form a compact, strong and apparently solid stalk, but which in reality is constantly moving
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upward and outward as new leaf material is formed in the center. If you roll up a sheet of paper and push on one end the pressure will cause the other end to move forward by unrolling spirally. The banana trunk grows in exactly this manner and when the stalk is severed the central portion, continuing its unrolling process, swiftly rises above the surface of the cut. Even if the banana tree should be awarded first prize for rapid growth it is not nearly so tenacious of life as many other plants and even trees. In the North the problem is to keep trees from dying, but in many tropical lands the problem is to keep trees from living. Very often one finds that what appears to be a hedge of trees was once a fence, the posts of which have taken root and sent forth branches and have become flourishing trees. In many localities, especially in Central America, one of the greatest difficulties in maintaining telephone lines is to prevent the poles from sprouting. Constant vigilance is necessary in order to keep the lines from being grounded or short circuited by the branches and foliage
springing from the bare poles, and many men are kept busy watching the lines and cutting away the shoots as fast as they sprout from the poles. Even railway ties will take root and grow and only by treating the wood with some chemical can this be prevented. On one occasion while in Costa Rica I was traveling through a dense unbroken jungle when I stubbed my toe and tripped over some object concealed among the fallen leaves and undergrowth. Upon investigating I1 discovered it was an old rusted and corroded switch lever. Wondering how it happened to be in such
a strange place I searched about and to my surprise discovered that I was on an abandoned railway track. But had it not beem for the switch which had tripped me and a few of the steel rails still remaining no one would ever have suspected it, for the wooden ties had sprouted and grown into good-sized trees. Although plants that refuse to die are far more numerous and are more tenacious of life in tropical than in temperate lands, yet some of the northern plants are just as tenacious of life as those of the tropics. Many of the willows are truly marvelous in this respect and almost any twig or withe even when peeled, will sprout and grow if planted in moist soil. We are all familiar with the weeping willows so common in this country and in England, yet all the weeping willows of Great Britain and America owe their existence to a fragment of a basket used as a container of figs sent from Smyrna to England. The basket of fruit was given to Lady Suffolk. Alexander Pope, the famous poet, was present when the gift arrived and drawing out one of the withes of which the basket was made he remarked, "Perhaps this will produce something that we have not in England" The withe was planted in the bank of the Thames at Pope's villa in Twickenham where it sprouted and grew into a fine weeping willow tree. Years later a young British officer who was about to leave with his troops for the American colonies, plucked a twig of the Pope willow to carry with him across the Atlantic. Having no doubt as to the outcome of the Revolutionary War, he planned to settle down in the
new land at the close of hostilities. Throughout the campaign he carried the willow wand with him, carefully wrapped in oiled silk, and at the end of the war he presented the twig, which he had hoped to plant on his own estate, to John Parker Custis, son of Mrs. Washington. Planted on the Custis estate of Abingdon in Virginia the withe from the tree by the Thames took
Rose of Jericho Left: When growing Right: When dry and dormant
root and thrived and became the ancestor of all weeping willows in the United States.
Telegraph poles and railway ties that sprout and withes filched from willow baskets that grow into trees are not so remarkable as the queer resurrection plants of the desert lands of our west, and of Arabia. The western plant is related to the club-mosses or princess pines; while the resurrection plant of Arabia and Palestine, which is also known as Rose of Jericho and
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Mary's Hand, is a member of the parsley or turnip family. But both are equally strange in their ability to come to life after long periods of remaining dormant. Possessing no true roots these queer plants live on the most arid and waterless deserts where their fernlike bronze-green or purplish leaves spread out in rosette form at night or when there is any moisture in the air. But during the beat of the day or when dry parching winds sweep across the deserts the plants roll up into balls and are blown about, often rolling for many miles before coming again to rest. When taken from their native homes these plants may be kept for years, dry, lifeless appearing spheres of dull straw-color. But if placed in water, or moistened, they at once commence to unroll and to expand, their faded leaves acquire a tint of green and purple and in a short time they spread out into handsome rosettes of ferny leaves. Many other desert plants possess the ability to remain in a state of suspended animation for long periods of time. A number of species of cacti will readily take root and grow after having been kept dry and apparently dead for many months. In the Andes of Peru there is a strange cactus which grows abundantly on the barest rockiest slopes where there is scarcely a trace of soil. During the winter season, when the air is damp and misty, the plants are green and fleshy and are covered with handsome yellow blossoms, but during the summer season, when the air is as dry and hot as though from some mighty furnace, the plants shrivel and shrink and become black, withered, and fleshless. But if gathered in this condition and placed in slightly damp sand in a moist atmosphere the repulsive-looking black
and lifeless things soon show signs of resurrection. The shrunken withered skins swell, and buds of green appear upon them. In a few weeks the black remains have been absorbed by the new growth and fleshy green cacti have taken their places.
But we need not seek upon the arid deserts, the bleak Andean heights, or in the tropical jungles for strange plants that grow while you wait and seem never to die,
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for some of our own native plants are just as strange and remarkable in these respects.
The wild portulaca or bitter-root, which is the state flower of Montana, is one of these. Aside from being the state flower the bitter-root is a staple food-plant of the Indians. Although the raw root is very bitter and has a disagreeable odor when being boiled, yet when cooked it loses both its bitterness and its odor and is very nutritious. But the most remarkable feature of the bitter-root is its resistance to conditions which would kill almost any other plant. It is strange indeed that a hewn timber will still survive and sprout, it is equally remarkable that a willow withe from a basket will take root and become a tree, and it is astonishing that a plant may be stored away in a dry spot for years and yet still spring into life at the first touch of water. But that any Plant will survive such treatment and in addition may be boiled and yet live is truly amazing. Yet the bitter-root has been known to do this, for a root of the plant which had been immersed in boiling water and was then dried and preserved as a specimen in a botanical collection for over a year not only sprang into life but grew and actually flowered.
Chapter V
PLANTS THAT CURE AND KILL
ONE of the strangest things about plants is that so many of them possess medicinal properties. There is an old saying to the effect that for every ill there is a plant to cure it. This is almost literally true, and in the early days of our country the colonists depended almost entirely upon the plant medicines to heal wounds and sores and to relieve sickness. Modern doctors and others may laugh at the old "herbs and simples,'' but we must remember that a very large proportion of our standard, most highly valued medicines are plant medicines. Moreover, the greater number of medicinal plants in use are natives of America and were not known to white men until after the discovery of the New World, although they had been in use by the Indians for countless centuries.
Ipecacuanha, sarsaparilla, sassafrass, wintergreen, boneset, striped maple, liverwort, feverfew, arrowroot, palmetto, papain, calisaya, goldthread, viburnum, catnip, peppermint, pye-weed, jimson-weed, witchhazel, yarrow, wild cherry, slippery-elm, sweet-flag, dittany, yerba-santa, grindelia, greasewood,
dogwood, couch-grass, mullein, lobelia, cascara-sakrada and many other medicinal plants and plant products were used by the Indians, and are still considered standard rem-
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edies. And what would the world do without cocaine and quinine?
Of all medicines perhaps quinine is the most important. Tens of thousands, in fact millions of people owe their lives to the cinchona tree whose bark is the source of quinine and was used by the South American Indians for thousands of years before the Spaniards conquered Peru. To the Indians of Peru, the tree and its medicinal bark was known as "quina" but the name cinchona was bestowed upon the tree by Linnaeus, the famous naturalist who, strangely enough, made the mistake of transposing the letter "h," thus giving the tree a name he had not intended. It was in 1638 that the wife of Don Luis Mendoza, Viceroy of Peru, was stricken with malaria, and despite every effort of the Spanish physicians she became steadily worse until her death seemed certain. Then, as a last resort, the despairing Viceroy and the doctors listened to the pleas of the Indians and administered a bitter decoction made from the bark of a forest tree. The effect was almost magical. The fever was broken, the patient rapidly improved and very soon was completely cured. Realizing what a boon to humanity the magic bark would prove, the Viceroy's wife carried a large quantity of the "Peruvian bark" to Spain when she returned to her native land. Very quickly the fame of the marvelous fever cure spread throughout the civilized world and the bark, previously known only to the Indians, became an important article of export from Peru.
Yet it was not until one hundred years after the

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Viceroy's wife had been saved from death by its use that the quina tree was described and christened with a scientific Latin name by Linnaeus. Knowing the story of the Viceroy Mendoza's wife, who was the Countess of Chincon, the great naturalist decided to name the tree in her boner, but instead of calling it chincona he misnamed it cinchona and such it has remained. Even Linnaeus did not know that there were a number of species of the tree, all of which have medicinal bark, although the yellow cinchona or calisaya produces the best quinine. All are natives of South America and grow only at an elevation of more than eight thousand feet above the sea in volcanic soil where there is a tropical climate with a rainfall of more than one hundred inches a year. To obtain the bark the Indians not only stripped the trunks but felled the trees in order to secure the bark from the branches. As there were no large groves or forests of the trees their numbers were so reduced that the world was threatened with a complete loss of the precious medicine. Fortunately, however, it was found that the cinchona trees would thrive in other lands, and about fifty years ago plantations were established in Java and elsewhere. To-day over thirty thousand acres of land are devoted to the cultivation of cinchona in Java alone and 99 per cent of the bark is produced in that island. Although an infusion of the bark is as efficacious or even more efficacious than the commercial quinine, yet it is seldom used except in its refined and prepared state. So even if the tree itself was given its name in honor of the woman who first made it known to the
outside world, its ancient Indian name still survives in the name of the drug, quinine. Another priceless blessing to the human race which was given to the world by the Incan races of Peru is cocaine obtained from coca leaves. To be sure cocaine has proved a curse as well as a blessing to mankind, but the benefits derived from it have far outweighed all the degradation and misery it has caused through its used by drug addicts. It has deadened the pain and relieved the agonies of millions of people, it has made many difficult and dangerous surgical operations simple and safe. Before local anaesthetics (of which cocaine was the first) were used, many operations were impossible, while those which we now consider trivial and painless were so agonizing that the subjects had to be chloroformed or etherized into insensibility. Yet thousands of years before our surgeons had discovered the pain-deadening powers of the drug the Indians of Peru and Bolivia and Ecuador had discovered its value as an anaesthetic and had made use of it in performing truly amazing surgical operations. It seems incredible that the pre-Incan and Incan surgeons, equipped only with bronze and stone instruments, could have amputated limbs, removed cancers and tumors, performed cassarean operations, filled, crowned, and bridged teeth, and even trepanned skulls successfully. Yet we have abundant evidence that they did all these things and more. Hundreds of trepanned skulls have been found in the ancient graves and tombs and a very large portion of these show by the healed edges of the bone that the patients recovered completely from the dangerous operation. Some not only recovered but,
later on, were trepanned again. One skull from Peru has five large apertures cut through the bone and all healed perfectly, while another had a huge piece removed from the top of the cranium and two other large pieces cut from the sides, leaving only a narrow bridge of bone separating the holes. Moreover, in this case the apertures were so large that silver and gold plates were required to cover them, and as the skin, which still adhered to the skull, had grown over the metal, and the bone beneath had healed, we know that the man recovered and lived for years after his terrible operations. Also many skeletons with a leg or an arm amputated have been found, while pictures and pottery vessels show men and women with amputated limbs and some even wearing artificial legs. Even more difficult and painful operations were successfully performed by these ancient Indian surgeons and we know that they made use of cocaine as a local anaesthetic, for on some of the sculptures and pottery, surgeons are shown at their work and are represented actually using the drug to deaden the pain of their patients. To be sure their method of using cocaine was crude and far from antiseptic, for they merely chewed the leaves of the coca plant and from time to time expectorated the juice into the wound as they proceeded with the operation. However, the results must have been satisfactory, for unless the pain had been deadened so that the patient did not squirm or move, the delicate operation on of removing a section of skull and exposing the brain would have been practically impossible.
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ancient Peruvians used the coca leaves macerated with wood ashes or lime and applied as a poultice. Just how they discovered the properties of cocaine no one knows, but for thousands of years the Andean Indians have been in the habit of chewing the coca leaves to allay hunger, thirst, and weariness. Among the most ancient specimens of pottery are vessels showing men with one cheek distended by the little wad of coca leaves and lime, and the practice is still universal among the mountain and desert tribes. Without the lime or ashes the coca leaves have no effect, for an alkali is necessary to extract the cocaine from them. Unlike the use of cocaine by drug addicts, the custom of chewing the leaves has no injurious effects and does not become a mania or even a fixed habit. Indians from the mountain districts who have chewed coca leaves for years almost invariably abandon the habit when they make their homes in the larger cities of the coastal district, and have no craving for the leaves. The great majority of household servants in Lima and other coastal towns are Indians from the mountains, yet it is rare indeed to see one of these men or women chewing coca, although the leaves are everywhere on sale in stores and markets. Neither do the lowland Indians use the leaves, and I have never known white men to acquire the habit, even if on long, tiresome journeys they sometimes follow the natives' custom. The leaves are chewed merely to deaden the sufferings of hunger, thirst, and weary muscles and when provided with plenty of good food to sustain him the Indian feels no need of the leaves.
Still another plant that has proved a boon to human

beings is the chaulmoogra tree, for the oil extracted from the seeds of this tree is the only known aid in the cure of leprosy. Countless men and women afflicted with the dread malady have been restored to health and happiness by treatment with chaulmoogra oil. Unfortunately it is not always efficacious and moreover, the treatment is so agonizing that many lepers have preferred to remain such rather than endure the suffering of the cure. But corps of men are striving steadily to find a means of treatment which will obviate this and at the same time render the results more certain. Oculists, too, depend upon a plant. They would find it difficult indeed to carry on their profession without belladonna or atropine which are derived from the same plant. And how many of us know that the useful belladonna and the atropine, which oculists drop in their patients' eyes in order to dilate the pupils so they may be more accurately examined, are obtained from the common deadly nightshade, The despised jimson-weed also yields a drug, valuable in the treatment of asthma. It seems strange that plants which are so poisonous should prove beneficial and curative as well. But there are many plants which will either cure or kill men depending upon how they are used: aconite, nux vomica, strychnine; foxglove, or digitalis; morphine and laudanum (obtained from the poppy) ; the poisonous henbane plant, from which hyoscyamine is obtained. Many other widely used medicines are obtained from poisonous plants. Still more will kill men but will not cure them, and same of these are so deadly that there is no known antidote for them. There is an acacia tree of Africa
which causes permanent blindness if it touches one's eyes. Innumerable people have died in agony after eating poisonous mushrooms or "toadstools," and the deadliest of all plant poisons is the terrible curare or wourali poison used by the Indians of South America for poisoning the darts used in their arrows. No one other than the Indians knows just what plant or plants make wurali so deadly, for the Indians use a number of different plants when concocting the poison, and purposely conceal the true source of its deadly character by adding harmless plants, hair, bones, and various other substances to the brew. But so deadly is the wurali that the least scratch of a poisoned dart brings certain and almost instant death. A large bird, such as a wild turkey, may fly a few yards before dying; a deer struck by a tiny wurali-tipped dart may run a few hundred feet before death overtakes it, and a human being may live for five or six minutes. Yet this fearful poison is harmless if taken internally, provided there is no cut, acre, or abrasion in one's mouth, throat or stomach, for wurali is only deadly when it enters the blood and in this respect resembles snake poison. It may seem very remarkable that a poison which will kill or injure a man by entering a wound may be taken internally without serious results, yet this is true of many poisonous plants. We all know the danger of poison ivy, yet the young leaves or even the berries may be eaten without the eater being poisoned. Stranger yet, the best means of preventing being poisoned by the vine is to eat the young leaves in early spring. But don't make the mistake of trying the same means of
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inoculation against poison hemlock, poison sumac or poison dogwood. One of the most poisonous American plants is the manchineel tree of the West Indies. Even water dripping from the leaves will burn and blister one's skin. To bathe in water where there are manchineel trees is to court serious illness or death and there are numerous instances of persons dying from the effects of the poison when they had sought shelter from rain by standing beneath manchineel trees. The fruit resembles a green apple and is deadly poison. Back in the eighteenth century a company of British soldiers sent out as a garrison at St. Kitts, discovered what they thought were edible fruits and bit into them. As a result the men were all dangerously ill and a number died in terrible agony. As every one in the West Indies is familiar with these trees it is rarely indeed that any ill-effects result from their abundance, but strangers should be very careful and should learn to recognize the manchineel on sight. There are other poisonous plants which are deadly if eaten raw, yet are harmless and nutritious food when cooked. The common jack-in-the-pulpit or Indian turnip is one of these. Although the raw tuberous roots are acrid and poisonous, yet the Indians discovered a method of transforming them into a valuable and nutritious food. By leaching the roots in lye, boiling and drying them and grinding them into meal the Indians prepare a flour which is used in making cakes or bread with a delightful nutty flavor. We all know the delicious cashew nuts, yet the raw nuts before being roasted are very poisonous and the
shell or "rind" contains a corrosive poison that will burn the skin of one's mouth or lips like strong acid. But perhaps the strangest and most remarkable poisonous plant that is used for food is the cassava or manioc plant. There are two varieties of this plant, one known as "sweet cassava" with edible non-poisonous roots, the other known as "bitter cassava" with roots which if eaten raw or merely cooked are deadly poison. Yet the roots of this poisonous plant, which contain prussic acid, form the staple food for hundreds of thousands of Indians of tropical America and for thousands of white and colored people and are the source of our tapioca. This is wonderful indeed, yet it is even more wonderful that the Indians should have discovered the secret. How they did so is a mystery which no one can explain, Probably it was by accident, just as so many great discoveries have been made. It scarcely could have been by experiment, for the experimenters would have died before they had carried their experiments far. But discover it they did and thereby provided their descendants with a food plant which yields abundantly where no other crops will thrive. In preparing the poisonous roots the Indian women carefully wash and pare them, thus at the outset getting rid of a large part of the poison, most of which is in or just under the outer skin. Next, the pared roots are grated, chopped fine or ground between stones. The damp soggy mass of pulp is then packed tightly into a peculiar wickerwork device known as a "metapee." This is a long cylindrical affair so woven that its diameter increases when the two ends are pushed
together and diminishes or contracts when the ends are pulled apart. With the metapee shortened and fully expanded the grated cassava roots are packed into it and the metapee is hung on a beam or a branch of a tree by a loop at one end, and a stout stick or lever is thrust through another loop at the lower end. One or two women then seat themselves on this lever and their weight draws the matapee out, thus decreasing its diameter and exerting a tremendous pressure upon the contents and forcing the juice of the grated roots through the countless openings between the strands. When no more juice is squeezed out the metapee is taken down and the contents, packed into a cylindrical mass, are dumped out. This is almost dry and is broken into lumps which are rubbed through a basketwork sieve to form a coarse white meal, and this is baked or cooked on hot stones or a sheet of iron over a slow fire. Sometimes the meal is moistened and made into big thin cakes, but at other times it is stirred and moved about while cooking and forms a dry crisp meal known as "farine." In either case the last traces of poison are driven off by the heat and the cassava bread or farine is a nutritious food which, if kept dry, will keep for months. The starchy manioc meal is the source of tapioca, while the poisonous juice extracted by the metapee is boiled down into a thick brown syrupy substance known as "cassareep" This is edible and forms the bases of the Worcestershire and other well-known sauces, of our dining tables. In the countries where the cassava grows the cassareep is used in making "pepper pot," which is an odd name for it as it is not hot and does not contain
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peppers. Any vegetable placed in it will ruin it, but it has the property of preserving and tendering meat and if heated every two or three days it will keep good indefinitely. All that is necessary is to add meat and fresh cassareep as fast as the contents are used. Properly prepared this pepper-pot is a delicious dish with a very rich flavor, and no matter how tough the meat may have been when placed in the cassareep it will be tender and delicate after a day or two. Still another product is made from this strange plant, although few white persons would consider it edible or, rather, drinkable. This is "paiwari," an intoxicating drink made by the Indians from scorched farine or cassava bread. It is prepared by the Indian women chewing the cassava and expectorating it into a wooden trough where it is allowed to ferment and is diluted with water. The paiwari is the Indians' beer and is always served as the welcoming draught to strangers who visit them. Disgusting and nauseating as it may seem to a white person, the explorer or traveler who visits the primitive tribes of Brazil and the Guianas must overcome his repugnance and drink the paiwari if he expects to win the friendship and confidence of the Indians. Like the calumet or peace-pipe of our North American Indians, the calabash of muddy looking paiwari is the symbol of friendship, and refusal to accept it is equivalent to an insult and a declaration of hostility. As a matter of fact the preparation of the drink is not quite so unsanitary and repugnant as one might suppose. The women who masticate the cassava are selected especially for this duty. They must have perfect teeth, they must be healthy and free from all
skin diseases, and before chewing the cassava they are obliged to undergo a long and elaborate cleansing process of washing and rinsing their mouths and teeth with decoctions of aromatic and astringent roots and barks. Finally we must not forget the pineapple. "Pineapples poisonous!" you may exclaim. "Nonsense. Pineapples are never poisonous." But if so you will be wrong, for decayed pineapples supply the poison with which many savages poison their arrows and darts which are almost as deadly as those tipped with wurali. Quite aside from this strange use, pineapples are very strange and unusually interesting plants. They belong to the bromeliad family and are first cousins of the gray Spanish moss that drapes the trees of our southem states. What we call the fruit is not a true fruit but a cluster of hundreds of small fruits each with its own core and its spiny hearts where the flowers matured. But perhaps most interesting of all is that the pineapple is the symbol of hospitality. When the Spaniards first visited the West Indies they soon learned that whenever they came to an Indian village or an Indian hut where there were pineapples or pineapple tops placed near the entrance, the inhabitants welcomed them as friends. The custom of using the fruit as the symbol of friendship appealed to the Spaniards who carried it back to Spain. From there it spread to England and when the British colonists settled in Virginia and New England they brought the old Indian custom back to its native land. But instead of displaying real pineapples which, of course, they did not possess, the English settlers placed carved or painted pineapples beside or above their doorways, their gates
and even on their bedposts and other furniture, to indicate that visitors would be hospitably received. The chances are that those old ancestors of ours were wholly ignorant of where or how the custom originated, while only those few who had visited the tropics had ever seen a pineapple or knew what the fruit was. But they did know that it was the symbol of friendship and hospitality and that is why we see so many carved pineapples on the old colonial houses.
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Chapter VI
PLANT GIANTS
IF a person were asked to name the strongest of all living things he would probably say "the elephant." But in that case he would be wrong, for the strongest of all living things are the plants. Even the largest and most powerful elephant is a weakling compared to little, delicate-appearing plants. This may sound impossible, yet no elephant can perform such prodigious feats of strength as do the plants which the big beasts eat. A slender threadlike root of a tree will rend solid rock asunder. A sprouting seed will force its way upward through the hardest packed earth and will lift soil many times its own weight. And the most fragile of all plants-the weak and pallid mushrooms, will break and lift concrete floors in their upward growth to find light. How do they accomplish such feats of strength? By hydraulic pressure. Every one at all familiar with the laws of physics knows that a hydraulic jack, consisting of a cylinder and a piston which is forced upward by a tiny stream of water pumped into the cylinder below it will exert terrific force, and is far more powerful than a jack operated by mechanical devices. Any child can easily lift many tons by means of a hydraulic jack, and in a way, every plant is a living hydraulic jack.
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Although few of us realize the fact, yet the sap of a tree exerts a pressure of many hundred pounds to the square inch. It is this pressure which keeps the stems and leaves erect and enables them to resist heavy winds. It is this pressure which lifts the giant trees high above the earth and it is this same steady irresistible pressure that enables a root to burst rocks or a mushroom or sprouting seed to lift tremendous weights and to break concrete or even slabs of stone. There is no mystery as to how the plants perform their miracles of strength but it is a mystery how they secure and retain the immense pressure of their sap. Regardless of the solution of this puzzle, we must credit the plants with being the strongest of all living things, and hence giants. And when it comes to size the plants again are the most gigantic of living things on earth. The largest of all land animals is the elephant and the largest of all creatures are the whales. Yet the biggest whale who ever swam in the sea would appear a puny creature beside the giant sequoia trees of California or beside many other plant giants. No one has ever yet measured a whale that was over one hundred and ten feet in length, no one has ever seen an elephant more than twelve feet in height, and the mightiest of dinosaurs who lived on earth measured only a trifle over one hundred feet from tip of nose to tip of scaly tail. Place such huge creatures as these mighty whales and these amazing dinosaurs beside one of the giant California trees and if standing on its tail it would be unable to reach the lowest branches with its nose. And it would take a whole family of such whales to equal
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the bulk and girth of the enormous plant giant. In fact the mighty whale would still seem small and insignificant if he were leaned against any one of countless millions of trees in the great forests of Central or South America. Many of these are more than two hundred feet in height and soar upward for more than one hundred feet without a branch, yet compared to the giant sequoias they would seem as small as would a whale compared to them. Famed as they are for their size and age, yet the giant trees of California are not the biggest or the oldest plants on earth. As far as is known, few if any of the sequoia trees are over 4,000 years old which is a ripe old age when we stop to consider that they were good-sized saplings when Moses was found amid the bulrushes. Yet these venerable sequoias are mere infants by comparison with the giant cypress trees of Mexico, such as the famous cypress of Chapultepec, which is said to be 6,270 years old. Think of it! A tree that was hoary with age when Abraham lived. A tree that was as old as the sequoias are to-day when the giant trees of California were tiny seedlings bursting through the soil. Although so much older than the big trees of California, these almost prehistoric cypresses of Mexico would appear mere dwarfs if placed among the mighty sequoias and redwoods. Cypresses, no matter how old they may be, never attain the astounding heights of the giants of the Golden State which tower skyward for nearly three hundred feet. The famous sequoia known as "General Sherman" measures 280 feet in height.
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But what the Mexican plant-giants lack in stature they make up for in girth, some measuring 120 feet in circumference or almost 40 feet in diameter, whereas the largest of the California giant trees are less than 100 feet in circumference at the base. Both the giant cypresses and the giant sequoias and redwoods are evergreen trees and all are famous for their durable wood. In fact cypress is probably the most enduring of all woods, for it will last practically forever. Many of the mummy-cases of the ancient Egyptians were made of cypress and are as untouched by decay or the lapse of thousands of years as though made yesterday. The original doors of St. Peter's Church in Rome were made of cypress and lasted untouched by decay or rot for eleven hundred years when Pope Eugenius the Fourth had them replaced with bronze doors. Even when buried underground in moist soil or submerged in water, cypress wood remains solid and sound for centuries. Almost as indestructible by time and the elements is the timber of California's giant redwoods and sequoias, and in one respect their wood is superior to cypress, for it contains practically no resin and hence will not burn readily. In fact the wood of the sequoia trees is so non-inflammable that it maybe said to be fire-proof. Giants among trees are not confined to evergreens or conifers such as the cypresses, the redwoods, and the sequoias, the gigantic firs, and spruces of the northwest, the famous cedars of Lebanon and the two-thousand-year-old junipers of Natural Bridge in Virginia. In India and Africa, as well as in other tropical and semi-tropical lauds, there are the giant fig trees or
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banyans, The banyans might be called juvenile giants for they attain enormous proportions in a very short time, comparatively speaking. The giant sequoias, redwoods, and cypresses have required thousands of years to reach their present size but a banyan will grow from a seed to a real giant in a single century. And unlike these other tree giants, who devote all their energies to increasing their individual dimensions, the banyans develop whole families of giants and form genuine forests by means of shoots which droop from the branches, take root in the soil and like Jack's famous beanstalk, develop into giant trees with amazing rapidity. One of these banyan trees which is in the botanical station at Calcutta, India, is only a trifle over one hundred years old, yet the main trunk is over 15 feet in character and has 250 supplementary trunks each from 5 to 8 feet in diameter, as well as more than 3,000 smaller trunks. Although it is barely 70 feet in height, yet it covers such a wide area that at one time 7,000 people stood beneath its branches. And if we should add the dimensions of this giant's 3,250 trunks together, think what a stupendous girth this giant tree would have. Even larger banyan giants grow in various places, one African explorer having described a gigantic banyan which formed a roof spreading over nearly an acre and forming a shade for a large native village. Unlike the wood of the giant conifers, that of the banyan is of no value, and as the trees are held sacred by many of the races where they grow, they are rarely disturbed and grow to great age and enormous size. Another tree giant is the baobab of Africa, India and Australia. If plant giants are judged by girth
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rather than height then the baobabs are the biggest of them all, for while they never attain great height they become enormously stout with trunks even larger than the Mexican cypresses. Immense as they are they have none of the dignity and grandeur of the mighty sequoias and redwoods and none of the age-old appearance of the giant cypresses and gnarled cedars. Rather, they remind us of the fat women of side-shows who are giants in weight and corpulency. Showmen are well aware of the value of contrasts or the truth of relativity as one might say, and by exhibiting giants and dwarfs side by side the giant appears even larger than he is and the pygmy much smaller, while by placing a living skeleton near a fat woman she seems even fatter and the emaciated man seems even more of a skeleton. If we consider the baobabs as the fat women giants of the plants, then the giant living skeletons of the vegetable kingdom are the palms. Many species of palm-trees grew to immense heights with trunks so slender that they seem utterly inadequate to support the crown of long, plumelike leaves. Even the cocoanut palms look as if they were top heavy and might double and break at any moment, yet the tallest of cocoanut palms rarely reach a height of 60 feet. Far more beautiful and stately are the royal palms with their smooth symmetrical, granitelike trunks and drooping fronds. These are real giants, for it is not unusual for royal palms to lift their plumed heads over 100 feet above the earth, and under favorable conditions they may become far taller. In the little island of Dominica in the Lesser Antilles, there are a number
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of these royal palms bordering a road in the Layou Valley, and not one of these is less than 130 feet in height while the tallest measures 155 feet from base to tip of topmost leaf-bud. In Barbados there are, or at least were until quite recently, a number of royal palms nearly 140 feet in height, while the giant of them all was on the island of St. Lucia where its fronds waved and thrashed like green banners over 200 feet above the earth. As far as known this is the greatest of all palm-tree giants, yet it does not appear as tall as many of the palms which grow in tropical American forests. Here, where the interlacing branches form a roof of vegetation which even the tropical sunlight cannot pierce, there is a constant struggle among the trees, each striving to thrust itself upward until its foliage finds the sunshine so vital to its life. In this endless battle for height the palm-trees are always the winners, for they grow far more rapidly than the other trees and their slender trunks and comparatively small heads enable them to push through the jungle roof and rise high above the mass of tangled branches, leaves, and intertwined vines. It seems strange indeed to find slender stems, only a few inches in diameter, extending straight as an arrow from the floor of the jungle and vanishing amid the branches 100 feet or more above one's head, yet with no sign of leaf, shoot or branch throughout their polished lengths. But it is still stranger to look across the forest from some eminence or from a river and see the heads of palm-trees rising high above the jungle's roof on trunks which appear no larger than pipe stems. I cannot say exactly how
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high these attenuated tree giants are, for it is a most difficult, in fact an impossible matter, to measure them accurately even by triangulation. But in many places scores may be seen flaunting their leaves 50 feet or more above the forest of trees many of which are more than 100 feet in height. It may not seem so very remarkable to find giants among the trees, but how about violet, verbena, heliotrope, and pansy plants 60 feet and more in height, with stems 5 feet in diameter? Impossible, you say. Not at all. Although we always think of these familiar flowers as little garden plants, yet in the tropics there are huge forest trees belonging to the same families as our pansies and violets, our verbenas and our heliotropes. And their blossoms are as lovely and as sweetscented as those of our gardens. It is a most wonderful sight to see a huge tree completely covered with odorous, brilliantly colored flowers, and it is a still more remarkable sight to see great mountainsides and endless forests gorgeous with pink, golden, white, rose, blue, mauve, scarlet, cerise, lavender, and orange-colored blossoms as if a gigantic crazy quilt had been spread over the roof of the jungle. In many places these giant flowering plants grow close to the rivers with their branches overhanging the water, and as the flowers fade and drop from above they form a multicolored mosaic covering the surface of the stream for hundreds of yards in every direction. In sluggish creeks, tranquil backwaters, and sheltered coves, there are other flower giants, for in such places gigantic plants like our familiar arrow-head and pickerel-weeds spread yard-long spear-shaped leaves
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10 feet or more above the water, and flaunt huge spikes of waxy white or rich purple flowers 5 feet in length and as thick as a man's thigh. And here is the home of the most gigantic of water lilies-the Victoria Regia, with lovely flowers a foot or more in diameter and with great platter-like leaves so immense and buoyant that they will support a child. In the humid swampy areas we will find giant pitcher plants with urn like leaves quite capable of trapping the
Rafflesia, Madagascar
equally gigantic insects that hum and drone about in the warm damp air. In such places we may come upon amazing giant arums related to our lovely calls, lilies with enormous flower-spathes 6 or 8 feet in length rising above the huge leaves like gigantic candles. Big as are such floral giants, none can equal the greatest of all giant blossoms, the raffiesia flower of Malaysia which measures a yard or more across its curiously mottled, fleshy petals. If the odors of flowers were in proportion to their size, what wonderful perfumes could be made from some of these giant blossoms.
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But in the case of the rafflesia it is fortunate that the strength of flowers' scents do not depend upon their size, for the blossoms of this gigantic parasitic plant give off the stench of putrid flesh. Many plants are giants in one respect and not in others. Aside from its enormous carrion-scented blossoms, the rafflesia is not gigantic. The largest of giant trees frequently have small leaves and tiny inconspicuous flowers, while many plants have truly gigantic leaves but can lay no claim to being considered giants in other respects. Among these are the giant caladiums, or elephant's ears, many of which have edible tuberous roots such as the taro of the Pacific Islands, the yautias of tropical America, the dasheens of the Antilles and the taniers of the French West Indies. Other species are widely cultivated because of their handsome leaves which are variegated with white, yellow, red, or purple. All have large leaves, but the true giants of the family are natives of the islands of the South Pacific. Most appropriately may these be called elephant's ears, for their enormous leaves are often 3 or 4 feet in diameter and are borne on great fleshy stems higher than a man's head. Yet even these great leaves, any one of which would serve as an umbrella, are not so gigantic as the leaves of the apa-apa plant of Hawaii. In appearance the leaves of the apa-apa are much like geranium leaves magnified thousands of times. Found only on these mid-Pacific islands, the apa-apa plants cover whole mountainsides, their great fleshy stems, topped by the immense five-foot leaves, forming a weird forest. Walking through it with the gigantic leaves
shutting out the sunlight, a person realizes how an ant must feel as the little insect moves about in a patch of violets. Another similar plant with equally gigantic leaves
Apa-apa, Hawaii
is found only on Juan Fernandez, the famous island where Alexander Selkirk lived with his goats and parrots, the original of Robinson Crusoe. These plants, known as gunnera, are useful giants, for the thick leaf stems, which are ten feet in length, contain a great amount of water like sap and are chewed by the natives
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to quench their thirst when traveling about this almost waterless island. It seems very strange to find giant trees belonging to the same families as our violets, verbenas and other garden flowers; to find mosses as large as ferns and ferns as large as palm-trees; and it is equally strange to find giant grass forming impenetrable jungles of bone-hard six-inch stems towering sixty feet or more above the earth. These giant grasses are the bamboos. Although there may seem to be little resemblance between a giant bamboo and the grasses of our lawns and meadows, yet if we examine a bamboo we will find that in its manner of growth it is very similar to a spear of grass. It has the same jointed, hollow stem, the branches and bracts sprout from the joints in the same way as those of grass, and the flowers are much the same. And the bamboo is as useful as many of our more familiar grasses. For that matter our most useful and valuable food plants are grasses. Wheat, barley, oats, rye, rice, and maize are all grasses, and even if the bamboo cannot be classed as an important food plant it serves a manifold of useful purposes. What would the angler do without a bamboo rod? How handicapped the clever Japs and Chinese would be without bamboo with which to manufacture furniture, matting, screens, musical instruments, and even houses. And how about chop suey and other Oriental dishes without the tender shoots of bamboo? Useful as this giant grass is, there are other plant giants which are just as useful. Moreover, these are leafless giants, for they are the giant cacti. Every one who has traveled across our desert lands
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of the southwest has seen the giant cacti, like enormous candelabra, but few persons realize that these huge prickly plants serve many useful purposes, or what interesting plants they are. They are of vital importance to thousands of human beings. The most casual observer will notice that the trunks and branches of these desert giants are deeply grooved or fluted, but how many know that this feature of the plants is vital to their very existence? Without its fluted trunk the giant cactus or saguaro could not thrive in the dry and desert areas where it is such a conspicuous feature of the landscape. A most remarkable and strange device it is, too, for during damp weather and at night the grooves open or expand to absorb all the moisture possible, and then closing, they retain the moisture during dry weather. Even with this bellows-like arrangement for obtaining every atom of moisture in the air, it is a miracle that these giant plants manage to survive and even increase. Many creatures, birds, cats, bats, and insects, devour the cactus fruits before they are ripe. Vast numbers are gathered by the Indians, and the few which ripen and fall are eaten by lizards and other ground-dwelling creatures before the seeds can sprout. Woodpeckers, who find the giant cacti ideal nesting places, riddle the trunks and branches with holes. But instead of bleeding to death from these scores of wounds, the cactus heals them quickly by forming a woody growth lining the holes. These cavities form welcome refuges for owls, hawks, and many other birds, While bees find them ready-made hives in which to store their honey. To the Indians the saguaro cactus is as useful and
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essential as the cocoanut tree to natives of tropic islands. It would be dificult if not impossible, for the Pimas, Papagoes, Cocomas and other desert tribes to exist without the saguaro, for they depend upon the giant cacti for food, drink, and timber. Early in the spring the saguaros' flowers appear, covering trunks and branches with their cream-colored petals, and developing into large egg-shaped fruits which ripen about the first of July. Within the prickly skin or rind is rich, crimson pulp which is slightly sweet and juicy and is very refreshing and nutritious. Great quantities of the fruits are eaten raw, but far more are made into a thick syrup, much like molasses. This is stored in jars and later on is made into the saguaro brandy or "wine" which is an important accessory to the Indians' ceremonies, The fruits are only one of the products of these giant plants. The seeds are dried, ground into meal, and eaten as a cereal. The fibrous woody skeletons of the dead cacti are tough and strong and provide the Indians with building material for their houses, fences, furniture, and other structures, while the wood-lined cavities formed where woodpeckers nested, are dug from the trunks and branches and serve the Indians as drinking cups and water jars. Just why some plants should be giants while others belonging to the same families or even the same genera should be tiny things-real pygmies--is something of a mystery. We all know that a plant growing in favorable surroundings with soil and climate adapted to its needs, will thrive far better and will attain much larger size that another plant of the same species in poor
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soil and struggling for existence under unfavorable conditions. Agriculture consists largely of providing the most favorable conditions and most suitable soils for cultivated plants in order to produce the largest possible growths and most abundant crops. In this way plants may he produced which are true giants by comparison with the rank and file of their kind. On the other hand it is possible to produce dwarfs from giants, as witness the fascinating dwarfed trees
Dwarfed tree (1/10)
of the Japanese who produce gnarled, twisted, ancient pines, cedars, and cypresses a foot or two in height which are so exactly like the great forest giants that they appear like full-sized trees viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. If man can reduce plant giants to plant pygmies and can induce dwarf plants to develop into giants, surely old Mother Nature can do the same. The seed of a normal-sized plant finding lodgment in some certain soil in a new environment might attain gigantic
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size, and its seeds taking root in the same locality would also be giants. Perhaps, ages and ages ago, the ancestors of all plant giants were small, and some becoming giants by chance survived, while their smaller fellows fell by the wayside in their struggle for existence and left only the giants to perpetuate their species. Most surprising things happen in the plant world, and no one can be certain just what the results may be when a plant is reared in a new locality under conditions different from its native home. When I was living in the West Indies I experimented with many northern plants and flowers, and while the majority did well and developed no new or novel characteristics in their tropical home others did most surprising things. Perhaps the strangest of all was the behavior of a Japanese morning-glory. Instead of growing into a climbing vine as all normal self-respecting morning glory plants should, it formed a short upright stalk, sent out a few leaves, produced one single enormous blossom, and promptly died. Far more surprising was the result of introducing the St.-John's-wort to New Zealand. Normally a little herb barely a foot in height, the plant in its new home didn't know when to stop and continued to grow and grow until to-day, eighty years after it was taken to New Zealand, the little St.John's-wort is a real giant, a sturdy tree forty feet in height. But perhaps the strangest of all plant giants are the huge lily like plants that grow on the mist-shrouded high plateau about the Kaetuerk Falls in British Guiana. Here, beside the world's greatest cataract, the
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rocky tableland is covered with queer plants found nowhere else. Among them are strange orchids, grotesque air-plants, immense maidenhair ferns, giant sundews and blanket like lichens. But most conspicuous of all are the stout-stemmed, lily like plants with stiff sword shaped leaves six or eight feet in length. The strangest feature of these giant lilies is that the bases of the leaves are filled with water, and in these miniature aquariums dwell golden frogs and tiny silvery fish which have never been found anywhere else on earth,
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Chapter VII
INTELLIGENT PLANTS
Do plants possess intelligence? Do they know pleasure and pain, do they suffer when they are injured, do they recognize their friends? No one really knows the answers, but there are many persons---even some scientists-who believe that certain plants feel pain when injured, that they possess a certain sort of sense which might be called intelligence, and that their roots or tendrils serve as crude ganglions and take the place of brains. And every one who has had much experience in raising trees, flowers, and other plants knows that they certainly respond more readily to the attentions of some persons than others. In fact, there are countless instances of plants growing badly or even failing to survive when cared for by one person, yet the same plants will thrive and do splendidly when reared by another individual. We often hear people say that a certain person has "good luck" with plants. But is it so much good luck as it is the result of the plants "taking to" the successful gardener? Neither is there any doubt that certain plants behave in what most certainly seems an intelligent manner. Vines will unerringly turn and grow towards the nearest tree, netting, or other support. Scientists may try to explain this by the theory that the vines are
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guided by the shadow cast by the stake or tree, that they grow towards the object merely because of the effect of light or absence of light, just as the sunflowers turn their faces towards the sun. But if that is the case how do they explain the matter when a vine is surrounded by objects all of which cast shadows, or when a trellis is so situated that it never casts a shadow, or when the support the vine selects is always in the shade? A British scientist carried on some very interesting experiments in an endeavor to determine whether or not plants do possess any intelligence or reason. In one case he planted a vine in a spot where there were no trees, shrubs, or other objects which would serve as supports. Then he placed a pole at some distance away and almost at once the vine headed for it. Before it reached the pole he removed it and placed it the same distance from the vine on the opposite side. Without hesitation the vine doubled back and started in the new direction heading for the pole as straight as if it possessed eyes. Again the pole was removed and set up in another spot and again the vine altered its course and made for the support. Again and again the location of the pole was changed and again and again the vine turned towards it unerringly. But there was a limit to the plant's patience and perseverance. After many futile attempts to reach the elusive pole the vine finally gave up and refused to be lured by the pole even when placed within a few feet of it. Not until the support was placed in the midst of the foliage did it show any further interest in it. Even more remarkable and convincing was the action of a trumpet-creeper growing in a garden in one of
our southern states. More than twenty feet from the vine there was a dead tree with the rough bark still adhering to the trunk in places. Although the creeper had never shown any tendency to send exploring shoots in the direction of the stump, yet after a fire built about the dead tree lied burned off the loose bark, leaving the trunk bare and charred, the vine immediately started towards it. For twenty feet and more a slender shoot made directly for the dead tree and reaching it commenced to climb. Completely abandoning its previous support, the creeper sent trailer after trailer to the stump until it was completely concealed beneath the vine's foliage. If this was not intelligence how can it he explained? Surely it was not mere instinct or the effect of the stump's shadow, for in that case the vine would have made for the stump before it had been burned. Yet it was not until the loose unstable bark had been removed, and the bare trunk afforded a secure hold for the vine's tendrils that the plant became interested in it. Any one who has been south of the equator and who is interested in plants will have noticed that in the southern hemisphere vines which climb by twining spirally about a support turn from right to left or anticlockwise; whereas vines (with a few exceptions), in the northern hemisphere turn from left to right or clockwise. Nothing will induce a northern spirally climbing vine to reverse its direction and grow upward from right to left. If you doubt it, just try it on a common morning glory vine. Take a long shoot or sprout which has not started to climb and twist it about a stick or a string
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from right to left. Will it continue to grow in that manner? Not a bit of it. Unless the stalk has been tied in place it will unwind and start on its upward way from left to right. And if the stalk has been secured so the vine cannot free itself it will double back or form a loop and resume its normal and accustomed way above the spot where it was fastened. Nothing could be more stubborn and fixed in its determination to have its own
Vine' (1/2) Left: South of the equator Right: North of the equator
way than a vine under such conditions, and south of the equator the vines (with few exceptions), are just as stubborn when it comes to spiraling from left to right. It is just as impossible to induce a vine of the southern hemisphere to climb from left to right as it is to force a northern vine to go from right to left. Moreover seeds from a vine which, north of the equator, spirals from left to right will produce vines south of the equator which will grow only from right to left.
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Just why this should be the ease no one appears to know with any certainty. Possibly it has some connection with the sun or the revolution of the earth or the fact that in one case the North Pole and in the other case the South Pole is the nearest. But whatever the reason the fact remains that some instinct or willpower appears to guide the plants and cause them to refuse to be led astray. Far more remarkable and savoring of real intelligence is the uncanny ability with which certain plants will find water or food or will avoid obstructions. The eucalyptus trees are famed for the manner in which their roots will seek out water or dampness. The same British scientist who tried the experiment with the vine tells of a most marvelous case of a eucalyptus tree seeking water. The tree was planted some distance from a stone wall on the farther side of which, and many yards distant, was a drain pipe, one joint of which leaked slightly. Great as the distance was and slight as was the moisture that seeped from the pipe, yet the roots of the tree had found it. Not only had the tree located the tiny area of moist soil caused by the leaky joint, but its roots had been forced to go a roundabout way in order to reach it. At the point nearest to the tree the wall rested upon a ledge and the roots could not find a way. But turning aside they had crept along until they had located a crack through which they had forced their way and then, turning back had followed their original course directly to the drain. Such behavior certainly appears to border on real intelligence, but even if the roots located the drain and were guided to it by the remote dampness caused
by the leak the extreme sensitiveness of the roots is almost as remarkable as if they had been actuated by intellect. Many plants have roots or tendrils so sensitive or so well provided with nerves or intelligence that when touched they will not only draw away like animate things, but will telegraph other parts of the tree or plant or send a message, as we might say, a warning, that something strange or dangerous is near. If we touch the tip of a vine's tendril with our finger or even with a stick or other object, the tendril will curl up. But if left alone it will soon uncurl and straighten out as before. Some species of vines, such as the ivy, will even produce new and special roots when the vine finds a contacting surface where no existing roots can reach it and cling to it. Darwin, the famous naturalist, considered the roots of plants acted as the brain does in the lower animals. He wrote: "If the tip be lightly touched, burnt or cut it transmits an influence to the upper adjoining portion causing it to bend away from the affected side. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle (root) thus endowed, and having the power of directing the movements of adjoining parts, acts like the brain of one of the lower animals." The most remarkable of all plants in this respect are those known as sensitive plants. There are many species of these, nearly all belonging to the leguminous group which includes the locust trees, the peas and beans, the acacias and mimosas, the lupines and other plants. Although there are a number of species of these
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sensitive plants found commonly in the United States, even as far north as New England, the largest and most remarkable forms are inhabitants of the tropics. It is usually necessary to touch the leaf or a stem of our northern species in order to cause the little fernlike leaves to close up and appear to shrivel. But so sensitive or intelligent are some of the larger tropical
Sensitive plant (1/2)
species that if a person or a large animal passes near them the leaves instantly close. Even a sudden or loud noise will affect them in the same way and, in the cases of those which are trailing vines, if the extreme tip of a plant or a single leaf near the tip is touched, every leaf will close. It is a strange sight to see hundreds of leaves all shriveling and closing one after another in rapid succession for a dozen yards or more. Amazingly swift is the reaction of the nerves of these plants, and within the fraction of a second after the first leaf closes every leaf over an area several yards in diameter will be tightly shut.
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Then when the plant finds that it was a false alarm and all danger has passed, the leaves open one by one. But in every case in which I have experimented with the plants, the leaf first touched or alarmed is the first to reopen. It is as if the others signalled, "You were the one who gave the alarm, now go ahead and find out if it's safe for us to open up." And very cautiously and timidly the disturbed leaves open, not all at once, but one at a time as if half afraid and ready to close instantly if danger still lurks near. Perhaps you may think that this is not because these plants are intelligent, but is just a reflex action; but in that case wouldn't the plants continue to close their leaves no matter how often they were disturbed? They do not, however, but after a few times, if no injury is caused, they remain with leaves open when touched. And incredible as it may seem they actually learn to recognize individuals. In Panama these plants are very abundant and the roadsides are covered with them. It was here that I carried on most of my tests and experiments and one day I made a remarkable discovery. I had been in the habit of gently touching the tip of one particularly large vine and it had never failed to respond. But on this particular morning when I touched the plant the first two or three leaves started to close and then immediately opened. Again and again I touched the plant, even lifting a section of the vine free from the ground, yet the leaves remained fully open. While I was examining it and trying to induce it to close its leaves as usual, a friend happened along. He had been quite interested in my "monkeying" with the sensitive plants, as he put it, and now stopped to
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see what new test I was trying. When I explained that the plant appeared no longer sensitive he reached down and grasped a leaf to see for himself. Imagine my astonishment when instantly every leaf shivered and closed ! Even my friend's interest was now aroused, for I insisted that the plant had not closed a leaf even when I had handled it and that I believed it knew me. Of course, he laughed at any such idea, but when, after waiting for the leaves to reopen, I demonstrated that it paid no attention to my touch and then, when he touched it, the leaves again closed, he was as flabbergasted as myself. Had this been the only instance in which a sensitive plant acted in this seemingly intelligent manner I should have decided it was merely a peculiarity of that particular plant or that it was the result of some cause other than recognition of a human being. But I soon proved to my own and my friend's satisfaction that other plants acted in the same amazing manner. He became so intrigued by the ability of the plants to recognize individuals that he began "taming" one of the vines himself. I have never seen a man more delighted and triumphant than he when after a few days his "tame" plant remained unaffected by his touch yet closed its leaves immediately when I touched it. At the time I thought I had made an epochal and astonishing discovery, but I discovered that similar experiments had been carried on by several scientists and that full accounts of the sensitive plants' remarkable ability to recognize individuals had already been published.
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Possibly these plants do not demonstrate intelligence by becoming "tame," but their behavior proves that plants know by some means when to protect themselves and when protection is not needed. Perhaps it will surprise many to learn that the holly,
Holly twig and a leaf from upper part of tree (1/2)
which is such an important accessory at Christmas time, is another plant that knows when or rather where protection is desirable. We are accustomed to think of holly leaves as prickly and stiff, but if we examine a good-sized holly tree we will find that the prickly, armed leaves extend only a certain distance up the tree.
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On the higher branches the leaves are very different, being quite flexible and spineless, for the holly, having protected its danger zone by ramparts of dense armed foliage, feels quite secure beyond its leafy fortifications. Of course, matter-of-fact scientists will declare that this habit does not indicate any intelligence on the part of the plant, but is simply its manner of growth. But how can they be sure that "manner of growth" is not actuated by some sum of intellect? And how does it happen that the extent of the holly's protected area varies greatly? In some localities the spiny leaves may reach almost to the top of the tree whereas in other situations they may be confined wholly to the lowest branches or, in occasional instances, they may be entirely lacking. Anyhow it makes the holly far more interesting and attractive if we credit the plant with a glimmering of common sense and foresight. Finally there is the lizard tree of the West Indian forests. Personally I think that "centipede tree" or rather "centipede vine" would be a far more appropriate name for this strange and remarkable plant. Its long, jointed, green stalk clinging tightly to the trunk of a tree by means of its numerous slender leg like roots which spring from each joint, give the plant the appearance of a gigantic green centipede despite the small and rather
inconspicuous leaves. But it is this plant's manner of spreading rather than its form which is really strange. As the clinging, jointed stem climbs upward, joints break off and fall. If the detached sections find lodgment on a branch or other portion of a tree they immediately
take root and commence to grow until three to five feet in length, when their joints break away and repeat the process. Very often, however, the sections fall to the earth, and it is then that the plant behaves as if it possessed intelligence. Sending out threadlike roots it crawls along the ground, not actually moving but budding out new joints at one end. The truly remarkable feature of this is the fact that the new joints unerringly grow in the direction of the nearest tree. Reaching its goal the plant at once begins to climb and after ascending a few yards it breaks free from the portion still on the ground, which then produces more joints which in turn climb upward. Very rarely a specimen may be found which has climbed high up a tree and still remains a portion of the vine on the ground. These, of course, cannot spread as they have no rear ends to be dropped off. It might be argued that this proves that the strange plants do not possess any atom of intelligence. But even among human beings, as among other forms of the higher animals, there are certain individuals who do not care to propagate their kind. Just because a man remains a bachelor throughout his life or a woman prefers to be an old maid is no reason to declare them lacking in intellect. So perhaps the lizard trees which fail to break away from the ground-growing sections are merely bachelor or old maid plants. It is now generally conceded that plants possess organs of vision or eyes. Dr. Haberlandt has proved that plants can distinguish light shades or colors. There are two forms of these plant eyes, one simple, consisting
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of cells which merely transmit light, while the others are more complex and are formed of papillae with the surfaces forming plane-convex lenses. In many respects these are very similar to the eyes of many of the lower animals.
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Chapter VIII
PLANTS THAT BUILD RAFTS
In many tropical forests especially near the large rivers, the bases of many of the trees spread out in immense hips or buttresses, often extending for twenty feet or more beyond the main trunk, and only a few inches in thickness. Other trees are even more peculiar. For their trunks end several feet above the earth and are supported by numbers of slender wirelike roots which spread in every direction. Both of these strange forms of growth serve the same purpose, which is to anchor the trees firmly to the thin soil and to prevent them from being uprooted by gales or floods. But the wide-spreading buttresses also serve other purposes. By constructing a roof of palm leaves across them they make excellent camps, and quite frequently an Indian family may be found dwelling cozily in a hut whose walls are two of the immense extensions of a tree trunk. Also they afford most welcome shelter from the torrential showers. On one occasion when hunting in the Central American jungle, I was caught in a terrific downpour and hurried for protection to the nearest tree, where I squatted between two of the great out jutting hips, sheltered from the heaviest of the rain by the towering tree with its dense canopy of foliage a hundred feet and more above my head. As I waited there for the deluge to let up, I heard the sound of something moving on the other side
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of the living wall beside me, but paid no attention to it as I supposed it was some bird or small creature. At last the shower passed and rising I stepped from my temporary refuge, glancing over the edge of the slab like wall as I did so. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a big spotted jaguar snuggled against the other side of the partition! Barely three inches of wood had been between the big beast and myself as we both had waited for the downpour to cease. For several moments we stared at each other, the jaguar apparently as much astonished at my presence as I was at his. Then with a bored yawn the giant cat stretched itself, rose to its feet and trotted off while I stood staring after it, too flabbergasted to shoot. But my strangest experience with these buttressed trees of the jungle was when I was on one of my expeditions in Guiana. It had been raining hard and steadily for days-an almost incessant downpour for three weeks, and the low swampy forest was flooded, making it difficult beyond words to find a camping place. At last, after a long search, we found a small spat of reasonably dry land and, spreading the tarpaulin shelter and slinging our hammocks, made the best of our cheerless, water-soaked condition. Everything was wet; our matches, tobacco, food, blankets hammocks, and clothing were soaked through and through. But one of my Indians kindled a fire by rubbing two sticks together and thereby brought to my notice another wonder of the plant world. Searching about he had soon found an etah palm and from it cut the flower-stem and a piece of the bark. Both, of course, were wet, but despite their damp condition he quickly
produced fire, a feat which would have been impossible with any other wood. Despite our soggy provisions we managed to get a meal of sorts and dog-tired as we were slept soundly although wringing wet. At dawn I was aroused by a shout from one of the men, and opening my eyes, I gazed about in bewilderment. We had camped at the edge of the forest with big trees towering back of the shelter, and now the forest had vanished. We were surrounded with water and seemed to be rocking gently. Then I glanced about to find the forest on the west instead of the east, and separated from our camp by several hundred feet of open water. Not until then did I realize what had occurred. During the night the rising water of the river had lifted a section of the forest floor-trees, camp, and all-and the floating island thus formed had drifted downstream, carrying us with it. By the merest chance the plant raft had not broken apart, or capsized, and by an even smaller chance our boat had remained with us, although we were nearly twenty miles down river from where we had gone to sleep. Such floating islands composed of sections of the jungle floor are commonly seen when traveling on the rivers near the coast during the rainy season. The soil is only a few feet in thickness and rests upon a rocky or hard clay foundation. This is completely filled with the roots of trees which are entwined, interlocked and knotted together to form an almost solid mass which is floated by the floods and breaks away in sections of all sizes. But in nine cases out of ten the plant rafts topple over from the weight of trees firmly anchored
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by their wide-spreading hips and cable like stilts, or break into fragments as the trees sway to the wind and the motion of the current. It is seldom indeed that human beings find themselves involuntary and unwitting passengers on such a raft, but it is quite usual for other living creatures to go a voyaging in this manner. Often the masses of detached forest will house quite a menagerie. There will be frightened chattering monkeys, queer spine-tailed porcupine rats, coatis and kinkajous, squirrels and opossums, ant-eaters, and sometimes even a deer, a puma, or a jaguar on board these forest arks. In some places they are a real menace, not only because they endanger and impede shipping on the big rivers, but because of the animal passengers they carry. At Buenos Aires a force of men is constantly employed in destroying these floating islands that come drifting down the Rio de la Plata with their unwelcome visitors from the jungles of the far interior. In order to secure an ample supply of water for the Panama Canal the Chagres River was dammed and an immense area of land was flooded to form Gatun Lake. Much of this area was virgin forest which on the higher portions of the inundated land rose far above the surface of the great artificial lake. The countless thousands of drowned trees presented a strange, weird sight; a dead forest of leafless skeletons, their bare branches and massive trunks draped with fantastic air-plants, withered trailing vines and masses of orchids. But gradually as their bases rotted by the water they fell and drifting hither and thither became entangled and inter locked and formed great rafts. Soon vegetation appeared
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upon them; rank grass and water-loving weeds found roothold among the logs, seeds wafted by the winds or dropped by birds sprouted and grew, and in an astonishingly short time the masses of fallen trees and dead branches were transformed to floating islands covered with a dense growth of tangled vines, ferns, brush, and small trees. Oftentimes they would drift upon the shores of the lake or would be stranded upon some of the real islands that marked former hilltops rising above the water. As they rested there for weeks, months, sometimes for years, snakes, and other reptiles, small quadrupeds and even large animals, frequented them, and birds nested in the vegetation. Many remained immovably anchored to the shores by vines, roots, and other growth, but many others floated free when the water rose high during the rainy season and continued to drift about bearing with them their little colony of furred, feathered, and scaled inhabitants. Some were small but others grew to immense size, for as they floated here and there they came into contact with other drifting flotsam and fallen trees and these becoming entangled with the waterlogged rafts and their burden of detached jungle added more and more to the floating islands. Many were or rather I should say are several hundred feet in length and width and some are several acres in extent. No one would ever dream that these jungle-covered islands are supported upon masses of dead, waterlogged tree trunks and are not natural formations of solid land. For that matter the majority of the larger masses have become true islands, for as their size and weight increased they have gradually sunk deeper and deeper until the original
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rafts of dead trees now rest upon the bottom of the lake as immovably fixed as though a portion of the earth itself. As the living creatures, other than birds, upon them cannot escape except by swimming, and as most wild animals are averse to taking to the water, and as there is an abundance of food and plenty of cover, these plant-formed islands are often richer in wild life than the mainland. Deer, tapirs, and other large animals inhabit them and they are favorite hunting grounds for sportsmen. In the quarter of a century which has passed since the drowned trees began forming islands, huge trees have grown upon them, and the larger ones are now covered with a forest almost as high as that which was sacrificed to provide water for the great Canal. There are many plant-made islands other than these of Gatun Lake. In Mexico and in Malaysia the floating islands formed by masses of logs and other flotsam are used as farms and gardens by the natives who have their houses and their cattle upon them. If you were to visit one of these floating farms you would never suspect you were not on solid land. Palm-trees rear their plumed heads high above the shores, hedges of prickly cactus and flaming hibiscus border the paths and fence in the gardens. Cattle graze upon the grass in little pastures; great gnarled trees cast a welcome shade over the little thatched huts of the farmer, pigs wallow and root in the muck and the air resounds to the songs of birds and the harsh cries of parrots and macaws. Like the plant-made islands of Gatun Lake most of the larger floating gardens of Mexico have become anchored
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and fixed to the bottom of the lake, but many still remain afloat as do those of the Malaysian floating farmers*. Such floating islands built by plants are beneficial to man instead of being a menace like the floating islands of the great South American rivers. But the latter are far less of a menace than another form of plant-raft which causes enormous damages and affords employment for many hundreds of men who are kept constantly busy destroying and removing these floating plant-islands. It seems strange that a little water plant with lovely sweet-scented orchidlike flowers should block navigable streams, cover thousands of acres of the surfaces of lakes, canals, and rivers with impenetrable rafts of vegetation, choke locks and pumping stations and become such a pest as the water-hyacinths have proved. Like so many of our worst weeds and plant enemies the water-hyacinth is an alien and a most undesirable alien from foreign lands. Its native home is in the Orient. But like so many immigrants-whether plants, insects, birds, or human beings-it has found our country so satisfactory that it has increased and spread beyond all reasonable bounds. Like the common white daisy, the quack grass or couch-grass, the wild carrot and the devil's paint brush, the English sparrow, the starling, the gipsy moth and the Japanese beetle, the lovely water-hyacinth, beautiful as it is, has become real public enemy. Very fortunately for all concerned it
* Many of these floating farms are on artificial, floating islands. These are made of logs, woven withes and brush covered over with earth. The roots of the growing plants bind all these together into a solid fabric which has all the appearance of a natural floating island.
is a tropical plant and will not survive northern winters, although it will stand a severe cold snap and heavy frost. In northern Florida the temperature frequently falls well below freezing and on the Suwanee River I have seen the thermometer only 12 F. above zero for several nights in succession. Everywhere the millions of
Water-hyacinth (1/3)
water-hyacinths wilted and shriveled and turned black. To all appearances they were as dead as the proverbial door-nail. But no sooner was the cold spell over and the sun shone brightly with semi-tropical warmth than the water-hyacinths put forth new leaves and were soon as healthy as ever. For that matter the brief intense cold benefited them and at the same time made them even more of a nuisance than before. Their shriveled collapsed leaves allowed them to drift free from the masses
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they had formed and to travel farther with the current and everywhere new colonies and new rafts appeared. Aside from the beauty of its fragrant blossoms the water-hyacinth is a very interesting plant, most perfectly adapted to life on the surface of the water. Each leaf-stalk is swollen to form a bulbous float which contains air, so that the entire plant with its mass of black wiry roots is supported by leaf pontoons. Starting from a single fragment of root the leaves rapidly sprout and form the buoyant floats which spread in every direction. Drifting with the current, the plants lodge in backwaters or shallows, the roots become entangled with water-weeds or attach themselves lightly to the bottom, other floating masses find lodgment with the first and as if by magic the spot soon becomes a solid mass of broad green leaves, lavender flowers, and buoyant bulbous leaf-stalks. Thicker and thicker the growth becomes; rapidly the plants spread outward from the edges of the mass and if unchecked they will completely cover the surface over an area of acres. And from time to time when the current runs more swiftly than usual, when a stiff breeze blows or when a boat is forced through the mass, countless plants break away and go drifting off to form new colonies. In the Panama Canal Zone the water-hyacinths have become a serious menace. They choke the feeder streams, clog the strainers to the pumping station and they afford a breeding place for mosquitoes. No effective means of combating them has been discovered other than gathering and destroying them, and a small army of men is kept busy raking and dragging the pestilent
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tial plants from the water and piling them in great heaps upon the shores. In the drainage canals of the Florida Everglades they are even worse. Many of the smaller canals are so choked and filled with the plants that no trace of ditch or water remains, for under favorable conditions the plants reach huge size with leaves extending several feet above the water. They are also a great nuisance in another way, for the Florida cows have developed an acquired taste for the water-hyacinths and eat them greedily whenever they have the chance, with the result that the milk from a hyacinth-fed cow is so rank with the plant's flavor that it is impossible to use it. Perhaps eventually, the problem of this raft-making plant may be solved by finding some natural enemy that will destroy it faster than it can increase. One naturalist suggested that hippopotami introduced to Florida would keep the water-hyacinths under control, for the big amphibious beasts are very fond of these plants. Why the idea was not carried out is a mystery, for unquestionably the "behemoths" would greatly decrease the floating plants. Possibly the authorities felt that the hippos might prove a greater nuisance than the water-hyacinths, that it would be out of the fryingpan and into the fire. But there should he no difficulty in keeping hippos under control, for if they became too numerous, an open season could be decreed and a new form of game would be provided for hunters who would make short work of the excess beasts. On the other hand, some one may discover some commercial
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use for these plants, but up to the present time their only useful purpose is to serve as ornamental plants in the north and to provide food for goldfish. By far the strangest and largest of plant-made islands are those formed in great rivers by stranded logs or trees. Even a very small limb or stick or uprooted tree becoming stranded in a stream may form an island or a cape. Once the object is securely lodged, the current of the stream is split and flows to either side, creating an eddy or an area of still water below the obstruction. Here the silt and sand carried by the stream settles and piles up to form a bar, while other bits of drift become lodged against the first log or tree trunk. And with each bit added, more and more slack water is formed, more and more silt accumulates, and presently the bar breaks the surface of the stream and a new island is created. Very soon coarse sedges, reeds, arums, and other water-plants take root about the verges of the new-made bit of land. Seeds lodge upon it and sprout and grow and rapidly the size of the little island increases and it becomes covered with vegetation. Sometimes a heavy freshet or a change of wind may cause the new-made island to disappear before it has become fairly established. But at other times it continues to grow and increase until it forms a large heavily wooded island or, by turning the current aside, it may gradually extend to the nearest shore and form a cape or promontory. It seems strange indeed that a single plant or fragment of a plant can build a big island, yet there are many such islands in existence.
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In the Essequibo River in British Guiana there is a huge island, nearly ten miles in length and two miles in width, with fields of sugar-cane, a good-sized town and big mills upon it. Less than a century ago the broad sluggish river flowed unbroken over the spot where the island with its waving cane, its lofty chimneys and its tramways now stands. Then one day a freshet brought countless uprooted trees drifting down the great river. One of the trees, torn from its forest home far up the river, became stranded on a shoal. Other trees sweeping toward the sea became entangled in its roots and branches and the fallen giants commenced to form an island. To-day no trace remains of those floating fragments of jungle, and no one who did not know the island's history would ever guess that it owed its existence to drifting trees carried seaward by a freshet.
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Chapter IX
STRANGE PARTNERS
We all know what an important part the busy bee and other insects play in the plant world. In most cases the buzzing bees, the gaudy butterflies and moths, the flower-loving flies and other insects who carry pollen from one blossom to another and thus fertilize the flowers so that they produce seeds or fruits, are customers of the plants rather than partners. The majority of plants remind us of our shops with their window displays. They dress themselves up with gaudy flowers or fill the air about them with perfume or scents in order to attract the attention of the insect shoppers. And just as the department stores or corner groceries welcome any and all patrons, so most plants welcome any old bee or fly or other insect customer who helps itself to the plant's stock in trade. But there are many plants as exclusive and as particular as any of the swanky specialty shops on Fifth Avenue. No frayed and ragged butterfly or humble bumblebee can enter their doors to secure the sweets within. They cater only to certain favored patrons and in place of impressive haughty gorgeously uniformed doormen to keep out the undesirables they are provided with cleverly designed portals which can only be opened by the insect visitors they desire. These devices to bar undesirable insect shoppers
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produce many strange and often fantastic forms of flowers. This is particularly true of the orchids, for these plants are among the most exclusive and discriminating of all. There are countless species but in nearly every case the flowers are designed to be pollinated by some one or a few privileged insects. It is for this reason that very few tropical orchids will produce
Vanilla bean orchid (1/6)
seeds when cultivated in the north, for the insects which fertilize the flowers in their native haunts are absent and orchid growers must pollinate their prizes artificially and by hand in order to secure seeds and to hybridize the species and obtain new varieties. Many orchids are so dependent upon some one insect that they cannot fruit or produce seeds, when removed only a short distance from their original home. One of these is the vanilla plant, for the vanilla bean is the seed pod of an orchid.
In its native home in the hot, humid jungles of the lowlands of Mexico, the vanilla, which is a vine which climbs to the tops of the tallest trees and is often more than one hundred feet in length, is pollinated by certain species of small insects. But when grown elsewhere, even in other sections of Mexico, the flowers must be pollinated artificially in order to produce the pods which are the source of the flavor so widely used. It is a very delicate operation and must be accomplished before two o'clock in the afternoon, for the flowers exist for only five or six hours after opening in the morning. An expert can pollinate two hundred flowers a day by means of a small stick or sliver of bamboo. With this he gently lifts the stigma of a flower and presses out the pollen from the anther. As the object in pollinating the flowers is to secure the finest and largest pods possible, only a small portion of the flowers in each cluster are thus treated. A healthy plant, however, will bear as many as two hundred clusters of flowers so that even the small proportion pollinated will yield a great number of pods. And as a pod eight inches in length when cured will weigh twice as much as a six-inch pod it pays the vanilla culturist to sacrifice numbers for size. In the case of the vanilla orchid its exclusiveness is of real benefit to man, for if the flowers welcomed any insect that happened to come along so many would be fertilized that the pods would be small and almost worthless, just as they are on the wild vines where the flowers are patronized by the particular insects which, alone of all others, are acceptable to this exclusive orchid.
There are other orchids far more particular than the

vanilla. Some of these bar all insects from the inner precincts of their gorgeous blossoms and rely wholly upon the probing beaks of humming-birds for pollination. And not a few form regular partnerships with certain insects which are as essential to the welfare of the orchid as the plant is necessary to the life of the insects. One species of orchid which is a native of Panama is always infested by hordes of vicious biting red ants. The insects make their home amid the mass of roots and bulbs and the moment the orchid is disturbed they swarm forth ready to do battle. On one occasion I sent a fine large specimen of this orchid to a friend in the States, first having made sure that all of the ant population had been eliminated. Within my friend's greenhouse the shriveled bulbs swelled with life and sent forth glossy green leaves, but never a bud appeared. In vain the owner waited and watched, for the orchid was new to him and he was most anxious to see the flowers. But when, at the end of the second year, the plant still declined to bloom, he decided that something was amiss and wrote to me asking me to give him all details regarding the orchid's home and habits, the kind of tree on which it grew, the height above the ground, the atmospheric conditions of the locality where I found it, the elevation above the sea and whether it grew in sunlight or shadow. In my reply I mentioned the ants and back came a cable asking me to send on a supply of the insects. This was easier said than done, but I solved the problem by shipping another plant with its ant colony still intact. A few months later I had a most enthusiastic letter from my friend. Not only had the second
orchid blossomed, but the ants had spread to the first specimen which had also bloomed. Moreover, the ants had swarmed over the flowers, feasting on the nectar, and had pollinated them, and seed pods were developing. But my friend's elation was short-lived. Although the orchids thrived in the artificially heated air of the greenhouse the ants did not. For some reason they could not survive, and within a few months not an ant remained and no more flowers ever appeared upon the plants. Here was a real partnership between the orchid and the ants. Why the plants would not blossom without the ants I cannot say, but beyond question their presence was essential, and when the flowers did appear the vicious tenants did their bit by fertilizing the blossoms. And in return for being provided with living quarters and a feast of honey they protected the plant by attacking any bird, beast, or man who attempted to molest it. Even stranger is the partnership between ants and a plant found in Java which is known as the ant tree. The woody root of this plant is bulbous and swollen and so so filled with natural holes, tunnels and galleries that it resembles a sponge. These provide ready-made homes for a certain species of ant which always inhabits the strange roots. Indeed, the plant is absolutely dependent upon the ants dwelling in its roots, for without them it cannot grow and thrive, while without the tree with its natural ants' nest the insects cannot live.
But perhaps the most remarkable of these plant-ant partnerships is that of a tropical American acacia tree
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and a certain species of ants which are so vicious and poisonous that they are called "fire-ants" by the natives. Like all the acacias the tree is covered with thorns, which in this species are huge, curved, double thorns with swollen bases which give them the appearance of miniature water-buffalo horns. So impassable is a thicket of these trees that the patois-speaking Negroes of the French West Indies call them "Arrete le Neg" or stop the Negro. Even if armed with a machete no one familiar with these trees will attempt to cut a path through them unless compelled to do so by necessity. The terrible thorns alone are bad enough, but the bases of the thorns are always inhabited by hordes of the tiny ferocious fire-ants, and the moment a tree is disturbed or a blow is struck with a machete, they pour forth by thousands and swarm over the intruder biting viciously like so many red-hot needles. It would seem as if the ants were capable of protecting themselves and that the fearsome thorns were ample protection to the trees. But thorns are no protection from leaf-cutting ants and other insect enemies which the fire-ants kill and devour, while without the protecting thorns the ants would fall victims to many a hungry ant-eater and other creature. Interesting and strange as it is to find plants so dependent upon their ant partners, it is even more remarkable to find plants which are propagated and cultivated by ants. In South America there are several species of ants which make their nests in trees and construct hanging gardens where they cultivate plants to supply them with food. Mouthful at a time the ants carry earth far up in the trees and there press and
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mold it into a huge globular mass in which they make their chambers and galleries which are neatly lined with paper like that of hornets' nests. Then, with their homes ready for occupancy, the ants transform the outer surface of their houses into farms and sow them with seeds of plants to provide food. But that is not all. Incredible as it may seem, the plants raised by these ants have never been found growing anywhere except upon the ants' hanging gardens. Think of it; fourteen different species of plants cultivated by these ants and found nowhere else in the world as far as known. Where do the ants secure the seeds? No one can answer that question, but scientists assume that the plants have been cultivated by the ants for so many millions of years that new species utterly distinct from the original plants have been developed by the insects, and that the seeds from the gardens are so carefully gathered and cared for that they never find roothold elsewhere. In other words these strange food plants of these ants are very similar to our corn or maize. Although hundreds of varieties of maize are known, all are cultivated and no wild maize plant has ever been found. In fact no one knows what plant may have been the wild ancestor of Indian corn, for maize has been cultivated for so many thousands of years by the Indians that it cannot exist or seed itself without man's aid. That ants should have become expert farmers and should have produced food plants all their own is truly amazing yet in a way it is not so remarkable as the fact that some ants raise mushrooms. In one case the ants merely plant and cultivate plants in their natural
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surroundings, but in the other instance they raise fungi where the plants would never grow naturally. These mushroom-raising ants are the leaf-carrying or
umbrella-ants of the American tropics. Cutting bits of leaves from trees and plants they shred these with their jaws, mold them into pellets and with these form hotbeds which they impregnate with the threads of a certain species of fungus which is never found anywhere but in the ants' nests. The beds are very carefully tended and weeded and as the fungus grows it is constantly pruned to prevent it from producing fruits. This is essential, for the ants feed upon the liquid or sap on the fungus roots and this is not formed after the plants bear fruit. In this case we know how the ants manage to establish new mushroom farms even if the plants do not exist elsewhere, for when a queen leaves to establish a new colony she carries with her a tiny pill of fungus paste. This she carefully guards until a new brood of workers have been hatched and are able to bring in the leaves in which to plant the spores preserved by their queen. Perhaps you may think that in these cases it is the ants rather than the plants which are most remarkable. But is it any more wonderful that insects should cultivate and produce unique plants than that plants should exist only when cultivated and propagated by insects? Although all of these partnerships between plants and insects are beneficial to both parties involved, there are many plants which welcome insects for a very different reason. This is the case when the insect visitors
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benefit only the plants; for instead of insects eating plants the plants eat the insects. There are many species of these insectivorous plants which are not all of one family but belong to widely separated groups. All are very strange and some are most remarkable for the manner in which they capture their prey. Moreover, they are not all denizens of the distant tropics, many of them being common plants of our fields, swamps, and forests. Perhaps the best known, although not the commonest of our insect-eating plants, is the pitcher-plant, also known as side-saddle flower and hunter's drinking cup. There are several species of these strange plants found in the United States, but all are inhabitants of swamps and damp meadows and all are easily recognized by their curious pitcher or jar-shaped leaves. Our eastern species are quite small with pitchers four to six inches in length, but there is a species found in California which is a real giant with pitchers three feet high. If we examine one of these queer plants we will find what a wonderfully clever and remarkable device Nature has provided to supply these plants with nitrogen, for all insect-eating plants depend upon their prey for the essential nitrogen which is lacking in the soil in which they grow. Each leaf has been transformed into a vase-shaped receptacle, the edges of the leaf joining along one side and showing as a slightly raised seam or scar on the outside and as a keel or fin on the inner side, while above the open mouth of the pitcher a broad flattened lid has been developed. The under surface of this cover, as well as the edge of the rim or mouth of the pitcher
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and the keel-like ridge, are coated with a sweetish slightly sticky nectar, while the rest of the inner surface is smooth and slippery and is provided with hairs all bending downward towards a little pool of liquid at the bottom of the strange leaf. Attracted by the bright red or purple blotches on the leaves, insects hasten to feast upon the honeylike nectar and crawling over the rim of the pitcher lose their foothold on the smooth slippery surface beyond and slide into the death pool below. Even if they struggle to climb upward they are baffled by the downward-pointing hairs and quickly expire in the liquid which digests their bodies just as an animal's stomach digests the food within it. Some species of the pitcher-plants make assurance doubly sure by quickly closing the lid of the pitcher the moment an insect enters. Then, the instant the captive is killed, the lid opens and the trap is ready for the next victim. In tropical lands, especially in the East Indies, there are many species of pitcher-plants which are very different from those of our swamps. These are climbing vines and are provided with tendrils formed by the midrib of the leaves which are extended in long delicate filaments. Some of these serve to anchor the plant to the trees and shrubs over which it climbs, but others serve as insect traps and develop into perfect pitchers which hang from the vine. Like those of our own plants these tendril-borne pitchers are provided with nectar about the rims and the under surface of the lid, but in this case the honeylike substance is doped and the insects which sip it become stupefied and befuddled and tumble into the "stomach" of the plant.
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Although these pitcher-plants capture and devour insects yet there are certain insects which are partners of the plants and live unharmed within the "pitchers." One of these is a fly whose larvae feed upon the decomposing bodies of other insects which have fallen victims to the plant. The other insect is a small moth and is a parasite rather than a partner, for the female lays her eggs within the deadly receptacle and the caterpillars, emerging from the eggs, feed upon the leaf, weaving silken carpets so they will not slip into the pitfall, and eventually destroy the "pitcher." A remarkable insect-eating plant which is quite common in some parts of the United States is known as the fly-trap or Venus fly-trap. It is a rather small inconspicuous plant with a flower stalk rising above a rosette of broad-stemmed leaves. But if we examine these leaves we will find that each is provided with a curious extension with sharp spines along each edge while the surface is coated with a purplish sweet substance. Projecting from this are three hairlike bristles hinged at their bases and forming a triangle. The whole arrangement is amazingly like a steel trap and that in effect is just what it is. Presently a small bee comes buzzing by, and attracted by the sweet moisture on the leaf, he alights. Instantly as the insect's feet touch the sensitive hairs which act as the trigger to the trap, the two sides of the leaf snap together and the poor bee is a prisoner. Even if by chance his entire body is not within the trap there is no escape, for he will be impaled upon the sharp interlocking spines. In this case the captive will meet a quicker and more merciful death, for if he is confined within the leaf he will be digested alive by
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the fluid excreted by the leaf which will remain tightly closed for several days. Then when only the empty skin of the insect remains, the leaf will again open, the remains of the bee will be cast out and the trap will be set ready for the next victim. Another plant which traps insects in its leaves is the butterwort, which is very common in our southern states. Unlike Venus's fly-trap, these plants bear handsome orchidlike flowers of yellow, white or lavender which serve to attract the insects necessary to pollination. But it is a treacherous plant and its rosette of broad leaves at the base of the flower stalk is a deadly trap. Unlike the leaves of Venus's fly-trap which are harmless except at the tips, those of the butterwort are deadly throughout. Innocent appearing as they are, they are coated with a sticky sweetish substance and woe to the unwary insect that alights upon them, for once its feet touch the surface it is held as securely as if it had stepped on tanglefoot flypaper. And as it struggles to free itself the edges of the leaves curl quickly upward and inward and lock the captive in a living tomb where it is digested. The Venus's fly-trap and sundew plants not only capture and devour insects but know what is edible and what not. If a tiny pebble or bit of twig or grass is placed on the leaf of one of the plants the tentacles will close over it, just as a steel trap may be sprung by a stick. But they will almost instantly open again and eject the inedible object. Still another of our insect-devouring plants is the little sundew. These sundews are very abundant in moist situations but being rather inconspicuous, with tiny
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flowers, they rarely attract attention and are passed unnoticed by most persons who never suspect what amazingly strange and remarkable plants are being trodden underfoot. Indeed, the sundews are among the most remarkable of all the many carnivorous plants in the manner in which they capture their prey. Brightly colored with red or pink in order to attract the insects, each leaf appears as if covered with countless glistening dew drops, but the shining globules which give the plant its name are treacherous deadly snares, for each is a globule of sweetish sticky material about the base of a tiny tentacle. There are two hundred of these on each leaf and the moment an insect touches them he sticks fast and instantly all the near-by tentacles bend inward towards the center of the leaf and actually roll the captive along as the leaf curls up like a closed fist. At the same time the honeylike globules which have lured the insect to its destruction become transformed to an acid digestive fluid which dissolves and absorbs the nitrogenous substance of the plant's prey. This requires about two days, when the leaf again unrolls, discards the waste material of the digested insect and once more displays its gleaming drops of nectar to lure other prey to the treacherous plant. Moreover, these plants actually detect the presence of an insect before it alights upon them. This was demonstrated by securing a live fly over half an inch from a sundew which at once began moving a leaf toward the captive insect and within two hours reached and seized the fly in its tentacles. Although our native sundews are small and capture only
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tiny insects there is a species in southern Europe which preys upon large flies and good-sized bees and other insects. In Spain and Portugal the countryfolk use these plants as we use sticky flypaper and hang the voracious sundews in their cottages. But the most remarkable of all the insect-catching plants is the little bladderwort, a water plant which lives in ponds and sluggish streams. The roots of these plants are covered with little bottle-shaped pouches or bladders, with the open ends provided with filaments or tentacles. These serve the plant as lobster-pots or fish-traps, for any water insect or small fish or baby tadpole entering them is securely held within by the tentacles which close over the opening until the prisoner has been digested. But when the plant is ready to bloom, the strange bladderlike roots serve a very different purpose. No longer do they capture living prey but become filled with air, and acting as pontoons, float the plant and buoy it up so that the flowers are well above the surface of the water where insects can visit and pollinate them. How fortunate it is for us that these treacherous carnivorous plants do not grow to such size that they could capture large animals and human beings. What a terrible fate it would be to find one's self caught in the relentless grip of a giant tendril or sticky leaf, be entombed within its folds and to be slowly digest by the fearsome cannibal plant. Many tales of such man-eating plants have been told by travelers and by natives of tropical lands, but as far as known these stories have no basis of truth, for although there are carnivorous plants which catch and
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devour small birds and other creatures no reliable traveler or explorer has ever discovered a man-eating plant. Possibly such awful plants may exist somewhere, but until their existence has been proved we must regard them as figments of vivid imaginations.
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Chapter X
PLANTS THAT SAIL SEAS
PERHAPS you have sailed the seas in a steamship or have watched the liners passing in or out of some port or have gazed in awe and admiration at their towering steel sides, their thousand-foot hulls and their mighty prows as they lie berthed at the piers. If so, has it ever occurred to you that these wonderful fabrics of steel and iron, with their gigantic engines and palatial furnishings, would never have existed had it not been for plants? That may sound ridiculous, for on a modern steamship what purposes do plants serve other than to decorate the dining-room and saloons with flowers or in the form of potted palms and ferns, or to supply the almost negligible amount of woodwork that enters into furnishings and finishing? But we must remember that we would not have had steel ships if we had not had wooden ships, which would have been impossible without plants; and that wooden ships were developed from small boats and that the original small boats were canoes. And if we go a step further back in the story of the ship we will find that before canoes were invented or evolved, men managed to cross streams or lakes on logs and rafts or bundles of plant stems.
It may seem a very far cry from a savage's canoe
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or a crude raft to a de luxe super-liner, but the steamship is merely a gigantic, vastly improved form of canoe with machinery replacing human muscles for motive power, and with steel substituted for the plant fibers of the other. Even to-day there are far more craft made of plants than of metal afloat, even if their total tonnage is far less, and it is safe to say that they are of vital importance to more people than are steel or iron ships. We could get along without our metal ships but there are thousands, yes millions, of human beings who could not exist without their craft made of plants, many of which are most strange and interesting. The manner in which men of many races have adapted the plants of their lands to the making of boats, or rather, I should say, have invented boats made possible by the plants available, is truly remarkable. We are all familiar with the birch-bark canoes of our North American Indians, although these lovely graceful craft have largely been supplanted by the canvas canoes patterned after them. It must have been a most ingenious and inventive Indian who first saw the possibilities of the light, tough bark of the white birch trees, and from this plant material constructed a canoe. The chances are that a bit of floating birch bark gave him the idea, but regardless of how it was invented the birch-bark canoe was one of the most buoyant, graceful and seaworthy boats ever made by man, and was built entirely of plants. Cedar and spruce supplied ribs and thwarts; hemlock roots or moosewood withes served to sew and lash the fabric together; the white birches supplied the
covering and pine, spruce and balsam gum, pitch, and resin were used for filling seams and holes and rendered the craft watertight. Although all familiar with boats know that the famous whale-boats of New England were the staunchest, most seaworthy and fastest of all small boats ever built by man, yet very few know that these marvelous Yankee craft were modeled after the Indians' canoes. And like the birch canoes, every portion of the whaleboats, other than nails and a small amount of metal gear and fittings, were supplied by plants of the New England forests. Good white oak, pine and spruce, tamarack and cedar, all were obtained from the woodlands of New England. For that matter the whale-ships themselves were constructed largely of native plants, even to the flax that went into the making of linen for sails, the staves of the oil casks and the hickory of tool and implement handles. And we must not forget that the cordage, the ropes and hawsers, the rigging and the lines of the harpoons that made sailing and whaling possible, were all made of plants---the fibers of the Manilla hemp plant. No other plants in all the world have ever traveled so far and wide as those of New England which, transformed into whale-boats, cruised the five oceans and sailed the seven seas. There were other plants than those whose lives had been sacrificed to the cause of the industry which sailed the seas in Yankee whale-ships. Seldom did a whaling vessel set sail from a New England port without potted plants from the captain's garden in the cabin. And if the Missus went along, as she often did, there would be all her favorite vines and
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flowers, as well as some growing mint, pennyroyal and other herbs to gladden her eyes and remind her of home during the years she would be at sea. At many a strange port and far-distant isle the ship would cast anchor to secure water, fresh fruit, and vegetables, and to give the crew shore leave, and when the Missus returned to the ship after her visit ashore she would bring with her plants or "slips," seeds, or bulbs of the strange plants in native gardens or growing wild. Even if the Skipper's wife was not with him on the cruise, the Old Man, tough and hardened and lacking in all sentiment as he might seem, would often, in fact usually, gather seeds, cuttings, or bulbs, to carry back to his better half for her garden or window-boxes in New Bedford, Provinectown, Salem, Nantucket, New London, or some other home port. Many of our most popular cultivated plants were first introduced by the whalemen returning from foreign lands, and not a few of our old fashioned New England flowers found their way via whale-ships to far-distant lands where the captains' wives exchanged seeds or slips with women they met on their voyages. Unfortunately the whalemen and their wives brought many an alien plant to New England which might far better have been left in its native land, for all too often these became most obnoxious weeds. And in all probability many an insect pest was carried as an unsuspected passenger on whale-ships, for the Yankee whalemen knew nothing of the peril of introducing insect stowaways and took no precautions to eradicate such as might be upon the plants they brought home. We all know that dug-out canoes were used and are
still used by many races of many lands and, of course, these are entirely plant-made craft. So also are the proas and outrigger boats of the natives of the Pacific and South Sea Islands and Malaysia, the great war canoes of the Indians of our far northwest and the aborigines of Australasia, the junks of the Chinese and in fact practically all small craft other than the skin boats of the Eskimos and the crude crafts of inflated hides used in a few portions of the world. Even the strange circular goofahs of Arabia, Palestine, and Persia are made wholly of plants, for they are constructed of willow withes woven like huge baskets, and are smeared with pitch and gum to render them water-tight. Wherever plants grow we find the people using them for making craft of some sort, and very often they employ strange plants in strange ways and produce very strange boats. In the West Indian Islands, as well as elsewhere in the American tropics, the cecropia tree is a very conspicuous feature of the landscape. With its straight stout stem and broad palmate leaves it always attracts attention, especially if there is a breeze when the huge leaves, turned by the wind, show their silvery-white under surfaces which gleam like burnished metal against the surrounding greenery. In the West Indies they are known as "hurricaine trees," the natives believing that the approach of a hurricane is foretold by the manner in which the big leaves turn and expose their undersides. The trunk of the tree is hollow and jointed like giant bamboo, and while worthless as timber it serves many useful purposes. Sections split in half are
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Cecropia tree
used as troughs and tanks. The largest trunks which may be two feet in diameter at the base, make excellent casks or barrels, while the smaller sections are used for conduits, pipes, and various other purposes. Being hollow and filled with air the trunks of these trees are as buoyant as pontoons, and a few lashed together provide rafts capable of supporting very heavy loads. Many of the most valuable tropical woods, such as
greenheart, bullet-tree, letter-wood and others are heavier than water and hence cannot be floated down the rivers. But by lashing a few lengths of cecropia tree trunks to the heavy logs they are buoyed up and float safely. On the large rivers of Guiana one often sees rafts of these cecropia-tree trunks, each supporting several immense squared hardwood timbers, and a little thatched hut wherein the Indian lumberman and his family, together with their dogs, poultry, and even pigs, live quite happily as the cumbersome structure drifts slowly with the current towards the distant seaport. In the West Indian Islands the half-amphibious colored youngsters find another use for the buoyant stems of the "hurricane trees." Cutting a few of the smaller trees, the boys lash them together with lianas or "bush ropes," hew a crude paddle from the broad base of a cocoanut palm leaf, and equipped with hooks and lines go paddling out to sea on their flimsy "pipiris," as the makeshift craft are called. As the little rafts are barely large enough to support the boys' weight they are constantly awash, but that matters nothing to the black and brown-skinned owners who are not bothered with clothing and whose naked bodies rubbed with cocoanut-oil shed water like the back of the proverbial duck. At a short distance the pipiris themselves are invisible, and it is a strange and surprising sight to see dozens of boys apparently standing or sitting upon the surface of the sea miles from the nearest shore.
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Even in treeless lands the natives have learned to navigate the lakes, rivers or even the ocean by means of plants. In many parts of the world boats or canoes consisting of bundles of reeds lashed together are used by the natives, but these reed-built boats reach their highest development among the Indians dwelling about the shores of Lake Titicaca high in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia. Not only are the canoes or "balsas" composed wholly of reeds bound together by lashings of twisted reeds, but the sails with which many are equipped are also made of reeds woven into a form of matting. Many of these reed boats are of large size and it is not unusual to see a reed balsa fifty or sixty feet in length carrying a cargo of live cattle or other freight, sailing slowly across the surface of the highest navigable lake, propelled by its immense reed sails. In times past such craft sailed the sea and the Incan races (who were the only American Indians who learned the art of sailing prior to the arrival of white men) ventured far out into the Pacific and even voyaged to Central America in their reed vessels. When on their way to conquer Peru, Pizarro and his men sighted a distant sail, and thinking it a Spanish ship headed for it. Much to their amazement they discovered that the vessel, navigating the ocean out of sight of land was a reed balsa with reed sails manned by Indians. Speaking of balsas, we must not forget the balsa wood, which is another plant that sails the spas. No one knows whether the wood was named after the buoyant reed boat or if the boats were named from the wood, but as the word means something that floats there
is no reason to suppose that either was named for the other. Of all known woods that of the balsa tree is the lightest, but there are a number of different trees varying considerably in the quality and lightness of their wood all of which are marketed as balsa. Being lighter than cork and being more water-resistant, balsa wood has largely supplanted cork for use as life preservers, life rafts, and similar purposes. Insect collectors have found it excellent for lining cases of drawers in which to pin their specimens, builders of model aeroplanes, coaches, and other objects find balsa wood ideal, for it is soft, easily cut or carved, does not chip or split and takes a good finish; quantities are also used in manufacturing aeroplanes, in boat building and in other industries. To-day this strange plant product is in great demand and has become a most important, I might even say indispensable, wood, although prior to World War I it was scarcely known outside its native lands and was regarded as a curiosity of no real commercial value. No one would guess from the appearance of the living tree that balsa wood was as light and almost as soft as pith, for the trees from which it is obtained are sturdy ponderous giants with huge swollen gray trunks and are often one hundred feet in height. The most striking peculiarity of the tree is the scarcity of branches. These are few, short and are confined to the upper portion of the tree so that it appears unfinished or as if broken off just above the lower limbs. In this respect it differs from the ceiba or silk-cotton trees, which otherwise are so similar that one is often mistaken for the other. But they may readily be distinguished, for the silk-cotton trees have short heavy trunks with great buttresses or "hips" extending from the base and with innumerable large, wide-spreading
spine-covered branches which, during certain seasons of the year, are covered with the bursting seed capsules containing the soft fluffy silk. As the seeds ripen and fall from their pods they float through the air supported by their silken covering, and wafted by the wind strew the earth and everything else in the vicinity with the downy buff-brown substance which of recent years has become of great commercial value under the name of "kapok." Great quantities of this soft, resilient silken substance are used for stuffing pillows and mattresses. As kapok is far more waterproof than any other known vegetable fiber suitable for the purpose, it is widely used in making boats' cushions which in case of emergency may be used as life preservers, while many of the life-vests and jackets aboard ships are also filled with the buoyant material. This is still another plant that sails the seas.
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Chapter XI
PLANTS THAT WE EAT
No matter what food we' may eat it may be traced back to some form of plant. Salt is the only ingredient of our meals which does not owe its existence to plants, but salt is not food in the strict sense of the word. Moreover, even salt may be obtained from plants, and many races secure what salt they require by evaporating the water in which certain plants have been boiled. Meats and fish, even lobsters and clams and the succulent oyster, are the products of plants, for without plants herbivorous creatures could not exist and there could be no carnivorous animals unless there were plant eaters to provide them with flesh. But by far the greater portion of our foods are plants, and aside from a few races who depend entirely or principally upon a meat diet, human beings are primarily herbivorous creatures, while the races as well as individuals who are strictly vegetarians far outnumber those who dine exclusively upon animal food. For that matter I do not know of a single race or tribe that is wholly carnivorous by choice. Some are far greater meat eaters than others, but such people as the Eskimos and a few other savage races who dwell in lands where there are no edible plants, are carnivorous by necessity and not by choice. Wherever there are plants suitable for human consumption we will find that vegetable foods are the mainstay of the inhabitants who, with very few exceptions, cultivate the more important food-plants in order to insure an unfailing supply as well as to improve the size and quality of the plants. Even our nomadic
Indian tribes of the western plains varied their diet of buffalo meat with many wild plants and cultivated a number of food-plants, while the South American Indians, dwelling in tropical jungles which, according to popular fancy, teem with game, could not exist without their gardens and fields and depend almost wholly upon plants for their food supplies. And although few persons realize the fact, we are indebted to the South American Indians for over 80 per cent of our own food-plants. It seems strange indeed that so-called "ignorant savages" should have supplied the world with over 80 per cent of our plant foods, that they should have cultivated more than two hundred species of wild plants and should have bred and developed these until they became our most important food plants, so totally different from their original ancestors that even botanists cannot identify the wild forms. It is even more remarkable that the Indians should have made such a thorough job of their agriculture that white men with all their boasted skill, knowledge, and superiority, have never succeeded in reducing any important American wild plant to cultivation. But the most amazing fact of all is that many of the plants which the Indians cultivated and improved, until they are now important food plants throughout the entire world, should have been
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1. Okra (about 1/3) 2. Mote corn (Peru) kernels showing comparative size of ordinary corn (about 1/6) 3. Andean corn that stands frost (about 1/6) 4. Wild potato of Central America (about 1/4) 5. Tatu or Andean potato that stands frost (about 1/1) 6. Sweet potato (about 1/4) 7. Wild tomato from the Andes (about 1/4) 8. Manioc or cassava (about 1/8) 9. Peanut plant (about 1/3) 10. Coontie briar (about 1/3) 11. Marsh-marigold (about 1/3) 12. Sego lily (about 1/3) 13. Jojoba (about 1/4) 14. Camas (about 1/3) 15-15A. Mesquite and mesquite beans (about 1/3)
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developed from plants which are inedible or even poisonous in their wild state.
I have already described the manioc (see Chapter V), and the preparation of its deadly root to form a valuable and nutritious food. Even stranger is the story of the potato, for the potato, as well as the tomato, the sweet and chili peppers, the eggplant and other food plants are members of the deadly nightshade family. Few plants have a stranger, more unusual and more romantic history than the lowly "spud" or "Irish" potato, and one of the strangest and most interesting features of the potato's story is the origin of its popular name.
Just where the potato was first cultivated by the Indians is not definitely known, for when the Europeans
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reached America it was grown and used by both Mexican and South American tribes. But we do know that it had been cultivated for thousands of years by, the Indians of Peru and Bolivia, for we find potatoes in the most ancient graves and tombs of the pre-Incan races, and many of their pottery jars and vessels were modeled in the form of potatoes. Moreover, the Peruvian Indians had produced and developed a great number of varieties of the plant. Not only did they have practically all the types of potatoes which our farmers cultivate to-day, but in addition they raised a number of varieties of superior quality which are not now familiar to us. Some of these thrive only in the higher Andes and will withstand heavy frosts, others are edible only when they have been frozen or frost-bitten, while others have plants immune to the potato beetle. In fact the number of odd and unusual varieties of potatoes one sees in a Peruvian market is truly bewildering. There are potatoes of every form, size and shape; potatoes with purple skins, potatoes with golden-yellow flesh, potatoes streaked, spotted or blotched with various colors, but all true potatoes or "papas" as they are called by the Indians and all Spanish-speaking people. Finding the tubers excellent and nutritious food, the Spaniards carried them back to Spain, where they were cultivated and eaten for forty years. Then in 1560, when Spain was establishing towns and settlements in Florida, the tubers were carried back to America by the colonists. Five years later, those famous old sea-dogs, Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins, raided the Florida coasts, and being in need of provisions they helped themselves to the settlers' crops, including potatoes.
The
strange
tubers
transported
to
England
by
these
pirate-privateers met with a cool reception and were used only as cattle fodder for more than two hundred years. But the Irish took to them and when Captain John Smith and his fellow colonists set sail for Virginia, the "Irish" potatoes were among the various Plant roots and seeds they carried with them. This was the potatoes' fourth voyage across the Atlantic, and more than one hundred years after they had been carried to Europe by the Spaniards, they were back on American soil far from their original home. But the British settlers in Virginia knew nothing of the tubers' history or origin. To them they were Irish potatoes, although they were neither Irish nor potatoes for the word "potato" is a corruption of the word "batata" which was the Arowak Indian name of the sweet potato. Saddled with the erroneous name, the "Irish" potatoes became a most important factor in life of the colonists of Virginia and New England, although it was not until 1773 that the tubers became of any importance in Europe. Yet so rapidly did they come into favor, once their true value became known, that they saved the people from famine during the Thirty-Years' War, and so dependent upon potatoes did the Irish people become that when, in 1845, the crop in Ireland failed, it started the exodus of Irish emigrants to America. To-day this edible and nutritious food-plant of the nightshade family is cultivated throughout the world with an annual crop of more than six billion bushels and a greater value than all the world's yearly production of silver and gold combined. Strange as it may seem, nine-tenths of all potatoes are raised in Europe,
although the plant is a native of America and was first cultivated and used by the American Indians. More than a hundred years before Drake and Hawkins carried the stolen "spuds" from Florida to England, the sweet potato had been introduced to Europe; for the "batatas," although first cultivated by the Indians of Peru, had spread throughout tropical and semi-tropical America and were cultivated by the natives of the West Indies where Columbus found them. From Spain they were carried to Italy, from there to Belgium, Austria, Germany, and finally to Great Britain, where they at once became popular, although so expensive that they were literally worth their weight in gold and only the nobility and the very wealthy could enjoy them. Unlike the white potato which as I have said is a member of the deadly nightshade family, the sweet potato or "camote" as the Peruvian Indians call them, are members of the morning-glory family. Moreover, the sweet potatoes are merely swollen or enlarged roots, whereas the common potatoes are true tubers. That the Indians should have developed a morning-glory into this important food-plant is almost as remarkable as their discovery that a member of a family of poisonous plants could be developed to produce edible tubers. If a person were asked to name the most valuable of all root-crops, nine times out of ten the answer would be "potatoes." But the world's most valuable root-crop is sweet potatoes. To be sure, comparatively few sweet potatoes are raised in the United States, the total crop amounting to less than one hundred thousand bushels a year, but in many other lands they are the most impor
tant of all food-plants. In South and Central America, the West Indies and many other lands, sweet potatoes or "camotes," to use the original Incan name, are the universal food of millions of people and are as much a matter of course as white potatoes with us. Vast quantities are raised and consumed in Africa. Still more are cultivated in Asia. Countless people of Malaysia, the Pacific Islands and the Philippines depend upon these plants for their mainstay, for they will thrive and yield in abundance in localities where the white potatoes cannot be grown successfully. Moreover, they are far more easily propagated and cultivated than the "spuds." They grow both from cuttings of either roots or vines and need no planting, for merely by plowing under or spading or hoeing in the vines after the crop has been gathered, another crop will be assured. They have fewer insect enemies than white potatoes, and an acre of land devoted to them will yield a far greater quantity of actual food than will white potatoes, for the roots of the vine are far more nourishing and contain a much greater food value, pound for pound, or rather acre for acre, than any other food-plant except maize. While only the tuber of the white potato is used as food, although the seeds or "balls" are edible despite the popular belief that these are poisonous, both the roots and the foliage of the sweet potatoes are eaten. In the Philippines sweet-potato shoots are regarded as the finest of all "greens," and are far superior to spinach and similar vegetables both in flavor and nutritious value. Finally, the sweet potatoes have many more uses than do white potatoes. Not only are the roots and "greens" eaten in their fresh or natural state, but great
quantities are dried, countless tons of the roots are made into flour, others are used for making alcohol and syrup, while Indian tribes make beautiful and fast dyes from the juice of certain varieties of these plants which, combined with lime juice and other ingredients, produce a great number of colors and tints. It is truly surprising that these most valuable of all root-foods should be so little used in the United States. To be sure they are extensively cultivated in our southern states where the damp, red variety known to the Peruvian Indians as "camote apichu" is very popular. In our country these thin-skinned, damp, very sweet roots are called yams but they are very distinct from the true yams which are the huge roots of a totally different family of plants. Perhaps one reason why most persons prefer white potatoes to sweet potatoes is because the varieties cultivated in the United States and sold in our markets are all more or less sweet. But there are many more varieties of sweet potatoes than of white potatoes, and among the vast array of yellow, brown, pink, red, purple, orange, greenish, and white-skinned "camotes" one sees in the markets of tropical America, there are many with dry mealy flesh which is no sweeter than that of the least sweet of white potatoes. Perhaps, some day, our people may discover that cultivated morning-glory vines will produce more nutritious and more abundant food than cultivated nightshades, and the sweet potatoes may become our most important root-crop. Next to the white potato, the tomato is the best known and most important member of the nightshade family which provides us with food.
Like so many other plants that we eat, the tomato originated in Peru where it was cultivated and developed by the pre-Incan races many centuries before the discovery of America. In the case of the wild nightshade plants the fruits are the most poisonous portions, and it is even more remarkable that the Indians could have developed some of these and transformed them into edible fruits than the fact that they developed the roots of others into edible tubers. Not only did the Peruvian races develop all of our present-day varieties of the tomatoes and the peppers which are very closely related-but in addition they had a number of varieties of tomatoes which are unknown to us, although still cultivated in Peru. Our tomato plants are tender, delicate things and very sensitive to frosts, but in Peru there are tomatoes which withstand the heaviest frosts and even freezing weather. In the Andean regions, at altitudes of eight to ten thousand feet above the sea, the commonest tomato is a small fruit about the size of a plum which is borne on vines that clamber riotously over trees or buildings, while the egg-shaped yellow tree-tomato thrives best from ten to fourteen thousand feet above sea level and is unaffected by the bitter cold and severe frosts of its Andean home nearly three miles above the sea. Long before the first Europeans reached America, the tomatoes, and the capsicum and sweet peppers had spread far and wide over tropical, and many portions of temperate, America and were very popular with the Indian races, yet it was not until centuries later that white people could be induced to eat tomatoes. For some reason the "love apples" were regarded as
poisonous, and they were not recognized as edible until 1850. To-day they are one of the most important of our agricultural products and are cultivated in every portion of the world where they will grow. It was quite a different matter with the peppers. From the time of the Spanish conquerors, both the sweet or "bull" peppers and the hot or "chili" peppers have been popular and in great demand. Perhaps the strangest thing about these peppers is the fact that the name "chili" is the old Aztec name of the plants and is used nowadays to designate the very hottest of peppers. But in Peru the name is applied to the big sweet or mild peppers, for in the Quechua Indian language "chile" or "chire" means cold or cool. American peppers are the source of red or cayenne pepper and paprika, but our white and black peppers are obtained from very different plants, for these are the ground seeds of Oriental trees. Oddly enough, both the fiery cayenne pepper and the mild paprika are obtained from the same chili pepper-pods. The "hot" portions of the peppers are the seeds and the membranes surrounding them, and when these and the dried pulp or pith of the fruits have been removed and the dried skin only is pulverized it is known as paprika, whereas, if the entire fruits are dried and ground, the product is cayenne or red pepper. Another condiment which causes a great deal of confusion and is a puzzle to many persons is our allspice. Most people, or at least a great many people, think that allspice is a mixture of a number of different spices, but in reality it is the ground seeds of a West Indian tree known as the pimento. And here arises an
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other chance for confusion, for the Spanish name for pepper is Pimiento which is so similar to pimento that many persons think the two words refer to the same plant. Among the many food-plants which add zest and nutriment to our diet are the various beans, the squashes and pumpkins, all of which are American plants cultivated and developed by the Indians everywhere although they, too, originated in Peru. But perhaps the strangest plant which these ancient American agriculturists developed and used was the peanut which is just as popular with us as it was with the Indians ages before the arrival of Columbus. Although the peanut is a first cousin of the peas and beans, yet its manner of growth is unlike that of any other plant, for instead of bearing its edible seeds like ordinary plants the peanut buries its pods beneath the surface of the ground. As soon as the yellow pealike flowers fade and the seeds commence to develop, the stems bend downward and burrow into the earth where the seeds develop and ripen. We seldom think of peanuts as one of the most important of food-plants, yet in the United States alone the annual crop amounts to nearly a billion pounds valued at more than twelve million dollars, yet we raise only a very small portion of the world's supply of peanuts. In China they are one of the most important of crops, while vast quantities are raised in Europe, the Pacific Islands, in Africa, and in the West Indies and in South and Central America and Mexico, the total world's crop amounting to more than three million tons of the little nuts.
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No doubt it will surprise many to learn that pound for pound peanuts are one of the most nutritious of all known foods. Even the very best beef steak does not contain as many proteins as a pound of peanuts, which also contains one-third as much fat as a pound of butter, in addition to as many carbohydrates as a pound of white potatoes. But peanuts are valuable for many purposes other than as food for human beings. The oil is an excellent substitute for olive oil and is also of great importance for the manufacture of soap, oleomargarine, and other substances. The "hay" made from the dried plants, as well as the pods or "shells" and the reddish "skins" surrounding the kernels, are among the most valuable fodder for live stock, while the waste material remaining after the oil has been extracted from the ground nuts is unexcelled as a fattener for cattle and hogs and is one of the best of all crop or land fertilizers. Finally, like all leguminous plants such as clover, alfalfa, peas and beans, the peanut roots produce nitrogen which they give to the soil. Hence barren or exhausted soil may be enriched and rendered productive by planting and harvesting a crop of peanuts. It may seem strange that we should eat the fruits, seeds, roots, or tubers of poisonous plants. But how many of us realize what a variety of foods are obtained from roses? Not from the rose bushes of our flower gardens, it is true, but from closely related members of the rose family. Plums, cherries, pears, peaches, apricots, apples, nectarines, almonds, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries are all members of the rose family, as are also the wild buckthorns and hawthorns which
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bear edible even if not desirable fruits. There seems little resemblance between a luscious peach and an almond, but if we compare the peach stone with the shell of the almond we will find them almost identical, while the kernel of the peach stone is exactly like that of the almond aside from its flavor. And while a big rosy apple is a very different fruit from a strawberry, yet we will find the flowers very much the same. Here it is interesting to note that blackberries and raspberries, as well as strawberries, are all American plants and were unknown in other portions of the world prior to the arrival of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere. Finally, among the strange plants that we eat there are the grasses, which are the most important of all our food-plants. Think of how badly off we would be were it not for the giant grass called sugar-cane. And what would we do without the grass we call wheat, the other grass we know as rye, the grass from which we obtain our oats and the barley grass? Millions of human beings depend almost entirely upon the swamp-loving grass whose seeds are the cereal we know as rice, while millions more would be faced with famine were it not for maize or Indian corn which is still another grass. Perhaps of all these grasses which provide human beings with their most important and widely used foods the maize is the most interesting and the strangest. In the first place "corn," as we call it, is of particular interest to us, for it is 100 per cent American. But that is not its only claim to be considered both interesting and strange. Although the original wild ancestors of sugar-cane and wheat are known we cannot identify the original
grasses which, through ages of cultivation, became transformed to rice, barley, and rye. But all of these are very similar in structure and manner of growth to common grasses. Among the grasses of our fields and meadows, our waysides and our woodlands there are species which are almost exact counterparts of the various grains which provide us with food. Some have "heads" with seeds like barley or rye, others have seeds that droop like oats, while still others have the "heads" covered with slender threadlike filaments resembling the "beard" of wheat. But nowhere on earth, as far as known, is there a wild grass having its stalks topped with flower tassels and with its seeds enclosed in tightly wrapped husks growing from the stalk at the bases of the leaves in the manner of our familiar Indian corn or maize. Even stranger is the fact that maize is the only cereal plant which is totally incapable of propagating itself. Wheat, barley, rye, oats, millet and rice if not harvested will drop their seeds or grains and these will sprout and grow. But the kernels of maize on their cobs enclosed within the tight covering of husks cannot drop from the parent stalk and produce more corn. Even if by chance the kernels do drop to earth, if they are accidentally scattered by birds, beasts, or human beings, and even if they sprout, the plants cannot grow and spread without the aid of man. For so many thousands of years has maize been cultivated by human beings that it has become entirely dependent upon man for its existence. Of all known plants it is the most thoroughly domesticated. Never does it revert to a wild state like most cultivated plants. Only where planted and cultivated by man does it exist. It has become as helpless as a Pekinese if left to itself, and in its early
stages it is one of the tenderest, most delicate, and frail of all plants. No one knows with certainty where maize first originated, for there are reasons to think it was first cultivated in Mexico and there are as many if not more reasons for thinking maize originated in Peru, the home of so many of our important food-plants. But regardless of where the plant was first developed from some unknown wild grass we know that it had been cultivated by the Indians of North, South and Central America for thousands of years when the white men first arrived in the New World. Moreover, the American races had developed all of the principal forms or varieties of corn known to us, with many varieties which have never become familiar to us in the North. In the most ancient known tombs and graves of the pre Incan races we find pottery vessels bearing perfect reproductions of ears of maize, and accompanying the ancient mummies are dried and shriveled ears of maize placed beside the bodies to provide the spirits with food. Among these ancient specimens of maize are flint corn and dent corn, sweet corn and popping corn, black and red corn, yellow and white corn, as well as examples of the various kinds of maize still cultivated in Peru but unknown to our farmers. Among these is the mote' corn with each kernel an inch or more in width. These are leached and cooked and are eaten singly, just as we eat chestnuts or peanuts. At the very opposite extreme is the pygmy of all maize with ears only two or three inches in length.
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But this tiny Andean corn has one great advantage, for its home is about the shores of Lake Titicaca nearly three miles above the sea, and is the only known variety of maize that will withstand cold weather and frost. The Peruvian races knew the maize as "sara," but they had a name for each variety of the plant. Thus the big-kerneled corn was called "sara-mote'," black corn was "kollo-sara," popping corn was "sara-cancha" corn used for making meal was "sara-sancu," while sweet corn was called "chocli." But the grain became first known to Europeans when the Spaniards conquered Mexico and Yucatan where it was known as "mahiz," the name which was adopted by the Dons and was corrupted to maize by English-speaking people. To-day this plant, first cultivated and developed in America, has spread to every quarter of the globe where it can be grown. In every land and on every island, other than those lying in the frigid zones, there are fields of waving corn. From New Zealand to the Siberian steppes, from the heart of Africa to the islands of the South Seas, everywhere throughout the world, Indian corn is cultivated by civilized men and by savage tribes, and it has become the third most valuable food-plant. Only wheat and rice stand above it, while its commercial uses other than as food are far greater than those of any other grain. Few persons realize the almost inconceivable quantities of corn that are annually harvested. In the United States alone the crop amounts to over three billion bushels with a total value, greater than that of all our yearly production of coal, iron, gold, and silver combined, and often worth more than all the wheat, rye, barley, rice, beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes,
and tobacco harvested in our country in a single year. But perhaps the very strangest fact about this wonderful plant we eat is that among all the races who cultivate and eat the grain, there are only two (other than the Indians) who know it by its proper name. In Africa and portions of India it is called "mealies"; the natives of Egypt refer to it as "Syrian corn"; the French know it under the name of "Spanish corn"; the Hungarians and the Dutch call it "Turkish wheat", while the Turks know it as "Egyptian corn." To us it is just "corn" Only the Spanish-speaking people and the British call it maize, and only the English, who of all races appreciate maize the least, give credit to those who originated the grain by referring to it as Indian corn.
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Chapter XII
WONDER PLANTS THAT WE DRINK
It is rather remarkable that aside from water and milk, all our beverages are made from plants. Moreover, all portions of plants are used. We have drinks made from fruits, others from leaves, others from flowers, others from seeds; some are made from nuts, others from roots, and there are still others made from buds, stems, sap, bark, or the entire plants. Among the fruit beverages we have lemonade, orangeade, limeade, cider, wines, and the popular pineapple juice, orange juice, tomato juice, grape juice and others.* Roots, barks, and saps supply us with most of our soft drinks such as root-beer, birch-beer, ginger-ale, coca-cola, sarsaparilla. We have elder flower and dandelion flower wines, as well as delicious wines made of blackberries, cherries, barberries, elderberries, and other berries. Buds and tender leaves supply our tea; our coffee and cocoa are made from seeds. When it comes to "hard" drinks and liquors there are the beers and ales made from seeds of hop vines combined with malt from grains, with the microscopic yeast plants added. Barley, rye, wheat, and maize seeds are the sources of various kinds of whiskey, while the Irish use potatoes for the same purpose. The berries of the
*A refreshing and delightful beverage may be made with crushed sumac berries and water sweetened to suit the taste.
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juniper give the flavor to gin---or are supposed to, although I'm afraid only a very small proportion of the liquor contains real juniper. But even if the flavor is imparted by chemicals, the basis of the liquor is alcohol which is distilled from the roots, fruits, sap or other portions of plants. Brandy, also, is made from plants, for it is made from grapes, while finally there is rum made from the sap of the sugar-cane. Man certainly has exhibited a great amount of ingenuity in inventing drinkables, and there is scarcely any group or form of plant life he has not employed in his desire to assuage his thirst, add zest to his meals, refresh his weary body or befuddle his brain. But it is rather a sad commentary on human nature that he should have devoted so much effort to producing intoxicating beverages. I doubt if there is a race anywhere, no matter how primitive, that does not have its alcoholic drinks. For that matter, about the first plant industry of human beings seems to be that of making home-brew of some kind. Even when cast away upon a desert island, shipwrecked mariners and others often manage to concoct some sort of a toddy to cheer their spirits, stimulate their energies and all too often make them disgracefully drunk. History records that the first white men to dwell upon the Bermuda Islands were shipwrecked sailors, and that even before they had erected shelters for themselves or had found means of sustenance other than shell-fish and birds' eggs, they had discovered how to make a fiery intoxicating liquor from the palmettos on the islands. Perhaps Nature is as much to blame for this state of affairs as are human beings for she has put temptation
in man's way and has provided a vast number of plants capable of being more quickly and easily transformed to alcoholic than to non-alcoholic drinks. Wherever there are cocoanut palms-and that means practically every tropical land or coral reef-there is an ever-ready source of fiery liquor. All that is necessary is to cut open a nut and allow the liquid within it to ferment. If there are no cocoanuts available, wild berries, fruits, pineapples, oranges, even palm fruits may be crushed and the juice left to ferment. For that matter, the sap of many trees will serve the same purpose, and if the land is a barren desert waste there will be cactus plants or agaves filled with watery sap which may be transformed to liquor by the simple process of fermentation. And by creating the minute plants which produce fermentation Mother Nature has provided the most essential detail of all. Think what a prohibitionists' paradise this earth would be if there were no microscopic plants to produce fermentation. No doubt the teetotalers feel that these minute plants are a curse, but without them life would be impossible. The "curse" lies in mankind, not in Nature, for it is the misuse, not the use of Nature's gifts that has resulted in most of mankind's misery and shortcomings. But irrespective of our ideas of temperance or intemperance the stories of our plant beverages, either alcoholic or non-alcoholic, are interesting and in many cases are truly strange and wonderful. Very probably it was chance or accident that led to the discovery of alcoholic drinks. Some primitive savage may have left a portion of his cocoanut water or some fruit juice unconsumed, and a little later, when he took
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another drink, he found the liquid completely altered. The slightly sweet or mildly acid flavor had been replaced by a sour, acrid, or even fiery taste. Perhaps the fellow made a wry face and spat it out, but the chances are that he swallowed enough to have its effect upon his system, unaccustomed to alcohol, and he soon became aware of entirely new sensations. Probably the savage was terrified at first and had visions of devils or evil spirits having entered his body by means of the funny-tasting liquid. But presently his fears gave place to unusual gaiety and exuberance of spirits, and as it dawned upon his rather dull brain that this was the result of the beverage, he gulped down more and became so filled with "Dutch courage" that his fellow tribesmen gazed upon him with wonder and admiration. If he kept the secret of his condition to himself he may have become a chief or a great medicine man, but probably he decided it was too good to keep, and became convivial and invited his friends to share his home-brew. Even if primitive man did discover intoxicating liquors accidentally it could scarcely have been by accident that he discovered how to prepare the seeds of a berry to provide him with coffee or how to transform the beans in the pod of a tree to cocoa and chocolate. Nobody knows when or how coffee was first discovered, but compared to the process of making cocoa and chocolate, that of making coffee is very simple. To prepare coffee all that is necessary is to dry the beans, remove the "parchment" or thin membrane that covers them, roast and grind them. But the preparation of the seeds of the cacao plant is a long and complicated process. It is impossible even
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1. 2. 3. 4.
Cacao flowers and pods (about 1/6) Cacao pod open to show beans (about 1/6) Yapon or Carolina tea (about 1/3) Tea (about 1/3) 1. Broken orange pekoe 2. First gunpowder 3. Second gunpowder and orange pekoe 4. Pekoe and young Hyson 5. Hyson and Imperial 6. Souchong 5. Coffee (about 1/3) 6. Mate gourd and bombilla (about 1/4) 7. New Jersey tea (about 1/3) 8. Maguey plant (about 1/40) 9. Biscuit root (about 1/3) 10-10A. Indian bread-root plant and root
to hazard a guess as to when man first discovered how to prepare cocoa and chocolate. For that matter we are not at all certain whether cocoa and chocolate were first made in Mexico or in Peru, for when the Spaniards first reached these countries they found both the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Incans using the beverages just as their ancestors had been doing for unknown centuries.
And here let me call attention to the confusion in regard to the words "cocoa," "cacao" and "coco." We read of "cocoanuts," but the nut of the palm-tree has no connection with the cocoa we drink and some think it should be spelled "coco." Neither is the term "cocoa" properly used when referring to the plant or to the beans which provide us with cocoa and chocolate, for the word "cocoa" is the name of the prepared beans only and these are the seeds of the "cacao" tree.
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In the Incan or Quechua language, both the seeds and the drink made from them were known as "cacahua," while the Aztecs knew the plant as "cacao" and called the beverages
"cacaoquahitl" and "chocolatl." These Indian words were far too long and too difficult for the Spaniards, and were shortened and corrupted to "cacao" and "chocolate." When the beverages became known to the English people the Anglo-Saxons, as was so often the case, transposed a letter and changed "cacao" to "cocoa." Then to still further confuse the names. they added a letter to the Spaniards' "coco," (their name for the well-known palm-nut), and called it "cocoanut." Finally there is the "coca" plant from which cocaine is derived, which made matters even more complicated.
As wild cacao trees which might be ancestors of the cultivated species are found only in South America, it seems probable that the ancient Peruvians were the first to discover the process of making cocoa and chocolate, while the similarity of the Incan "cacahua" and the Aztec "cacao" would seem to indicate a common origin and that the Mexicans learned the method of using the plant from the Peruvians. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, we know that both the people of Peru and the people of Mexico used cocoa and chocolate in the most remote times.
Cacao beans are found with other food-plants in the most ancient of Peruvian graves and tombs, and pre Incan pottery vessels dating back for thousands of years are modeled in the form of
cacao pods or are decorated with pictures of men or women holding the pods in their hands. In Mexico there are equally posi tive evidences that the use of the beans was familiar to the Indians even before the Aztec Empire came into existence. Moreover, in both South and Central America a great number of varieties of the cacao trees had been developed, all quite distinct from the wild species, which proves that the trees had been under cultivation for an almost immeasurable length of time. Mainly the recognized varieties of cacao trees differ only in the color or size of their pods, the color of their leaves and the quality of their beans. All are easily recognized and all are most striking and peculiar. Unlike the great majority of plants, the flower-buds sprout directly from the bark of the trunk and branches, and as the pods mature the tree presents a very curious appearance resembling, as one tourist expressed it, "a beech tree with summer squashes nailed to the trunk." Even though the cacao tree is very different from a beech and is a very beautiful tree with large deep-green or copper-crimson leaves, the fruits or pods do resemble squashes, especially when they are yellow or green. But there are varieties with scarlet pods, crimson pods, and deep, almost purple pods. The pods themselves are not edible, however, and are filled with a rather sweet, mucilaginous whitish substance or "flesh" containing many large seeds which are quite soft and pinkish-brown in color and somewhat similar in general appearance to raw peanuts. When the pods are fully ripe they are picked and are heaped in piles beneath the trees where workers armed with machetes quickly split the pods in half and empty the slippery mass containing the seeds into boxes or
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trays. The next step is the fermentation or "sweating" process which is the real secret of the preparation of the cacao beans, and by which their natural raw-potato flavor is changed to that of cocoa. It is a rather tricky process requiring practice and judgment as well as great care, for if the seeds or beans are fermented too much they are ruined. There are a number of ways employed in "sweating" cacao. Sometimes the contents of the pods are placed in vats, other planters prefer the use of gratings, while many of the smaller growers simply cover the mass of pulp and seeds with leaves, burlap sacks, or other material. No matter what method is followed the result is much the same, the pulp souring and fermenting and becoming almost liquid, in which state it flows off leaving the seeds exposed. The next step in the process is one in which planters also disagree, many insisting that the beans are improved by washing before being dried, while others feel equally certain that they are better if dried without being washed. But in either case it is highly important that the beans should be dried very evenly and thoroughly. To accomplish this the beans are spread on huge trays on the large estates, or on ox hides in the case of growers who have only a few trees, and are constantly raked or moved about in the sunshine. As the beans mildew and spoil if wet by rain, the large estates have the drying-trays mounted on wheels running on tracks leading into huge sheds so that the beans may be quickly placed under cover in case of a shower or at night. Other growers employ artificially heated air for drying their beans, while many thousands
of tons of cacao beans are dried on raw hides or small trays or even on sheets of corrugated iron placed on the ground, or in the streets of villages and towns. As dogs, poultry, sheep, goats, and even cattle wander about freely and go where they please, they frequently walk over the drying beans. Finally the beans are polished and are usually colored with red clay or ochre mixed with water and sprinkled on the dried beans while they are being polished. Unlike the question of fermentation and washing wherein experts disagree, all cacao growers seem to agree that the very best method of polishing the beans is to employ barefooted Hindus, Indians, or Negroes to shuffle the beans about with their feet. But we need have no hesitation about partaking of cocoa or chocolate because of this or because live stock wander over drying cacao beans, for in the subsequent manufacture of cocoa and chocolate the superficial skin or shell of the beans is removed. When the dried and polished cacao beans reach the factories they must go through an even longer and more intricate process before they are ready for human consumption. First of all they are roasted. Then they are dehulled and the germs or "chits" are removed and the beans cracked into fragments by special machinery. They are then sifted, screened, and blended. In fact the blending of various grades and flavors of beans from different localities is a most important part of the process, for the quality and flavor of the finished products depend upon this. When the blending is completed the beans are passed through the grinders and are transformed into a creamlike paste or "liquor" which is beaten and churned for hours until it becomes "cocoa
cream." The warm cream is poured into forms or molds where it solidifies and becomes the chocolate of commerce. Cocoa is prepared by extracting the oil or "cocoa butter" and pulverizing the dry remainder. In addition to cocoa and chocolate there is the product known to the trade as "broma." This is merely the husks or skins of the beans pulverized and sweetened and therefore contains any dirt or foreign matter that might have adhered to the beans while being dried and polished. At one time large quantities of broma as well as the whole "cocoa shells" were sold because of their cheapness, but nowadays cocoa and chocolate are so abundant and so low in price that there is practically no sale for the inferior shells, which are used mainly in the manufacture of cattle fodder. When we consider what a long and involved and complicated process is required to transform the seeds of the cacao tree into nourishing food and drink, it seems beyond the bounds of reason to assume that the Indians hit upon it by chance. But if not how on earth did they learn the process? To be sure they did not produce the same high quality of chocolate and cocoa as result from modern manufacturing methods and specially-designed machinery. But the flavor of the Indians' crudely ground and 'prepared chocolate is fully equal to and often superior to that of our highest grade product. Of course, we all know that our tea consists of the leaves or buds of a plant, but how many of us know that the tea plant belongs to the same family as the sweetscented, waxen-flowered camelia? How many of us know that the various kinds of tea, such as Orange Pekoe, Hyson,
Colors, Souchong, and others are all leaves from the same plant, the grade or name depending upon the portion of the plant or the size of the leaves used? How many of us know that black tea and green tea differ only in the method of preparation? And how many of our tea drinkers realize that tea leaves must undergo a long process almost as involved as that of chocolate, before they are ready to use? When we speak of "Orange Pekoe" we refer to tea made from the tenderest buds at the tips of the stalks. When we ask for "Young Hyson" we wish tea made from medium-sized leaves. If some tradesman offers a bargain in tea and vows it is just as good as the best Orange Pekoe, and we notice it is marked "Souchong," it is no bargain, for Souchong means that the largest and poorest leaves are contained in the package. On the other hand "Gunpowder" tea is made from very young and tender leaves near the top of the plant-stalk and is next to Orange Pekoe in quality. Oolong, green tea, and black tea differ in a very different manner. In preparing leaves for black tea they are spread on trays for several hours or until they wilt and become soft and velvety. Then they are handled and rolled on stone tables to break open the leaf cells and release the oils or juices, after which they are roasted and are finally "fired" or dried by artificial heat or hot air at a temperature of about 210' F. Green tea is not wilted, roasted or rolled before being dried, but is steamed or "fired" as soon as gathered, thus destroying the ferments, while Oolong is tea from Formosa which is very slightly fermented before "firing"
Although practically all real tea is imported from

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Japan, China, India, or Ceylon, yet there are a number of native American plants whose leaves may be used for making tea. Perhaps the best known of these is the woodland shrub known as New Jersey tea. The leaves of this common plant when carefully dried make an excellent beverage and served our ancestors as a substitute for Oriental teas during the Revolutionary War. Sassafras leaves were widely used for making a beverage in the past, the "sassafras tea" being considered a certain remedy for many forms of sickness. In our more southerly states there is a member of the holly family which is known as yaupon or Carolina tea which is far superior to the New Jersey tea plant as a source of tea. The tender shoots and leaves of the yaupon when "steeped" produce a very healthful and refreshing beverage which was very popular with the Cherokee Indians to whom it was known as "black drink." But the only tea which competes with that of the Orient in popularity and widespread use is the Paraguay Tea or "mate" of South America. Mate', however, is not the name of the plant, which is a species of ilex or holly, and in the Indian language means a small gourd, the real name of the plant being Yerba mat or gourd plant. This name was not bestowed upon the plant because it bears gourds, but on account of the way in which the dried leaves and twigs are used. In the lands where the beverage is popular and is as universally used as is tea, cocoa, or coffee in our country, no native would ever dream of brewing mate' in a pot. To obtain the full flavor of the drink it must he prepared in a certain way, the leaves and tender
twigs being steeped in a specially designed vessel from which it is sipped by means of a slender tube with a spoon-shaped end pierced with many tiny holes to form a strainer. This device is known as a "bombilla" or "little pump," while the rounded or egg-shaped container is the mate' or gourd. Originally these were made of real gourds, and many of the poorer people still use them; but the majority of people, and all who can afford to do so, use imitation gourds made of glass, metal, or porcelain which are often highly decorated or are of solid silver or gold. In preparing the beverage, a few of the ground dried leaves are placed in the gourd into which boiling water is poured until it is about two thirds full. For a few minutes the contents are stirred gently with the bombilla, until the drinker deems his tea just right, when he sucks it through the "little pump." One of the principal reasons why mate' has not become, popular in the United States is because our people have not learned how to prepare and use it. But there are other and greater reasons. In the first place only the poorer grades of mate have been obtainable here, and there is as much, or for that matter more, difference between poor and good mate' than between Souchong and Orange Pekoe tea or between the cheap and the high grade coffees. Unlike true tea, the mate' tea is made from the leaves, twigs and even the smaller branches of the plant, while aside from being partially dried in the sunshine and "cured" over wood fires no other preparatory process is needed, other than to chop or grind the dried product into a coarse powder. Inferior or cheap grades of mate are mainly made from the branches and twigs and contain a great deal of fine
dust, whereas the really superior grades consist wholly of the buds and leaves and are free from all small particles which bother the drinker by passing through the openings in his bombilla. The other reason why we have never become mate' conscious is because wholly misleading and exaggerated advertisements of the beverage have been widely circulated, and because equally misleading and wholly unfounded statements declaring that mate' is a drug and injurious have been broadcast in the press, by radio, and otherwise. There is no more truth in such statements than in the advertisements which declare that mate' will insure long life, perfect health and will cure almost every ailment from dandruff to heart disease. Just how or where the idea that mate' is a drug or is injurious originated, is a mystery. Perhaps well-meaning but ignorant reformers and self-appointed guardians of public welfare, confused mate' and marijuana owing to the fact that both words begin with "m" and both are used by Latin Americans. But I strongly suspect that the outcry against the use of mate' was inspired by the liquor interests who realized that users of Paraguay tea are seldom heavy drinkers of alcoholic beverages, and foresaw losses to their own trade if mate' became as popular as it deserves to be. Although it is no cure-all and has no more effect upon falling hair, the postponement of old age or the acquisition of strength than does tea, coffee, or cocoa, it is fully as refreshing and stimulating as these beverages, and is no more harmful. In fact it contains far less caffein than any one of the three most popular drinks, and it is not nearly so habit-forming a drink as
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ordinary tea or coffee. More than thirty million people in South America drink mate' as regularly and as often as we drink coffee or tea. In Europe it has become a very popular and widely used beverage, and in many districts has almost entirely supplanted all other drinks. Surely over thirty-five million human beings can't have gone to the damnation bow-wows by drinking this "tea of the Gauchos," and it is a great pity that such a harmless, refreshing and truly desirable "tea" has not been popularized in our own land. Perhaps, once we learn how to prepare it properly, and when the higher grades of the mate' tea are imported, we may see thousands of our people sipping the beverage through silver bombillas instead of standing by a bar and tossing raw whiskey down their throats. Mate' may not be the means of reforming drunkards, it may not be a "cure" for intemperance, but the fact remains that where the plant is most widely used the consumption of alcoholic liquors is almost negligible. In various lands the people have plant beverages that are almost or quite unknown to us, but are as popular locally as are tea, coffee, or cocoa in our country or as mate' in Brazil, the Argentine, and Paraguay. In Africa, millions of people consider beverages made from the cola nut the finest of all, while in Arabia the native khat is the favorite. In our southwest the Indians prize the sweet syrupy juice of the giant tree cactus or "saguaro" (see Chapter VI) when freshly drawn from the plant or after being fermented to form a rich heady wine. In rainless desert districts the cacti are most important and valuable plants, for all contain a large amount of watery sap which in the case of many species
is drinkable and palatable. Some of the stout-stemmed barrel varieties are real desert drinking fountains, for by cutting a slice from the top of the plant and digging out some of the pithy interior to form a hollow the
Barrel cactus (1/16)

thirsty traveler may secure a draught of cool clear liquid which quickly fills the cavity. One of the most remarkable of plants which provide man with beverages is the guarana' or devil-doer of the Amazon district in South America. In its natural wild state the guarana is a liana or climbing vine, but when cultivated it becomes a small bushy tree. The seeds of this plant contain nearly four times as much caffeine as coffee or from 4 to 5 per cent. These seeds are ground
and pressed into cylindrical cakes four or five inches in length and about an inch in diameter. By slicing off a few shavings of one of these "sticks" and dissolving them in boiling water, a most refreshing and stimulating beverage is prepared. A
half-teaspoonful of guarana in a cup of water is equal to several cups of the strongest black coffee, and its effect upon weary brains and muscles is almost magical. No matter how utterly worn out and fatigued a person may be, a drink of guarana makes him a "new man," as fresh, strong, and active as ever. Moreover, as far as known, this appropriately named "devil-doer" has no ill effects upon one's system. There is no depression or lassitude after the effects of the guarana have passed off, its use does not become a habit, and one may drink the beverage before going to bed and sleep soundly to awaken in the morning as fresh as the proverbial daisy. Another popular beverage of many natives of Mexico, Central, and South America is known as "chicha." This, however, is merely a general name, for there are many kinds of chicha such as corn chicha, pineapple chicha, sweet potato chicha and chicha made of various fruits and other plants, and there are as many methods of preparing the drink as there are plants used in making it. In Costa Rica, pineapple chicha is the favorite beverage, while in Peru chichas prepared from special varieties of maize are the most popular. Broadly speaking chicha is similar to slightly hard cider, and like cider it becomes harder the longer it is kept and the greater the fermentation. But unlike the well-known juice of apples, chicha soon sours and spoils. When fresh and
properly prepared it is a most refreshing beverage, regardless of the plant used in making it, although few Northerners like the flavor of the corn chicha until they become accustomed to it, for like olives and many other edibles it is an acquired taste which many persons never acquire. Another plant beverage somewhat similar to chicha, is the cassiri of the Caribs and other jungle Indians of South America. This is made from the juice of a certain variety of red sweet potato and is an excellent agreeable drink. As much cannot be said of another beverage very popular with these Indians, paiwarrie, prepared from the cassava or manioc meal, or the cassava cakes in the manner described in Chapter V. The after effects of paiwarrie are very bad, overindulgence in paiwarrie being followed by extreme physical weakness and exhaustion, a severe cough and not infrequently a wasting illness and even death. Moreover, it is not unusual for the Indians to use their entire cassava meal supply for making paiwarrie, leaving them without food when the orgy is over, for in their exhausted condition the men are incapable of hunting or fishing. Paiwarrie is one plant drink that most fortunately has never become popular beyond the boundaries of the tropical jungles, for it does not possess a single redeeming feature. It is quite a different matter with the national beverage of Mexico known as "pulque" (pronounced poolkay), made from the sap of the agave or maguey plant which is one of the so-called "century plants." When the maguey is fully matured it contains a quantity of
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starchy material and sugar stored in the fleshy stiff leaves. At this time just when the plant is about to produce its flower-bud, the maguey is tapped by having a deep cavity scooped from the heart of the plant. Oozing from the surrounding fleshy portions of the leaves, the sweet sap called "miel" accumulates in the hollow and is gathered twice each day by a man who sucks the liquid into a long tubular gourd and empties the contents into a skin bag or cont ainer strapped to his back. When slightly fermented, the "miel" or "honey" loses its almost cloying sweetness and acquires a slightly sour, slightly acid flavor, very similar to good apple cider. The pulque thus prepared is a most refreshing and delightful beverage and is highly nutritious. Unfortunately, however, the Mexicans are not satisfied with such a desirable and innocuous drink. Like the majority of human beings, they demand something with a "kick" in it and obtain a "kick" worth while by allowing the pulque to ferment until "ripe" and then distilling it, the resultant highly alcoholic liquor being the fiery mescal. Yet even this is not so potent a liquor as other native Mexican beverages. I have stated that with the exception of water and milk all beverages are made from plants, but if we are to believe the natives of Campeche there is still a third exception.
On one occasion while I was in Campeche, the Alcalde of the town invited me to have a drink with him and some of his friends. "Senor Alcalde," I inquired as he filled the glasses, "of what is this drink made?" The Alcalde grinned. "Of a truth, amigo mio," he
replied, "it is compounded of sulphuric acid and gunpowder."
And when I tasted the innocent-appearing, colorless, sparkling liquor I was convinced that he had told the truth.
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Chapter XIII
MAGIC PLANTS
DID you ever notice how frequently some twig, root, tree, flower, or seed-pod resembles some other object? The little wild flower known as Dutchman's breeches has flowers which are miniature replicas of the baggy trousers so typical of the national costume of the Hollanders. The broad-leafed aristolochia vine which shades so many of our porches is most appropriately called Dutchman's pipe for its flowers are shaped exactly like the long, crooked-stemmed pipes popular with the Dutchmen, while the elephant flower has blossoms strikingly similar to the heads of pachyderms. Another plant, found in South Africa, has a root-stock so stout and massive with a bark so wrinkled and cracked that it instantly reminds one of an elephant's foot, which is one of its popular names. It is also known as the tortoise plant, for at times it varies its mode of growth and forms rounded or dome-shaped masses which at a very short distance might easily be mistaken for land-turtle shells. Another plant which is just as well named is the elephant's ear. There are many species of elephant's ear plants, among them the taro of the Pacific Islands and the eddoes and yautias with edible roots or tubers, of the West Indies, some species of which are cultivated in our greenhouses and gardens because of the big, ornamental leaves. Far more remarkable are the orchids,
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Magic plants 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Elephant flowers (about 1/3) Mistletoe (about 1/3) Mandrake (about 1/3) Witch-hazel (about 1/3) Beenas (caladiums) (about 1/3) Dutchman's breeches (about 1/3) Moccasin flower (about 1/3) Dutchman's pipe vine (about 1/3) Root fetish of South American Indians (about 1/12) A root in the form of a bird (about 1/4) Root shaped like a seal (about 1/4)
many of which are famous for the strange forms of their flowers. The common lady's slippers or moccasin flowers are true orchids with blossoms strikingly like moccasins or slippers in form, although perhaps they are even more like wooden shoes. Many orchids have flowers which appear like gay-colored butterflies, others resemble bees, hornets, or grasshoppers, while others are so similar in form and colors to night-flying moths that it is very difficult to distinguish the insect from the flowers. Very frequently one comes upon freak plants with branches or roots which are twisted, deformed, or inter-grown to produce weird and fantastic shapes resembling various animals or monsters. Recently it has become quite a fad to collect these, and some of the specimens secured are truly amazing. A friend who lives in Maine and is fond of wandering in the woods and has an eye for anything strange or unusual, devotes much of his time to searching the borders of ponds and lakes for gnarled and weathered cedar
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and spruce roots which bear a resemblance to beasts. birds, or other creatures. He has become so skilled in this hobby that he will see possibilities in an old stump or root that the average person would pass by unnoticed.
Butterfly orchid
1
By cutting away superfluous bits and with a few deft touches of paint and artificial eyes he transforms the roots into really remarkable figures of seals, lions, moose, and various other beasts. Until one has searched for such queer plant-forms one does not realize how numerous they are, although very often one may chance upon them. A short time ago while walking through a
patch of woodland I picked up a bit of gnarled wood which had unmistakably the semblance of a bird and needed only eyes and feet to transform it into a perfect robin. Of course, we know that such things are nothing more than freak growths, but primitive and superstitious human beings regard them in a very different way. To them the queerly shaped roots, gnarled trunks, flowers and seeds are supernatural or magic, and they prize or fear them accordingly. From time immemorial the mandrake has been credited with magic powers by many races, merely because the roots of this plant bear a resemblance to the body and limbs of a human being. Among our American Indians, almost any unusually shaped root or plant was often regarded as "medicine" and was supposed to possess curative or magic powers. But there are many plants which are considered magic or medicine or are used as charms or fetishes, although they are quite normal in their mode of growth and other respects. The Sioux and other plains Indians consider our common sweet-flag as "good medicine" and value it very highly. In this case there is good reason for prizing the root, for it does possess medicinal properties. But when the word medicine is used in connection with Indian practices and beliefs it does not mean a remedy, but something that possesses weird, mysterious, or magic qualities, and bits of the sweet-flag root strung on thongs to form a necklace or placed in a "medicine bundle" are regarded as most potent charms. Among the South American tribes a number of peculiarly shaped flowers and seeds are used as love charms. One of these is the pale purple flower of a
climbing vine, which, when dried and powdered is supposed to possess amazing powers. The Indians believe that if the pulverized blossoms are scattered in a man's hammock or are thrown upon his person he will fall in love with and marry the woman who used the charm, or will go crazy. And it always works, for the man is also a firm believer in the powers of the charm and feels certain that he will go mad unless he marries the girl. These Indians of South America are particularly addicted to plant charms and magic plants, which are called beenas. Just why certain plants should be supposed to be magic while others are not is a mystery, but every Indian recognizes the beena plants instantly. Moreover, there are beenas for nearly every purpose, while in addition, every man and woman has his or her personal beena plant which will bring dire misfortune upon any one else who employs it. Usually these magic or beena plants are callalike caladiums. Many varieties of these are cultivated in our greenhouses, or are used as potted plants in our homes, because of their beautifully colored and marked leaves which are spotted, mottled, splashed, veined, or streaked with vivid red, white, yellow, or purple. To the Indians each of the colors and each form of marking indicates a different kind of charm. Mainly they are used as hunting, fishing, or travel charms, the Indians believing that the use of the proper beena will insure success in his undertaking. If he is about to start on a hunt for deer the Indian will select a leaf with red spots. If he wishes to secure tapir he chooses a leaf of deep liver and green color. If his quarry is the jaguar he uses a leaf spotted with yellow and with deep red
veins and so on. To the Indian's way of thinking no charm is worth having unless it causes pain, so he cuts or scratches his arm and rubs the acrid juice of the leaf into the wound. Of course, the plant has no potency or power to bring him luck, yet the use of the beena usually results in his being successful. Having used it he feels self-confident and uses every effort to secure the game, whereas without the magic plant to aid him he feels certain of failure and makes no real wholehearted attempt to succeed in his quest. Hence, indirectly, the leaf does serve as a charm. Probably the peculiarly marked leaves of these plants first led to the Indians' belief in their magic properties, yet there are many other plants with even more curious and unusual leaves which are never considered beenas, while others, among them the bulbs of certain lilies, are highly valued as charms. If fantastic forms and colors caused plants to be regarded as magic or medicine plants, then surely the orchids would be among the most magic of all growths. Yet I do not recall any tribe who considers any orchid in this light. The ancient Britons regarded the mistletoe as a magic plant, and to some extent it is still regarded as a charm or fetish, or at least mystic, as witness our custom of hanging a sprig over a doorway or on a chandelier at Christmas time. To be sure its charm when thus employed lies largely in the privilege it confers upon the lucky chap who catches a pretty girl beneath the sprig. It would be difficult indeed to find a man who did not thoroughly believe that mistletoe is "good medicine" and a worth-while "beena" under such conditions. Very likely the Britons looked upon mistletoe as a
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magic plant because of its parasitic growth, especially when found upon oak-trees where it is rarely seen, and its cannibalistic nature. Yet there are countless parasitic plants which no one considers either magic or sacred. Neither does there appear to be any reasonable explanation of the magic properties attributed to the alder by "dowsers" or users of divining rods. But in this respect alder is not by any means the only plant which is supposed to indicate the presence of water, treasures, or precious metals beneath the surface of the earth. Some dowsers swear by hazel, others by apple twigs; some insist that hawthorn or gooseberry forks are the most magic of all plants when it comes to finding water, while I have met one or two who admit that the "magic" is all in the user rather than the plant and that a divining rod made of wire works just as well. Another common plant which for untold centuries has been considered magic or at least a charm, is the witch-hazel of Europe which is a species of elm and should not be confused with the American witch-hazel or hamameliis. It would not be surprising if the American witch-hazel was regarded with superstitious awe by the Indians, for it blooms in the autumn when by all rules and regulations plants should be ripening their seeds, and it possesses great medicinal properties as every one knows. Although we seldom think of it in that light, yet our interest in finding four-leafed clovers is merely a leftover from our ancestors' belief in the magic properties of these freak leaves. For that matter a great many otherwise sensible and intelligent people still have faith
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in four-leafed clovers bringing good fortune to the finders. And when children pluck the petals from a daisy and repeat the words, "He loves me, he loves me not," they are unconsciously perpetuating their ancestors' practice of divination by means of magic plants. Of course, even the children of to-day have no real faith in the results of their mutilation of the flowers, but their ancestors did, and not so very long ago at that. Had any one, child or adult, been caught pulling petals from a daisy while repeating the well-known words during the early days of New England, he or she would have been arrested and cast into prison on a charge of witchcraft. From time immemorial, magic or mystic plants have been a very essential part of necromancy. Every witch had her "brew" compounded of magic plants, herbs, and other ingredients, and no "spell" could be cast, no fortune told, no ailment cured, no "devils" exorcised or no love philter compounded without resorting to magic plants of some sort. This former use of plants in witchcraft is perpetuated in the common names of many species. Aside from the witch-hazel and witch-elm and the witch-alder we have the witches'-besom, the distorted broomlike branches of evergreen trees resulting from a fungus disease the Witch-balls or tumbleweeds, the witch-broom, which the witches were supposed to employ in making their flying brooms to carry them through the air; the witch-grass,the witch-apples or curiously shaped galls on cedar and juniper trees, and others. It is a poor rule that does not work both ways, and our witch-ridden and witch-fearing ancestors were as firm believers in the efficacy of certain magic plants to
circumvent witches as in the evil powers of the witches' brews. In Scotland a sprig of white heather worn on one's person or placed over the doorway of a cottage was considered a certain means of safeguarding one's self or one's home from the perils of witchcraft. The sweet marjoram, sweet cicely, trefoil, and other common plants were used in the same manner and for the same purpose. The well-known custom of placing an evergreen tree or bough on the roof of a newly erected barn or other building had its origin as a charm against witches or evil spirits. Witches were popularly supposed to work "spells" which caused cows to "go dry" and the magic bough, placed on the building, was believed to prevent such a catastrophe to the cows within. The horse-chestnut was still another magic plant credited with the power to keep witches and evil spirits at a respectful distance, and the custom of carrying a horse-chestnut for "good luck" or for its supposed curative properties is merely a survival of the belief in the nuts' magical powers. Many persons still have implicit faith in the efficacy of a white potato as a cure for rheumatism, and always carry a spud in their pockets or worn like a scapular. Seldom indeed do they realize that by so doing they are unconsciously using a magic plant as a safeguard from evil spirits or witchcraft. Yet such is the case, for the custom dates back to the time when all ills that flesh is heir to were attributed to "devils" taking possession of the afflicted person or to "spells" of witches, and the potato was deemed a most potent charm to drive out the devils and to render the spells impotent. Probably
many worthy and highly intelligent people will rise up in arms and declare that potatoes will cure rheumatism. I have no doubt that in a great many instances the "Irish cobbler," for this is considered the most reliable and efficacious variety of the tubers, does relieve the sufferer who carries it. Faith will cure many ills, and if one has sufficient faith in the curative properties of a potato the "charm" will work. But the same results would follow if the afflicted person carried a turnip, a carrot, or an onion, and had the same amount of faith in either. For that matter an onion, or better still a bit of garlic, might have even greater magic powers than a potato, for there are many persons who swear by asafetida and carry a bit of the fetid gum in a pocket or in a little bag suspended about the neck. Certainly it would not be at all surprising if this magic plant did keep witches and devils at a distance. Very probably, in many cases the magic properties attributed to certain plants resulted from the ancient widespread belief that various trees and plants were the abodes of spirits or supernatural beings. Dryads, wood-nymphs, and numerous sprites or fairies were supposed to dwell within certain trees, and in some cases were believed to be able to assume the form of a tree or human form at will, while' other trees were believed to be fearsome monsters or ogres who preyed upon human beings. To appease these dangerous spirits sacrifices and blood offerings were made, especially when a tree was felled or cut. Among the Vikings and other races it was customary to lash a prisoner to the ways when a ship was to be launched, the people believing that when the vessel crushed the unfortunate victim as
it slid into the sea, his blood would satisfy the demands of the spirits of the trees sacrificed for timbers and planking, thus preventing them from wreaking vengeance upon the ship's crew. This may seem like a most heathenish and terrible custom, yet we still follow it in a less bloodthirsty manner by substituting a bottle of wine for human blood when a ship is launched. In some of the Pacific islands the people believe that the spirits of their dead chiefs enter certain trees. These are regarded as sacred and are regularly given food and drink. In former times the trees were provided with human flesh and blood, but with the abolition of cannibalism the spirit trees have been forced to be satisfied with the blood of pigs or other animals smeared upon them. A far more terrible custom is that of some of the tribes of Central Africa. These tribes use huge wooden drums for ceremonial purposes and provide the sections of the trees with a "spirit" or "soul" by sealing a living boy within them. When the drum has been almost finished, a boy is given a knife and ordered to crawl within the hollowed-out shell of wood in order to shave off the rough projecting portions. Presently the men outside borrow the boy's knife on some pretext or another and then fasten the head of the drum in place, sealing the boy in his living tomb. The drum is then taken into the forest and suspended upon a tree where it remains until the boy dies a terrible lingering death and his body becomes desiccated. In this case there is a reversal of the usual order of things, for instead of the drum being made from a magic plant, the plant, consisting of a section of tree, is made "magic" or "medicine" by providing
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it with a human spirit. Fortunately the horrible custom has been almost completely wiped out by the British officials, and instead of the boy, "magic" stones are now placed in the drums. A somewhat similar custom, and in its way just as cruel, was formerly prevalent in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe and is still in vogue in remote districts. A hole was bored in a tree, usually a birch, and a living shrew was placed in the cavity which was then tightly plugged, thus sealing the little creature within the tree.
Such "shrew-trees" as they are called, are believed to possess magic properties. A mere twig from a shrew-tree is a most potent charm, and a branch placed in a house will insure safety from witchcraft or any misfortune. On the other hand the owner of one of these magic plants can employ it to bring misfortune on others. By means of its occult power he can put "spells" on his enemies, and merely by touching their cattle with a shrew-tree switch the cows will go dry and the bewitched creatures will sicken and die. Of course it is all most ridiculous superstition, yet it was very real to our ancestors whose favorite expression "beshrew me" had its origin in the supposed powers of the magic shrew-tree.
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Chapter XIV
PLANTS WITH STRANGE USES
WHEN we go fishing we carry a rod and line, hooks and sinkers, bait or artificial flies, and usually a landing net or a gaff. How much easier and simpler it would be if we could be relieved of all this tackle and could go fishing with nothing more than a bunch of flowers, a pocketful of seeds or a few leaves plucked from some shrub, tree, or weed. It may seem as if it would be an impossible feat to catch fish with such things, but there are many races who find leaves, flowers, or seeds all the fishing tackle they require, and who catch more fish in a few minutes than an angler with hook and line could catch in a day, even if he had unusually good luck.
Perhaps this method of fishing may not be "sport," but it brings home the bacon---or rather the fish, and when one is dependent upon fish for one's meals and it is a question of no fish, no dinner, it is results and not sport that counts. Moreover, this method of fishing has many advantages over taking fish by hook or nets, for it doesn't injure the fish in the least, it enables the fisherman to select those he wants instead of being compelled to take those he gets, and there is nothing cruel about it.
There are a great number of plants whose leaves,
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seeds, or blossoms are used for catching fish, but the action of all is the same, the juices of the plants stupefying the fish which float helpless upon the surface of the water where those that are desired may be dipped up by hand or in a net. In order to understand just how these strange plants cause the fish to float we must understand how fish control their submergence when alive and well. All fish have air-bladders which serve as buoys or pontoons to support their weight which, being greater than the amount of water their bodies displace, otherwise would make them sink to the bottom. In order to rise towards the surface or to remain suspended at any desired depth, the fish increases or decreases the buoyancy of its internal pontoon and by means of its fins keeps right side up and rises or dives in the same manner as a submarine by means of its horizontal rudders. It is a popular belief that when a charge of dynamite is exploded under water the concussion ruptures the airbladders of the fish which bob up to the surface. This, however, is not the case. The fish which appear are those whose pontoons contain enough air to float their bodies and, being killed or stunned by the explosion, have no control over their movements and hence rise to the surface. But those which are deeply submerged with their ballast-tanks filled with water and their air-tanks empty, sink to the bottom. It is for this reason that large deepwater fish are seldom obtained by dynamiting, while the ruptured air-bladders of many dynamited fish are the result of the sudden change of pressure rather than the concussion of the charge. The plants used in capturing fish act in a very differ Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005 Page 204
ent manner. Not only do they stupefy the fish like an anaesthetic, causing them to lose control of their movements and buoyancy, but they produce a sensation of suffocation forcing the poor fish to come up for air, where they float helpless but alive and unharmed at the mercy of the plant-fisherman. No one knows how many plants affect fish in this way, but a great many different plants are used in various parts of the world. The Indians of California use the leaves and pounded roots of the soap-plant and also the common turkey mullen. In our southeastern states the seeds or "nuts" of the red buckeye, pounded and broken and thrown into the water stupefy fish and cause them to float helplessly to the surface. The natives of the Canary Islands use the leaves of a euphorbia plant in the same way, while the Negro tribes of Central Africa gather the sweet-scented flowers of the muckanyoko trees and by scattering these in ponds or streams capture vast numbers of fish. In South America, the Indians have a number of "fishing plants." In Guiana, the Caribs use the leaves of the mazetta tree and it is a most interesting and strange sight to see them securing fish in this simple and convenient manner. If the stream is swift, a makeshift dam of rocks or a weir of sticks driven into the bottom is first made in order to partly cheek the current and to form a fairly quiet area where the fish are to be taken. But if the spot selected is a sluggish stream or creek or a tranquil pool these preparations are not necessary. Gathering a few handfuls of the mazetta leaves, the Indian bruises them between two stones or pieces of hard wood and tosses the bruised leaves into the water a few yards above the spot where he expects to get his fish.
The result seems almost magical. Within a few moments fish appear upon the surface. Some splash and struggle, others rush here and there and others jump clear of the water. I have frequently seen a fifty-pound "lukanani" or salmon leap several feet into the air as it felt the effects of the crushed leaves. But very quickly the struggles of the fish cease; they give a few spasmodic flaps of their tails and float motionless, unconscious, but with gills opening and closing on the surface of the water. Leaping into the stream or pool, or by means of a net if the water is deep, the Indians gather up the helpless fish, tossing back any that do not suit them or those they deem too small. It is not unusual for the Indians to secure a bushel of fine fish in a few minutes, but unlike white "sportsmen" the Indians never kill or take more game or fish than they require, and scores of the fish are left undisturbed. They do not float long, but presently they begin to revive. For a few moments they swim about in a most ludicrous, erratic, and drunken manner, turning first on one side then the other, heading first one way then another, until having fully regained their senses they disappear beneath the surface none the worse for their temporary loss of consciousness. When we stop to consider that there are many plants which will render human beings insensible to pain or will cause them to lose all consciousness for hours at a time, it is not so remarkable that other plants should have a similar effect upon fish. Perhaps somewhere there are certain plants which will act as anaesthetics for every class of animals, and the time may come when big game will be hunted with
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plants instead of with high-powered rifles. Even as it is, plants play a very important part in trapping animals, for every experienced and successful trapper uses some lure or scent to attract animals to his traps, and almost invariably this is composed largely of plants. We all know how cats are attracted by catnip and forget everything else once they are reveling in a clump of this common medicinal weed. Many of the larger cats, such as lions. tigers, leopards, and jaguars are affected in the same way by lavender, while bears, raccoons, and other creatures forget all caution and are irresistibly attracted by the odor of musk or rhodium. One famous grizzly bear hunter tells a story of a big bear entering his camp and awakening the trapper by licking his feet which had become scented from the "lure" he had rubbed on his boots in order to form a trail of the musk and rhodium to his traps. The same trapper, who was employed by the authorities to destroy predacious animals such as wolves, pumas, wild cats and coyotes, declares that no lynx, bob cat or puma can resist the scent of oil of catnip and that traps treated with the oil, especially if combined with decaying meat, will invariably catch these animals. These plants- catnip, lavender, musk, rhodium-are far more efficacious than any music when it comes to charming the "savage breast," while oil of bergamot will tame the wildest bird. Few persons realize the almost magic effect which bergamot has upon birds. If you have a canary or other bird who is wild or nervous and flutters and beats itself against the bars of its cage in fright when you approach too closely, just try rubbing a little oil of bergamot upon the bird's bill about its nostrils. The bird may
struggle in your hand for a few moments, but it will soon calm down, and after a few applications it will become so tame that it may be petted and handled and will readily take food from your hand or perch upon your finger. Even the insects may be charmed by certain plants. If you rub your hands with anise you may handle honeybees with impunity and with no danger of being stung, and even the most savage hornets become quite peaceful if their nests are sprayed with anise-seed oil. Every country boy knows what is liable to happen if he starts to dig out a bumblebees' nest, but I have repeatedly excavated these bees' burrows without the owners showing any anger or resentment merely by a liberal use of anise. On the other hand certain plants, or rather their Castor-oil bean plant (1/4)
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odors or oils, are so distasteful to insects that they keep as far away as possible. Every one knows that citronella is a great help in keeping mosquitoes at a distance. In India the "mosquito bean" is used for the same purpose, and in the American tropics the natives grow castor-oil bean plants about their houses, and hang leaves of the plant in their homes to keep off the mosquitoes. Another insect pest of the tropics and of our southern states is the red-bug or "coloradita" as the Latin-Americans call the creature which is known as the "jigger" in our southern states. Scientifically speaking, the red-bug is not an insect but a mite closely related to the spiders, but its proper place in the animal kingdom is of little interest to any one who is afflicted with the pests. Kerosene. sulphur, formaline, carbolated vaseline and many other substances aid in keeping the mites from burrowing into one's skin and causing an intolerable itching. But none of these remedies or preventives are as efficacious as crab oil, which is not made from crabs as many people suppose, but is extracted from the seeds of the West Indian crab-tree. Another member of the spider or mite family which is a terrible pest in the tropics and the South, as well as in some sections of the North, is the wood-tick or cattle-tick. Immune as are these pests to nearly all ordinary remedies, they cannot abide the odor of the common Osage orange, and a liberal use of the juice of the fruits rubbed on one's skin will afford greater protection from ticks than anything else known. But how about fleas? you may ask. Is there any plant which will keep these pests at a distance? Certainly there is,
although to many persons the "cure may seem worse than the disease," figuratively speaking, for the plant which causes fleas to flee is the common onion. Camphor, as every one knows, acts as a preventive of clothes moths, although it has largely been supplanted by various chemicals, and camphor is the gum of a tree. In the old days of sailing ships, chests of camphor wood were in great demand for storing woolen garments and furs which were safeguarded from moths and buffalo beetles by the odor of the wood. Nowadays camphor-wood chests are rarely seen, but chests of red cedar or "juniper" are widely used for the same purpose and serve just as well for the destructive insects find the aromatic and to our nostrils pleasing, odor of red cedar most obnoxious to them. Every gardener and the majority of housewives are familiar with the Persian insect powder which not only drives off but destroys plant lice, mites, larvae, roaches, and other insect pests and vermin. But how many know that this yellowish pungent powder is nothing more than the dried and pulverized flowers of a plant? In many a garden this pyrethrum plant is grown for its attractive blossoms which resemble single chrysanthemums to which it is closely related . Taming wild animals and birds, luring savage beasts to their doom, stupefying fish, driving off or destroying insect pests by means of plants are only a few of the strange uses of strange plants. Sometimes, however, the plant used for some strange purpose may not be strange itself, while in other cases some very strange plant may be put to some ordinary
everyday use. Such is the yaretta. a very strange plant indeed. Found only in the bleak, cold Andean regions of South America where there are no trees and practically no other forms of plant life other than cacti, dry harsh grasses, lichens and mosses, the yaretta is a conspicuous feature of the landscape, although a person unfamiliar with it might never recognize it as a plant. Its dull, dirty grayish-white color and massive dome shaped form give it the appearance of a weathered brain coral, or when seen at a distance, a clump of the strange plants might easily be mistaken for a flock of sheep. During the greater part of the year it has neither leaves nor blossoms and appears merely a dry lifeless mass with crinkled or wrinkled surface resting singly or in large clusters upon the bare sand and rocks and varying from a few inches to several feet in diameter. But at certain seasons of the year small yellow flowers cover the surface of the odd growths although no sign of a leaf appears. Perhaps the strangest feature of the yaretta plant is the fact that it is a member of the celery family. Although it is absolutely inedible, even in its youngest stages, it is far more useful to the Andean Indians than celery is to us, for it is most excellent fuel and burns readily with an intense steady heat and practically no smoke and little flame. No plant anywhere on earth is better adapted to its environment than is the yaretta. Growing where there is practically no soil from which to draw sustenance and water, the plant is almost rootless and in place of roots has developed a lichen like base that adheres tightly to the rocks. Constantly bathed in the mist of
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drifting clouds, it has acquired a sponge like surface to absorb the necessary moisture from the air. Exposed to bitter cold winds and howling blizzards which would destroy branches and leaves, the yaretta has abandoned these accessories and is all trunk, as one might say. Its rounded domelike form offers the least possible resistance to gales and the greatest possible area of surface to sunshine and air, while its tough woody texture safeguard it from the weight of deep Andean snows and the foraging llamas and alpacas. Only to the hardy Andean Indians is the plant of any use or value, and it would seem as if Mother Nature had created the plant especially and solely for the Indians' benefit, to provide them with a fuel in this otherwise fuelless land of thin cold air miles above the sea. We all know that many plants contain combustible oils or gums, such as pitch, resin, turpentine, and the like. Some of these emit most agreeable odors when burning and are used as incense in churches and temples as well as in our own homes. Among these incense plants is the sandalwood tree, the gum elemi, and the copal. Others, such as resin, pitch, and many gums burn with brilliant flames and dense clouds of sooty smoke and are often used for making torches and flares. But there is one plant, the Mai Yans tree of Siam which provides the natives with illuminating oil for use in their lamps. In order to secure this vegetable petroleum the natives burn holes in the trees. Sap oozes from the wounds and seeps into the cavities where it accumulates ready to be gathered and used without further preparation. So widely used is this strange illuminating oil that it is practically impossible
to find a Mai Yang tree that has not been tapped by dozens of these miniature oil wells. In other lands the natives find a very different use for certain kinds of trees and transform them into living water-towers. Many tropical trees, such as the ceibas or silk-cotton trees, the baobabs, the tefeldi trees and others, have few branches and short, immensely stout trunks. The wood of the interior is soft, pithy and worthless, but is surrounded with a thin shell of hard wood and bark. Very often these huge trees are hollow, the pithy interior having decayed or been destroyed by insects, yet the trees continue to grow and thrive, apparently none the worse for having lost the greater part of their substance. Some bright and observant savage may have noticed this and immediately conceived the idea of taking advantage of it to benefit himself and his fellow tribesmen. On the other hand some thirsty native may have discovered that a hollow tefeldi tree contained rain water which was drinkable, and realized the neglected possibilities of the big tree near his hut or village. At all events the natives of Africa and other lands make good use of the obese trees by hollowing out the trunks and transforming them into living tanks for storing water which remains sweet cool, and pure indefinitely. Strange as are many of the purposes for which plants are used by man there is no stranger use than that of tobacco. It is also a strange and interesting fact that when we say "tobacco" we are unwittingly speaking of the pipe in which the plant is smoked and not of the plant itself. When the Spaniards first saw Indians smoking tobacco in the West Indies and asked the natives the name of the strange plant,
the Indians misunderstood, and thinking the white men wished to learn their name for the pipe, they replied "toba-go." So tobago the plant was called by the Spaniards and in the corrupted form tobacco it became known to all English-speaking people. How or why the Indians first discovered the use of tobacco or acquired the habit is as great a mystery as how they learned to transform poisonous manioc to nutritious food, how they discovered that the fermented seed-pod of an orchid developed a delicious flavor or how they learned how to prepare cacao beans to afford a most nutritious beverage. Tobacco in its natural state and merely dried is a mighty poor material to smoke. In fact one might as well smoke turnip, cabbage, or almost any other dried leaves as far as flavor or enjoyment goes. In order to bring out the flavor and aroma of tobacco, the leaves must undergo a long, complicated and delicate process of drying, fermentation, and curing. Even the finest of tobaccos are worthless unless properly prepared, and the treatment varies greatly, depending upon whether the tobacco is to be used for cigars, cigarettes, for pipe smoking, for snuff, or for chewing. Yet somehow, by some means, the Indians had discovered how to prepare tobacco for all of these uses ages before the first white men arrived in America, for cigars, cigarettes, and pipes were all in use by the Indians of North, South and Central America and many used snuff or chewed tobacco. Yet tobacco was not as universally used by our northern tribes as is generally supposed. The majority of
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the tribes who dwelt in what is now the United States regarded tobacco as semi-sacred and used it mainly for ceremonial purposes. Moreover, in the northern districts, such as New England and the districts about the Great Lakes and on the plains, tobacco was very scarce and valuable. A certain amount was grown in the rich valleys of New England, but the greater portion was brought from the southern districts and was acquired by trade and hence the supply was very limited. But our northern Indians did not go smokeless because of this. From time immemorial they had smoked sweet fern, the inner bark of red willow, the silky cornel and other plants. Moreover, they had learned how to mix or blend some or all of these, together with bear berries and sumac berries to produce a very good substitute for tobacco. This mixture was the "kinnikinnick" of the Algonquin races, who as a rule mixed a certain amount of tobacco with the other plants. Neither were all Indians tobacco addicts. Many never used tobacco in any form, and it is doubtful if any Indian ever acquired the habit to the extent of white men. But by vastly improving the Indians' methods of preparing tobacco, and by raising superior varieties of the plants, white men made the use of tobacco far more enjoyable and pleasant. Many persons think that smoking was invented by our Indians and that the habit spread from America to every quarter of the globe. But ages before America's existence was suspected by Europeans, men smoked plant products. Among these was opium which as every one knows is obtained from the sap of the Oriental or white poppy. But unlike tobacco, which is
smoked for its pleasant flavor and as a mild stimulant or sedative-depending upon the smoker---or as a ceremony, opium is smoked because of its narcotic properties which produce a stupor and strange dreams or visions. Another plant that is smoked for a somewhat similar reason is the true hemp plant of India and other parts of the Orient. It is strange indeed that a plant which is the source of one of our most valuable and widely used fibers should also be one of the most injurious and mind-destroying of drugs. To be sure, the hemp plant that is cultivated for its tough, strong fibers is not the identical plant employed in making hashish, bhang, and ganja, smoked by the people of the East Indies. But the latter plant is merely a variety of the former which may be used as a substitute if the other is not available. Hashish, which is perhaps the most widely smoked of these hemp drugs, is prepared from the acrid, resinous gum of the hemp seeds and tops, while bhang and ganja are made from the dried leaves and seed-capsules and are both smoked and chewed. Unlike opium, hashish or bhang do not produce unconsciousness, but result in a peculiar hypnotic state in which the user is conscious, but has the sensation of being in another sphere and life. Sounds, colors, and light are exaggerated and distorted, and glorious visions of riches and everything desirable fill the addict's brain. Many persons confuse this Oriental hemp with the native American weed known as "Indian hemp." The name does not refer to India but to our Indians, not because our North American tribesmen smoked the plant, but because they used its fibrous bark for bow
strings and other purposes and employed its medicinal root as a cathartic and emetic. It is a very different plant from the hemp of India, and is not even a true hemp for that matter. The true hemp of the Orient is a member of the mulberry family and is known to botanists as Cannabis sativa, the variety Indica being the source of "hashish." The narcotic derived from it is also known as Cannabis indica. The native American "Indian hemp" belongs to another family of plants, its botanical name being Apocynum cannabinum. Unfortunately the term marijuana is now applied to both the drug-producing introduced Oriental hemp and the harmless native "Indian hemp." Much has been said and written about this common weed. Greatly exaggerated statements have been made as to its horrible effects upon those who smoke it, and stringent means have been taken to put an end to its use and to exterminate the plant itself. Worthy as the cause may be, it is a hopeless task to accomplish either the one or the other. We might just as well attempt to exterminate the white daisy, the wild carrot, the ragweed, the dandelion or the witch-grass, for the plant grows anywhere and everywhere. Vacant lots in the cities, rubbish dumps, wayside fields, even neglected back yards are all equally acceptable to this vagabond plant, and wherever it grows it may be gathered and smoked. Yet despite its abundance and the fact that this Indian hemp plant has been used to some extent for untold centuries, the habit of smoking it has never become very widespread or general. Partly this is due to the fact that comparatively few persons recognize the weed when they see it, but another reason that it
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has never become popular is because it does not have a pleasant or agreeable flavor and, in the case of many persons, it has less effect than tobacco by itself. Far be it from me to argue in favor of the marijuana smokers or the plant. But I have dwelt among people who were habitual smokers of the weed and I cannot truthfully say that I could see that they suffered any ill effects from it. In the Canal Zone very elaborate and careful tests were made to determine the truth of the matter, and soldiers who used it and those who did not were studied, queried and psychoanalyzed. The conclusion reached was about what might have been expected. Some men suffered terribly when deprived of it, others felt no desire for it if provided with tobacco. Certain individuals admitted they got a "kick" out of it while others declared it did not affect them in the least. In other words the net result was to prove the truth of the old saying that "what is one man's food is another man's poison." The real truth of the matter is that our native weed known as "Indian 'hemp" has not only been confused with the hemp plant of India in so far as its injurious effects are concerned, but in many cases the effects of true hemp have been attributed to, Apocynum, owing to the fact that in many localities the true hemp plants have become naturalized and grow wild. This is not surprising, for at one time large areas of land in the United States were devoted to hemp cultivation, and the seeds from abandoned fields have been carried here and there. However, irrespective of the seriousness of the effects of hemp smoking, it is unquestionably a form of
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drug habit, and many persons, especially boys and girls, have most unfortunately become addicts. Even if it is not as injurious a habit as smoking opium or hashish, it tends to lessen the will power, to deaden the sensibilities, both mental and physical, and to induce a laxity in morality. Hence it should be stamped out. The great problem is to do so. Whether or not the tobacco habit is injurious is a mooted question. Those who decry the use of tobacco would have us believe that it is responsible for nearly every ill that afflicts the human race, and that smoking is the most direct and certain road to perdition. But unfortunately for these extremists, statistics and incontrovertible facts prove that many inveterate smokers and tobacco chewers live as long and often even longer than those who have never smoked or chewed, and countless habitual users of tobacco are almost abnormally healthy. Many righteous and goodly men, even priests and ministers of the Gospel, are tobacco addicts, while many of the most despicable scoundrels and hardened criminals have never smoked or chewed. There is no question that tobacco is a stimulant and a narcotic, but so are many other plants which we use daily, such as coffee, tea, cocoa, and chocolate. Probably the truth is that like many another plant, tobacco also is "one man's food and another's poison," for while some men are made deathly ill by the mere odor of tobacco smoke others smoke or chew or take snuff constantly with no ill results, morally, mentally, or physically. It would seem as if there were plenty of other matters of more importance than tobacco to keep reformers
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busy, especially as nothing they can say or do will ever decrease the consumption of the plant. And even the most rabid and fanatical anti-tobacco apostle must admit that the "sinful" habit acquired from the Indians has been of inestimable benefit to the world at large. Hundreds of thousands of men and women earn a livelihood from the tobacco industry. Millions of acres of land are devoted to the cultivation of this strange American plant, and billions of dollars are put into circulation and enrich our country because people will smoke and chew tobacco. Think what a calamity it would be if every one stopped using tobacco! Not only would it mean ruin and bankruptcy to countless people in our own land, but to many in practically every country on earth, for the broad-leaved plant first cultivated and used by the American Indians is now one of the most important crops of all the continents and many of the islands of the world.
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Chapter XV
PLANT TRAVELERS
Every one who has taken a walk in the country in autumn or late summer knows beggar's-ticks, those variously shaped and colored seeds that stick so tenaciously to our garments. Some are little spheres covered with spines, others are long and narrow, others almost rectangular, others oval, for beggar's-ticks or beggar's-lice are the seeds of a great many different plants. One of the commonest is the bur-mariqold, while the round seeds of the cockle-bur, the two-tined black devil's anchors, and the seeds of the green-bur are all well known nuisances. So also are the seed-heads of the burdock with their countless fish-hooklike spines, while many of the aster and goldenrod plants contribute their share of tiny barbed seeds covered with soft fluff which stick to one's clothing and give one the appearance of having been showered with feather down. Some have such stiff, sharp spines that they puncture one's skin and cause painful wounds. Such are the spherical seeds of the cockle or bur-grass so abundant in our southern states. Once the tiny spines of such seeds become embedded in the skin it is very difficult to remove them for they are covered with minute barbs like those on a fish-spear. Lodging in the skin they cause irritation and itching and the more the spot is rubbed or scratched the deeper
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they penetrate, often causing serious sores or ulcers or even necessitating a surgical operation in order to remove them. In such cases the seeds overdo their parts and gain nothing, for all of these various sticktight seeds are habitual hitchhikers and their purpose is to travel from place to place at some one's else expense, until the obliging carrier wearies of their company and brushes or scrapes them off and leaves them to shift for themselves. This is precisely what Nature intended, for the seeds, dislodged far from their parent plants, take root and grow and produce more hitchhiking seeds to travel and spread their kind still farther. When we stop to consider the matter, it seems strange indeed that while we think of plants, and especially trees, as stationary fixed objects, they are among the greatest of travelers. In fact many plants have traveled completely around the earth and from the Arctic to the Antarctic regions. Moreover, they journey hither and yon by much the same means of transportation as those used by human beings. In addition to the plant hitch-hikers there are plant aeroplanes, plant autogiros, plant parachutes, plant boats, and plant busses. There are also plants that creep and plants that walk, but like human pedestrians these seldom travel very far from home and move so slowly that they are left far behind by their fellows who avail themselves of mechanical means of transportation. A very large proportion of plant travelers are air minded, and on any autumn day we may see countless plant aircraft on the move. As the pods of the milkweeds ripen they split open, releasing the scores of
1. Dandelion seeds (about 1/2) 2. Thistle seeds (about 1/2) 3. Basswood seed (about 1/3) 4. Maple seeds (about 1/3) 5. Elm seed (about 1/2) 6. Milkweed (about 1/6) 6A. Milkweed pod and seeds (about1/3) 7. Jewel-weed or Touch-me-not (about 1/4)
8. Sand-box seed capsule (about 1/3) 9. Walking fern (about 1/3) 10. Cockle-bur (about 1/2). 11. Teasel bur (about 1/3) 12. Chestnut bur (about 1/3) 13. Grapple plant seed (about 1/2) 14. Lizard tree (about 1/30) 15. Air-cabbage (about 1/12)
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aircraft stored within the plants' hangars. Quickly they emerge, their silken wings folded back along their sleek brown fuselages, and instantly, as they come forth, their wings spring open and catching the faintest breath of air they go sailing off to unknown destinations. Other autumnal aerial travelers are the tiny fluff-covered seeds of asters, the shimmering gossamer winged aircraft of the thistles, and the breeze-borne seeds of the wild clematis or virgin's bower with their oddly twisted feathery wings. We may see the dandelion's gliders also, although the great majority of these have winged away from their parent plants during the summer, for the dandelions, as well as a number of the thistles and other plants, do not wait for the approach of frosty weather before sending their offspring on their cruises. But
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earliest of all are the poplar and willow trees whose fluff-covered seeds have filled the air and covered the earth and have clung to every object where they fell before spring merged into summer. Although we consider most of these silken or feathery-vinged seeds as nuisances, for mainly they are the seeds of weeds, yet there are some which are of immense importance and value to man. The thick, silky, brownish fiber that covers the seeds of the ceiba
Cotton (1/4)
trees and transforms them into plant balloons is used for a number of commercial purposes (see Chapter X), but the most important and valuable of all flying seeds are those of a yellow-flowered hibiscus which we know as cotton. I wonder how many persons realize that the soft white fiber which is one of the most valuable and essential of crops was designed by Nature to float and carry the seeds through the air and thus spread the plants far and wide. But Ill wager there are even fewer persons who
know that the okra or gumbo we use as a vegetable or in our soups is the seed-pod of a plant closely related to the cotton, and that the gelatinous slippery material surrounding the immature seeds would become silken fibers to bear the seeds on their travels if the pods were left to ripen on the plants. A very different type of aircraft carry the seeds of many trees on their journeys. Those of the basswood or linden with their broad blades may be likened to parachutes, for the rudderlike fins are too small to carry the seeds any great distance and merely prevent them from dropping swiftly and directly to earth beneath the parent branches. On the other hand the elm trees, maples, ash, and tulip trees believe in safety first with distance a second consideration, and have seeds with blades that serve as horizontal propellers and transform them to miniature autogiros. A great number of plants whose seeds travel the greatest distances rely upon common carriers to transport them for hundreds or even thousands of miles from their original homes. Some of these pay for their transportation by covering their seeds with flesh or pulp. This provides food for birds and serves as tickets for the seeds which the feathered travelers carry with them as they move from place to place and drop the seeds here and there. Some of these seeds, such as the "pits" of cherries, haws, and other fruits, are so hardshelled that they remain unaffected by the birds' digestive apparatus, and are dropped with their excrement. Birds, however, are not the only creatures who carry seeds in this manner. In the tropics, the fruit-eating
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bats are among the greatest of seed-spreaders, while the big bats known as flying foxes of the East Indies provide man with the most valuable of all coffees. These giant bats feed on the coffee berries during the night and spend the day hanging in vast numbers in their roosts. In these places the indigestible coffee beans accumulate with the bats' guano. These beans when gathered and cleansed, are the source of the highly esteemed and costly Old Government Java coffee whose superior flavor is the result of some chemical effect of the bats' digestive fluids. Many fruit- and berry-bearing plants trust largely to luck for the transportation of their seeds. As the birds dine on the sticky fruits some of the pulp filled with the seeds adheres to the birds' beaks or even to their feet, and is dropped here and there as the birds wipe their bills against branches and twigs or the pulp dries and drops off. We might think that such seeds would not be carried long distances, but birds fly swiftly and far and may travel thousands of miles in a few days. Moreover, before starting on a long flight, especially during migrations, they gorge themselves in preparation, and the seeds that adhere to their beaks when they eat their last meal before taking off may remain there until the feathered carriers reach their destinations. Of course, there are many seeds carried in this manner which will not sprout or grow in the spots where they fall. It is lucky for us that this is so, for if all the northern seeds carried south by birds should take root in tropical lands, and all seeds that the birds bring from the tropics should thrive in the north, there would be little chance of raising our crops.
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It is also fortunate that while many of our plants will thrive in warm climates, few tropical plants will grow in our land and will survive our winters. No one can say with certainty how far seeds may travel by the bird airways, but tiny seeds from waterplants of the Argentine have been found in the mud adhering to the feet of wading birds killed in our northern states. Many plants prefer land travel to air travel, and some provide their seeds with vehicles that go rolling across the country like plant-trucks or buses. One of the commonest of these is the tumbleweed so abundant on plains and prairies, especially in our western states. When the seeds are ripe the tumbleweed folds itself into a ball and, releasing the hold of its roots, it goes rolling across the land at the whim of the winds, dropping its seeds along its route.
Cocoanut in husk
Other plants send their seeds cruising on the surface of lakes, ponds, rivers, or even on the ocean. Nature has enclosed these seeds in waterproof buoyant coverings which serve as rafts or boats, and some even have little wings which serve as sails to catch the slightest breeze. Among these seed-boats is the cocoanut. Enclosed within
its thick fibrous husk with its waterproof and watertight skin, these palm-seeds are perfectly designed for long ocean voyages. Falling from the trees that rear their fronds above the tropical shores the nuts are carried afar by the wind and waves until, washed upon some coral reef or island beach or stranded on some low-lying land, the nuts sprout. From the "eyes" in the end of the hard shell ropelike roots burrow into the sand and a leaf-bud shoots upward and rapidly unfolds. The cocoanut's travels are at end and from the rotting hull a graceful palm-tree comes into being. Still another strange method of scattering seeds is that of the air-cabbage, an air-plant of the West Indian forests. It is very appropriately named, for it looks very much like an everyday cabbage growing upon the limb of a tree. But instead of having a firm dense "head" the center of the air-cabbage is hollow, the leaf-bases forming a little cup which in due time is filled with seeds. How on earth can those seeds ever reach the ground? you wonder. Will they be carried away by some bird or other creature? No, indeed. The air-cabbage doesn't require the help of any outsider to scatter its seeds. It can take care of that important matter all by itself, and it does so in a truly wonderful way. The roots of the plant are small and weak and as the seeds mature the plant's leaves swell and spread, until it becomes top heavy. Then at the first strong breeze or heavy shower it capsizes and out tumble the seeds which drop to the earth or find lodgment on other branches where they sprout and grow. An even stranger means of sowing seeds is to shoot
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them from a plant-gun. Some of our commonest plants employ this method. Among these are the touch-me-nots or jewel-weeds, the wood sorrels, the pansies and the violets. All of these familiar plants have seed-pods which burst open with a little pop and throw the enclosed seeds for some distance. But the "big bertha" of plant artillery is a tree known as the sand-box which is
Milkwort (1/2)
common in tropical America. The fruit or seed-capsules of these trees are circular, three or four inches in diameter and about an inch in thickness, with deeply scalloped edges. When these handsome pods ripen they explode with a report like that of a giant fire-cracker and shoot the flat seeds in every direction like so much shrapnel. During the season when the sand-box seeds
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are ripening a constant fusillade may be heard and the seeds fall like hail. These plant-projectiles have considerable force and I have known a seed-capsule within a cigar-box to blow the sides apart when it exploded. In the West Indies the natives say that every time a sand-box pod explodes it announces a lizards' wedding. If so the reptiles must have a mania for getting married. The great majority of plants trust in luck to have their seeds lodge in favorable spots in which to grow, and produce such vast numbers of seeds that some are almost certain to do so. But the pretty little milkworts or wild bachelor's buttons of our southern states take a most unusual precaution to insure the perpetuation and spread of their family. At the summits of their stalks they display showy orange or yellow flowers which are conspicuous enough to attract insects from far and near. But the milkwort believes in preparedness and produces a second set of very different flowers. If all goes well and the gaudy blossoms are fertilized by insects, the spare flowers never develop beyond the bud stage. They have no petals, no nectaries and even the pistils are rudimentary. But if the showy blooms fail to lure insects, the reserve flowers mature and produce seeds by a strange method of self-fertilization. Preparedness is the watchword with a great many plants. Some, such as the houseleeks and life-leaf plants produce seeds, and in addition have thick fleshy leaves capable of producing new plants. If one of these leaves drops off and falls to the ground tiny roots will appear on the lower surface, a little shoot will spring from the
upper surface and a new plant will soon take the place of the vagrant leaf. Even when a leaf is pinned to a board or any other object it will sprout and grow quite as well as when resting on the ground.
Houseleek (1/2)
Other plants spread by means of running roots as well as by seeds, and send up new plants as they burrow along just beneath the surface of the earth, while some plants walk or stride along. One of these is the walking fern which is fairly common on mountainsides and other rocky spots in our eastern states. You might not recognize this plant as a fern, for its leaves, instead of being plume like or feathery, have only a
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few leaflets, with the tip of the leaf extending in a slender ribbon. As the leaf grows, this fingerlike central portion bends towards the earth and taking root produces a new plant. This in turn produces leaves that creep onward and produce still more plants which in turn progress by this strange series of leaf-strides. Many plants produce seeds which are true amphibians, while others provide their seeds with life preservers. The bladder-nut seeds have three water-tight compartments like those of a modern steamship, so that in case the flying seeds fall into the water they will float safely until washed or blown ashore. The pods of the locust and acacia trees, as well as those of many other plants, have seeds enclosed in water-tight compartments, while the seeds of the dock and various other common plants are provided with a buoyant covering that acts as a life preserver if the seeds accidentally fall into the water. Man may think he invented corkfilled life preservers, but the common dock has seeds surrounded with a layer of cork. Every one knows how hopeless it is to attempt to walk across mud, and in the south of France the shepherds solve the problem by wearing stilts. But long before man appeared on earth certain plants had taken to stilts to travel over the mud where they grow. These are the mangrove and black-jack trees of the tropics and warm countries where they form dense jungles in the shallow water of river mouths and swamps and along muddy shores. They are strange-looking trees, for instead of having trunks that grow directly from the mud their trunks end some distance above the surface of the water and are supported by numerous
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tough, stiff roots that serve as stilts. These anchor the trees securely and yet leave open spaces through which the waves may surge and wash without meeting the resistance of large trunks. But even more wonderful than this means of self-protection is the
Mangrove tree
manner in which these trees spread. With no solid ground beneath them the seeds would have small chances if they dropped from the branches into the water. Nature, however, has taken good care of this and has overcome the difficulty in a most unique way. Instead of dropping off when ripe, the mangrove seeds remain
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attached to the branches until they have sprouted and have produced roots. Then when they fall, the roots sink to the muddy bottom of the swamp or lagoon and at once anchor the young plants firmly. Perhaps you wonder why these plants do not drown if their roots are always under water. Old Mother Nature attended to that detail too. If you should examine the curved, crooked and arched root-girders that support the trees above water you would find a great number of little filaments which you might easily mistake for tiny roots or tendrils, but these are really breathing devices consisting of countless minute tubes leading to the underwater roots and supplying them with the essential air. Finally these truly wonderful trees produce roots from their branches, and these growing downward, anchor themselves to the mud and become new trees. By means of these aerial roots and their seeds the mangroves spread rapidly in every direction and form dense, almost impenetrable jungles. This habit makes them most useful plants, for silt and rubbish, dead leaves and twigs, become lodged against the countless sprawling roots and form solid land. Tens of thousands of acres of land are yearly added to the coast lines of Florida and other shores where the mangroves grow, and as the new land forms the mud-loving trees go marching seaward supported on their root-stilts and constantly leaving more land behind them. Even when dead the mangroves serve a useful purpose, for their bark is one of the best of all tan barks and hundreds of tons are used for transforming hides to leather to provide us with shoes, straps, suit-cases, and other articles.
Many species of grass are land-builders and win land from the sea. The marram grass or sand-reed has been widely used to protect shores from erosion by the sea or the waters of large lakes, and to form new land. Not only do the roots grow to great depth anchoring the grass firmly to solid ground beneath the shifting sands, but they also send out countless small roots which mat and bind the sand together. In addition to this, the roots suck up immense quantities of water, and being continually damp cause the grains of sand to adhere to them.
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Chapter XVI PLANT PUBLIC ENEMIES
JUST what do we mean when we speak of a weed? That little four-letter word is most difficult to define. In fact it is capable of several definitions, not one of which is strictly correct or even wholly explanatory. We might say that a weed is a wild plant that is a nuisance. But there are many weeds that are cultivated plants, just as there are many wild plants that are not nuisances. Neither would we be explicit if we should state that weeds are plants that grow where they are not wanted or plants that interfere with the cultivation of desirable plants. A great many weeds, as we call them, grow on vacant lots, rubbish piles, and similar unsightly places and hence should be desirable, while fully as many rarely or never interfere with cultivation. If we state that weeds are plants which are neither useful nor ornamental we would be wrong, for a great number of our worst weeds are either useful or ornamental or both, as for example the black-eyed Susans, the white or ox-eyed daisies, the goldenrods and asters, jimson-weed and tansy yarrow, and chicory and many other plants. Moreover, plants which are considered bad weeds in one locality or in one country may be regarded as most desirable and valuable plants in another place. We cultivate the scarlet salvia, the portulacca, the poppy and various other flowering plants
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and think them most desirable, yet in their native lands these plants are looked upon as obnoxious weeds.
On the other hand plants which we consider bad weeds, such as the dandelion, mullen, wild asters, goldenrod, white daisies and others are highly prized as cultivated plants in other countries. In fact the question, "What is a weed?" is about as difficult to answer as the senseless query, "How old was Ann?'' But there are certain plants which are universally considered weeds, real public enemies of the plant population. Among them there are gangsters, racketeers, hijackers, robbers, thugs, murderers, kidnappers, and prototypes of practically every class of human criminals. And like human scoundrels and outlaws these plant rascals are constantly quarreling and fighting among themselves. There is no more honor among plant thieves than among human thieves, despite the old adage to the contrary. They are tough guys, too, and can certainly "take it," for harsh treatment and injuries that would kill most plants leave these plant public enemies apparently unharmed and quite able to carry on their nefarious careers. Even when we think we have killed them they often come to life, recover, and are soon back at their old tricks. The death and destruction of their fellows does not deter them in the least and is as ineffective in results as the imprisonment or execution of human criminals. Only by ruthlessly slaughtering them, and by destroying their offspring, can we prevent them from gaining the upper hand and wiping out the desirable and law-abiding members of the plant community.
This, however, is as difficult an undertaking as to apprehend and eliminate any other criminal. Some are brazen villains and make no attempt to conceal their identity. They are like the old "bad men" of the wild and woolly West and trust to their offensive and defensive weapons for safety. Among these are the
Nettle (1/2)
thistles with their armament of sharp spines, the stinging nettles, the cat-briars with their thorns, the sneezeweed, the nightshades and jimson-weed with their poison gases, the cockle-burs with their prickly irritating seed-cases and many others. On the other hand some plant outlaws wear disguises and pretend to be something else hoping to escape detection in this manner. Others sneak about ever striving to make themselves
inconspicuous while carrying on their nefarious activities. Such

are the root-rot fungoid plants, the mildews and molds, the various rusts and smuts. Still others follow the custom of the more intelligent, and also the more dangerous, human criminals who wear stylish, expensive clothing, drive costly cars, and to use a slang expression "put on a front," hoping that because of their appearance they will be mistaken for honest well-to-do citizens. The bluff works out as well in the plant world as among human beings and many a bad weed "gets by " and is spared because of its attractive appearance or beautiful flowers. Among these weeds who trust for safety to their "glad rags" are the daisies and asters, the goldenrods and wild coreopsis, the buttercups and sweet briars, the poppies and many other flowering plants. But by far the greatest number of plant public enemies rely upon being "tough." The common dandelion makes no attempt to hide away or to conceal its identity, but develops a root so long, and penetrating so deeply into the earth, that nine times out of ten when the weed is dug up a portion of the root is left and a new plant soon sprouts from this. The same is true of the mullen, the obnoxious plantain and numerous other weeds. The hawkweed sends runners in every direction just beneath the surface of the earth, and if a fragment of these is left, new plants will spring as if by magic from it. The witch-grass safeguards itself and also spreads by means of surface roots or shoots which creep in every direction, anchoring themselves securely as they travel over the ground, and sending
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up new plants from the joints. We may tear up and destroy vast numbers of these plants, but unless every cruising, creeping stem and every clinging root is eliminated the weeds will soon be as numerous as ever. Some weeds are so "tough" that even a leaf or a bit of the stalk dropped upon the earth will produce a new plant, while others outwit their human enemies by developing seeds which ripen so rapidly and so early in the season that before the plants become conspicuous or threatening their seeds have already been scattered far and wide. Moreover, many of these most insidious weeds produce seeds so similar to those of the desirable plants among which they live that they can only be detected by a skilled botanist using a microscope. And when the agriculturist sows his seeds he unconsciously plants thousands of weed seeds along with the others. A single pound of clover seed has been found to contain fourteen thousand weed seeds representing four different species of plant public enemies. Fortunately for our farmers only a very small portion of seeds germinate and grow, for if all those fourteen thousand weed seeds in a pound of clover seeds should develop into weed plants, the poor farmer would stand small chances of freeing his fields of the plant racketeers. For that matter, even as it is, our hard-working farmers and our gardeners would wage a losing battle against their plant enemies were it not for the assistance of Nature's "G-men" and police. The most efficient of these are the birds, for countless species of birds dine only on seeds and many prefer weeds' seeds to all others. The cheery little American goldfinch is commonly known as "thistle bird" owing to its well-known fondness
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for the seeds of thistles. Yet many farmers kill or drive off these birds merely because they occasionally vary their diet by eating the seeds of carrots, beets, or other cultivated plants. All members of the sparrow and finch families depend upon seeds for a living and prefer weed seeds, while the common Carolina or mourning-doves and the little ground doves of our southern states are most voracious consumers of weed seeds, as are the bob-whites and other quails and many members of the starling family such as the red-winged and rusty blackbirds, the bob-o'-links, the meadow-larks and the cow-buntings. Few farmers or others appreciate the tremendous service rendered by birds in keeping weeds under control. Examinations of the stomach contents of one bob-white revealed 1,700 weed seeds while another had recently swallowed 5,000 seeds of common weeds. The stomachs of a pair of mourning-doves contained 7,500 seeds of sorrel and 9,200 seeds of pigeon grass. When we consider that these were merely the seeds which the birds had swallowed within the space of a few hours, and that many more had been digested, and that there are vast numbers of these birds steadily consuming an equal number of seeds from sunrise until sunset every day, we begin to realize what an incalculable service the seed-eating birds render. Even insects play an important part as weed-destroyers. Many of our commonest caterpillars-the larvae of moths and
butterflies-feed only upon certain noxious weeds. Not only do they devour the leaves, but some species burrow into the stalks and others dwell within the seed-pods and dine on the immature seeds, while still others prefer a diet of the weeds' flowers.
The larvae of many beetles devour the roots and bore into the stems of weeds and weeds only. And the little froghoppers who produce the frothy masses of "spittle" seen on plant-stems in the spring, feed mainly on the sap of various weeds. Moreover, as there are a dozen weeds to every valuable or cultivated plant, even the omnivorous insects that feed on both wild and cultivated plants serve a very valuable purpose by eating the weeds, even if they may be pests in our gardens. Many of these, such as the rickets, certain aphids, and beetles, prefer the weeds, as any one may prove by gathering an equal number of weeds and garden plants and counting the number of insects found in each group. Probably the average farmer or gardener would scoff at the idea of our commonest and worst weeds having a commercial value. But it is a case of ignorance being bliss, for many of these plant outlaws and public enemies are worth as much or even more, pound for pound, than the crops raised with so much care and trouble by the agriculturist. I admit that it does sound preposterous and ridiculous to state that dandelions, witch-grass and other detested weeds have any real monetary value, but such is the case, for many of our commonest weeds possess medicinal qualities and are in constant demand, and when carefully and properly prepared or dried bring high prices, a number of them being worth several dollars a pound. Among the most important and commonest of these valuable weeds are the following:
Yarrow. Used as a tonic and an infusion for indigestion.

American senna. The mature leaves and seeds are dried and an infusion of these is used as a laxative. Boneset. Dried leaves and flowers are made into a tea which is a laxative-tonic when taken cold and is excellent for sore throat and malaria when hot. Pennyroyal. Used as a cure for colic and other bowel troubles. Dittany. A tea made from the leaves is a mild stimulant and relieves fevers. Gumplant. This sunflower of the Middle West is the source of the "Grindelia" of our drug stores and is used as a medicine for affections of the throat, lungs and blood. Jimson-weed. The dried leaves when burned emit a pungent smoke which is one of the few known remedies for asthma. In the drug stores this well-known, abundant, poisonous weed is sold under the scientific name, Stramonium. Burdock. The roots are widely used as a blood purifier. Witch-grass. couch grass. Roots of these noxious weeds are highly esteemed as medicine. Pokeweed. This is the "Phytolacca" of the drug stores and is used as a remedy for skin and blood diseases. Mullen. Both leaves and dried flowers are employed in medicine being used in the treatment of colds, catarrh and nervous affections. Tansy. Sold as "Tanacetum" in the stores it is a well-known medicine. Dandelion. One of the most popular of the old "herbs
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and simples," the dandelion still holds its own as a simple and excellent tonic and blood-purifier. Considering the superabundance of these and other useful weeds, it seems strange indeed that we should be obliged to depend upon other lands to supply the demand. Yet such is the case and each year we import more than 25 tons of burdock, 60 tons of dandelion, 125 tons of witch-grass, 15 tons of tansy, 75 tons of jimson-weed (or Jamestown-weed as it should be called) and many tons of boneset, hoarhound, dittany, pennyroyal, senna, yarrow, and other common weeds. Yet every year our farmers throw away, burn, and otherwise destroy thousands of tons of these same weeds. Surely we cannot blame other nations if they consider Americans a most wasteful lot. Moreover, there are countless weeds which have an industrial value other than for medicinal purposes. Among the most important of these are the plants used as dyes. To be sure, the invention and widespread use of the cheap aniline dyes have played havoc with vegetable dyes, but many of the arts and crafts guilds which have been and are constantly being established throughout the country, use vegetable dyes only. A complete list of the common wild plants and weeds which are employed in dying would fill many pages, but among the commonest which may properly be included among the weeds are the pokeweed which may be used for dying pink, rose, red, or purple. The berries of cahosh, viburnum, and the elders which give blue dyes. The leaves of St.-John's-wort and the roots and stalks of sorrel from which red dyes are made. Wild
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madder is used for dying orange and crimson, while yellow dyes are made from wild sunflowers, goldenrod, yellow-wood, barberry roots, burdock, cockle-burs, dock root, vetch, meadow-rue, nettle flowers, teasels, jewel-weed, and many other weeds. Just as police records prove that the majority of human criminals are aliens or naturalized citizens, so we find the worst and most numerous of our plant enemies are undesirable aliens. It is true that we have an abundance of native American weeds, but the immigrants are the most objectionable and dangerous. They are true hijackers of the plant world and "muscle in" on the native plant-gangsters, force them to take second place, and become the "big shots" of the weed criminals. In their home lands they had many natural enemies to keep them from increasing beyond all bounds, but when they emigrated to the New World they left their foes behind them and hence have a great advantage over the true American weeds who are beset by countless natural enemies who serve to keep them partly under control. One of the most insidious of these undesirable aliens is the wild carrot, or Queen Anne's lace. Like the majority of our foreign weeds, it was a stowaway and entered the country by sneaking past the Customs and the Immigration officials in the form of seeds hiding among those of desirable plants. But once on American soil it spread like magic, relentlessly crowding out every plant that stood in its way, taking possession of fields and pastures, and traveling north, south, east, and west. Many of our states passed laws providing penalties for farmers and others who permitted the
wild carrots to grow on their properties. But the authorities might just as well have tried to penalize the husbandmen for permitting swallows to wing their way across the farmlands. To destroy these weeds was as hopeless an undertaking as to push back the sea or to carry water in a sieve. The weed grew and spread faster than it could be destroyed, and to-day one sees broad fields white with the lacelike flowers of this alien plant criminal, utterly ruined and abandoned, worthless even as pasturage, for the wild carrot is poisonous to cattle. Almost as abundant as the Queen Anne's lace, and one of the first plant-outlaws to stowaway and reach America by stealth is the common white or ox-eye daisy, known in England as the marguerite. In its own borne on the other side of the Atlantic the plant is not much of a nuisance, for it has countless natural enemies who serve as police to keep it under control to a reasonable extent. But it is almost free from insect enemies in our country and has spread far and wide. In a way it is a true paradox, for while it is a bad weed and plays havoc with pastures and fields, it is such a pretty cheery flower that every one loves it. Our summer landscapes would seem dull and bare indeed were it not for the fields of daisies, and if by some miracle this alien weed were completely exterminated it would be a sad loss to the public at large, even if a blessing to the farmers. Another immigrant from Europe is the chicory. But this alien can scarcely be classed among the plant public enemies or criminals, for it is rather a harmless sort of vagabond, a plant-hobo which prefers the open road to fields and gardens. Typically a tramp with its ragged, dust-covered
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leaves,
its
half-starved,
ill-nourished
appearance, the chicory is a happy-go-lucky bum and to offset its unattractive foliage adds a note of beauty to the by-ways with its handsome sky-blue flowers. Moreover, it is one of the useful weeds, for its root is edible and nourishing although it is more familiar as an adulterant of coffee than as food-plant. Chicory, however, is not the only common weed which is edible, although comparatively few persons are aware of the fact. The thick fleshy roots of the common burdock are excellent and are highly esteemed in Japan. Tender young shoots of the milkweeds are fully equal to asparagus. Young shoots of the common nettle are also excellent. Purslane and pigweed greens are as good as spinach and, of course, dandelion greens are famous. The marsh-mariqolds or cowslips are another source of "greens," while the so-called Jerusalem artichokes or sunroots are the tubers of a wild sunflower. The flowers of milkweed, gathered in the early morning when still damp with dew, bruised and boiled, yield a sweet syrup with a fine flavor. The roots of the bull brier are used as a basis for root-beer in many sections of the country. When dried and ground into meal they may be used in combination with cornmeal for hot cakes. The chipped roots of the more southerly china brier or coontie are a favorite article of food among the Indians. Mixed with water they form a red sediment which is strained and dried. This is used like flour and when mixed with warm water and honey it forms a beautiful jelly.
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Many weed-seeds may be used as meal or cereals, one of the best being the seeds of the common pigweed, while the Indians consume quantities of coarse flour made from the seeds of wild oats, squaw-grass, and sand-grass which is the stand-by of the Zunis and is known as "Indian millet." The wild leeks and wild onions, which sometimes become bad weeds, are all edible, as are the bulbs of many other members of the lily family which are weeds in certain sections. The Indian potato or sego lily of our western states is a weed in many places, although in the east it is prized for its handsome flowers and is known as the Mariposa tulip. The bulbs are excellent eating, as are the roots of the wild sego. This is the state flower of Utah and its tubers formed the first diet of the Mormons when they reached the vicinity of Great Salt Lake. The roots, roasted in ashes or steamed, are fine-flavored and nutritious. The same is true of the roots of the wild California hyacinth, while the roots of the camas or quamash are fully equal to potatoes when boiled, roasted or steamed. One of the most abundant weeds of the west is the mesquite which bears beans which are highly nutritious and are used as meal by the Indians, while the goat nut, known also as sheep-nut and jojoba, of California, has nuts which are not only edible but contain an oil which is credited with being a marvelous hair grower, especially for the eyebrows. Then there is the weed known as chocolate root or Indian chocolate which really should be included among the Magic Plants (see Chapter XIII), for the Indians believe that those who cut the root or drink the beverage made from it, are able to converse in whispers with others many miles away.
Even if we do not expect to dine on weeds, and are perfectly satisfied with our more familiar vegetable foods, it is a good plan to bear in mind which weeds and wild plants are edible in case of necessity. A knowledge of edible wild plants has saved many a man from starvation when lost in the woods or on deserts or cast away on some remote island. When John Colter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition escaped from the Blackfeet Indians by whom he had been captured, he would have starved to death had he not known of the Indian bread-root plant which was his only food for more than a week. I have mentioned only a few of the better known and commoner weeds which may be used as food, and there are many others, some of which are widely distributed while others are quite local. In fact a book might be written on the subject of edible wild plants of our country if it were not confined to those which may be classed as weeds or plant-enemies, for our woods, fields, swamps, and prairies are filled with plants which will serve to sustain human life and many of which are fully equal or superior to some of our most popular everyday vegetable foods. As I have already said, nearly all types of criminals are to be found among the army of plant public enemies. There are even kidnappers, and just as some human kidnappers hold their victims for ransom and release them when the ransom has been paid, while others murder their victims, so among the plant kidnappers we find those who eventually allow their victims to depart unharmed, while others destroy them. But in one respect these plant-kidnappers are far less despicable than their human prototypes, for their
lives depend upon kidnapping and were they to reform and abandon their criminal careers their species would soon vanish from the face of the earth. Some kidnap insects in order to force these creatures to pollinate or fertilize the flowers, while others require more animal matter than they can secure from the soil, and having kidnapped an insect they absorb its life-giving chemicals. One of the commonest of plant-kidnappers is the aristolochia vine or Dutchman's pipe so widely used as a shade vine to cover our porches. When a bee or other insect enters the pipe-shaped flower of this vine it little dreams that it is walking into a most wonderfully designed trap and will be doomed to remain a prisoner until the plant sees fit to release him. As the insect crawls down the tubular flower, attracted by the sweet nectar below, he pays no attention to the countless stiff hairs that, bending inward, form no obstruction to his passage. But when, having dined, he prepares to leave, it is a very different matter, for the hairs over which he passed with no trouble now present a barrier of daggerlike points barring his way more effectually than a barbed-wire fence. He may buzz and fume, but there he must remain a prisoner until the pollen has ripened and he has dusted himself thoroughly with the golden powder. Then at last the stiff, sharp hairs wither, and the angry bee goes forth to blunder into another flower and fertilize it with the pollen he has accumulated. Perhaps it seems strange that the bees do not learn by experience to avoid these tricky flowers. But after all, why should they? They may be involuntary captives for a few days, but they are unharmed and there is an
abundance of food in the shape of nectar to be had for the eating. Some of the milkweed plants have a very different method of kidnapping insects in order to hold them until the flowers have been fertilized. These plants seize the insects in their powerful jawlike anthers, but release the creatures unharmed when fertilization is assured. Sometimes plants discriminate and kidnap or imprison, or for that matter arrest, try, condemn and execute, rascally insects which come to rob them. The common catchfly or fire-pink is one of these. Its gorgeous scarlet flowers attract hosts of insects, but it desires only those who will serve to fertilize its blossoms, and to protect these from marauders such as honey loving ants who crawl up plant-stems, the fire-pink covers its flower-stalks with a sticky fly-paperlike compound which holds the ants helpless until they perish. The starry campion, which is another member of the pink family, accomplishes the same results in a different manner. To protect the honey drops within the tubes of its white flowers, this plant spreads a sticky trap on its calyxes and pedicels, and no crawling insect ever succeeds in passing these "no trespass" areas. One of the worst of plant-kidnappers is our old friend,
Jack-in-the-pulpit. Moreover, Master Jack is one of those despicable kidnappers who not only lures his victims into his clutches but relentlessly puts them to death. Examine the interior of one of these woodland flowers and you will find the lining is very smooth and slippery. Any insect that attempts to crawl within the pulpit and sets foot on this precipitous slide is lost, for down it goes to the bottom of the pitfall. Yet other
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insects that come buzzing to the flower spathe of "Jack" have no difficulty in leaving when they choose. At the bottom of any flower of this plant you will find the dead bodies of many of Jack's victims, but not digested as are the bodies of insects captured by the carnivorous pitcher-plants, sundews, and other insect-eaters, for the Jack-in-the-pulpit merely absorbs the chemicals of the decomposing corpses of its victims. Perhaps, in days to come, our friend Jack may become a truly carnivorous plant. Undoubtedly that happened with the true insect catching forms whose ancestors were in all probability quite satisfied with food they obtained from the soil and the air. To-day we may see the same transition taking place in various plants other than the Jack-in-the-pulpit. One of these is the common teazel or gypsy combs which is oftentimes a bad weed but was formerly a useful plant, for its spiny seed-coverings were used for carding wool in the days of hand-looms. The teazel is only beginning to learn to catch or kidnap insects, for you may examine a number of the plants before you come upon a kidnapper. You will recognize it at once, for you will notice that the lower portion of some of the leaves high on the stalk have drawn themselves together to form little tanks filled with water, and the chances are that these little death-pools will contain the dead bodies of numerous insects. Like the Jack-in-the-pulpit, the teazel merely absorbs the juices or chemicals of the insects which are extracted by the water as the bodies decompose. But unlike Master Jack, the teazel cannot claim the latter's excuse for its kidnapping by arguing that it does so to protect its flowers.
It has merely acquired a taste for animal food and in ages to come, its leaves may develop into traps as cleverly designed for capturing insects as are those of the sundew or Venus's fly-trap. Many plants smother or strangle their victims, and very often these murderous criminals of the plant-world are very lovely things and appear innocent and harmless. The goldenrods and asters, the milkweeds, and daisies, the ragweeds, burdocks, and common docks, depend upon smothering their weaker neighbors by shutting off the sunlight and taking possession of the soil. But the bindweed, with its pretty pink flowers, the cat-briers, the spiny wild cucumbers, the wild peas and many other plant-outlaws are stranglers and vicious thugs who murder their victims by twining their ropelike stems about stalks and leaves. Even worse than these, and the most insidious of all plant-criminals, are the vampires who fatten themselves upon other plants, and secure their nourishment by sucking the life -blood of their victims. Like the feminine "vampires" of fiction and the movies, these plant-parasites are often very beautiful. Nothing about their outward appearance would arouse the least suspicion as to their true characters, and many display gorgeous flowers. Such is the painted cup' of our meadows, although in the case of this parasite that feeds on roots of other plants, the scarlet tip responsible for its common name, is not the true flower, but the leaves or bracts surrounding the cluster of small yellowish blossoms. In this respect it is similar to the poinsettia which also flaunts gaudy leaves of scarlet or crimson, like an aureole about its inconspicuous flowers.
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Far worse than these vampires, and a murderous strangler as well as a blood-sucker, is the common dodder. Like the majority of parasitic plants, the dodder has no chlorophyl in its system and hence cannot secure nutriment from air and soil, and is compelled by Nature to suck the blood of other plants. Yet in infancy the dodder is innocent enough and sprouts from the soil in the manner of ordinary plants. But no sooner does its yellow snakelike stalk touch another plant than it sends out suckers and begins its nefarious career. As soon as it has secured a firm grasp on its neighbors it withers away and breaks off near the earth, and thereafter crawls, twists, writhes, and wanders over the tops of other plants, binding them together, holding them fast in its suckers, and subsisting on their sap. Although the devil's thread, as it is often called, has no leaves, but merely a slender yellow stem, yet it bears clusters of little bell-shaped white flowers. Once the dodder secures a good start it is practically impossible to check it. Its writhing, yellow stems may be twenty feet or more in length, and as the seeds ripen and fall and new plants spring up and take to the aerial parasitic life, they soon conquer everything within reach of their deadly suckers. In our southern states, as well as in the Bahama Islands and elsewhere in warm countries, it is not unusual to see acres of brush or weeds or even cultivated plants completely hidden under the mat of tangled, twisted, yellow cords of the devil's thread. Who would ever suspect that this snaky, strangling vampire was a first cousin of the lordly cypress trees of our southern swamps? Very different from the flamboyant plant-parasites
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with their gaudy flowers, are the sickly-looking vampires which have the appearance of drug addicts. Some are almost colorless and are ghostly, goulish things, while others, such as the Indian-pipe and beech-drops, are very attractive in a bizarre sort of way and are delicately tinted with pink and pale orange. These parasites scarcely can be considered weeds, for they keep under cover and hide away in woodland and forests where they draw sustenance from the roots of the various trees. The same is true of the parasitic fungi, the mushrooms, and so-called "toadstools," for even if some species do disfigure our lawns and shade trees they rarely become a menace. Many persons think of the orchid and air-plants as parasites, but strictly speaking this is not the case, and if charged with the crime of being vampires they could plead "not guilty" with perfect truth. As a matter of fact, they are merely squatters or perhaps better, "moochers," who take up their abodes on other plants, yet draw their sustenance from the air and from the decaying vegetable matter and debris about their roots, without attempting to harm their involuntary hosts. In fact they thrive just as well on a section of a dead limb or a piece of bark as on a living tree, while many of them are as much at home on lifeless rocks, the roofs of buildings or on telegraph wires as on other plants. Many orchids also kidnap insects and hold them prisoners until the flowers have been thoroughly fertilized. Even the familiar gray Spanish moss which, drapes the trees of our southern states will thrive on lifeless objects, and the injuries it inflicts upon trees are caused by the plant stifling or smothering the branches
with its dense masses and countless clinging adhesive roots, rather than to vampirish habits. Also, it is interesting to note that this picturesque plant is not a moss but is a member of the bromeliad family and is a first cousin of the luscious pineapple. But it should not be confused with the somewhat similar old man's beard which drapes cedars and other trees in our northern forests and swamps. This is a very different sort of plant and is a member of the lichen family and its correct name is usnea. While we are on the subject of plant-vampires and plant-parasites we must not forget the parasitic giants of tropical lands-the lianas and the wild fig-trees. Not only do these strange plants attach themselves to other plants but pitilessly strangle the trees which have afforded them homes and a livelihood. We may quite fittingly compare the writhing, twisting lianas to giant serpents, and the fig-trees to loathsome octopi. And woe to the tree encircled by the coils of a huge liana or seized in the woody tentacles of the fig-tree, which by the way is not a tree that bears the edible fruits, but one of the rubber trees. Unlike true serpents and octopi, these constricting plant-giants are devoid of intelligence, even if they do appear to act with malice and forethought and to commit murder deliberately. No boa constrictor, anaconda or other snake would ever make the mistake of wrapping its coils about its own body and squeezing itself to death, and no octopus would be so lacking in common sense as to encircle itself with its tentacles and relentlessly destroy its own body. Yet this is precisely what the lianas and the fig-trees do. It is a very common
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thing to find enormous lianas, great vines six or eight inches or more in diameter, strangled to death by their own ropelike branches or tendrils which have tightened their grip about the parent stalk so tightly that they are buried almost out of sight in the body whence they sprouted. Neither is it unusual to find a dead or dying wild fig-tree that has committed suicide in this way. These trees are very tenacious of life and the upper portions will continue to grow long after the lower portions have been completely killed. We might suppose that even a plant would know enough to cease squeezing itself to death under such conditions. But it doesn't. A number of years ago when I was residing in Georgetown, British Guiana, Professor Harrison, who was in charge of the wonderful Botanic Station, called my attention to a wild fig-tree that was slowly committing suicide. For years, he told me, he had been watching the big tree fighting with itself. Slowly, relentlessly the struggle of the tree to live and the struggle of its tentacle like aerial roots to destroy their parent had been progressing beneath the eyes of the naturalist who was deeply interested-I might say fascinated by the weird battle between two portions of a single plant. When I first saw the tree many of its upper branches were healthy and covered with leaves, but the lower portion of the trunk and the maze of huge intertwined roots were dead and partly decayed. It was a truly remarkable experience to watch -this strange struggle as it proceeded day by day. As if the living top of the tree were aware of its peril it would send aerial roots from its branches, and these descending
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would grasp the larger strangling roots and endeavor to choke these in turn. But it was a hopeless battle. The older larger roots always won. Little by little the signs of life decreased and at the end of two years the suicidal tree was a bare dead skeleton, a victim of its own deadly habits, its lifeless roots still clinging to the body of the victim it had destroyed in order to live.
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Chapter XVII
WONDER PLANTS OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY
ONE of the most wonderful features of plants is the important part they play in our commerce and industries, as well as in our daily lives. This book, for example, would not be possible were it not for plants. Even if the paper upon which it is printed had been made from old rags it would still be a plant product, for the rags used would have been cotton or linen cloth made from plant fibers. The same plants have supplied the thread with which the leaves have been stitched together. The ink used in printing was made of carbon which came from burning wood, and the glue and paste used in making the cardboard covers and attaching the binding to the leaves were probably manufactured from gums or juices of plants, perhaps even from the stalks of maize. And even if the adhesives were wholly or partly animal glue, they would not have been possible without plants which provided food for the creatures whose hoofs, horns, and hides supplied the glue. Until one gives serious thought to the matter and looks about at the innumerable things upon which we depend, one does not realize the extent to which we employ plants to supply both the necessities and luxuries of life. It is not even necessary to trace back
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various substances and materials to their original plant sources, or to argue that by doing so all animal life is dependent upon plants. So let us confine ourselves to materials obtained directly from plants. Among the most important and valuable plants of commerce and industry are those which supply us with fibers. Moreover, there is a vast number of these fiber producing plants, some of which are very familar to every one and serve us every-where every day. Others are strange to most persons, even though their fibers are commonly used, while others are seldom used except by the natives of the lands where they occur. Yet some of these little known fiber-plants are superior to many of our own and deserve to be much more widely used than they are. Probably the most familiar of all plant fibers is linen which is made from the leaf and stem fibers of the flax plant, and cotton from the seed-coverings of the cotton plant. Next in importance in our everyday life are hemp, Manilla, jute, and sisal. An entire volume might
Flax (1/2)
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he written about these alone, and a very romantic and interesting story it would be, for these four fibers come from widely separated parts of the world and are grown and gathered by strange races amid strange surroundings. Hemp, as I have already mentioned (see Chapter XIV), is obtained from the hemp plant which is a native of India and its vicinity. Manilla or Manilla hemp, which is the source of the best cordage and ropes, especially for use on shipboard, is obtained from a very different plant, a variety of the banana which is a native of the Philippines and the East Indies. Jute is another Oriental fiber derived from an East Indian annual plant with tall stalks and yellow flowers. Although one of the most important and valuable of fibers it is not very strong and hence is not suitable for high grade cordage. But it is fine, silky, easily woven and serves a multitude of purposes. Great quantities are used in making sunny sacks or burlap bags. Immense amounts in the form of "tow" are employed for caulking the seams of vessels, for making coarse and cheap papers, for fiber carpets, rugs, seat-covers, curtains, draperies, and "art" fabrics, while the finer grades are used in place of hair on wigs for actors. For the world at large, jute is a blessing, but to many a poor devil in prison it is a terrible curse, for "picking tow" is the principal task allotted the convicts in many penal institutions, especially in England. Sisal comes mainly from Mexico, Central and South America, the West Indies, Hawaii, and South Africa. This well-known fiber is obtained from the leaves of the hennequin, a species of agave or "century plant" which
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Hennequin (greatly reduced)
is a native of Mexico and Yucatan. Although the hennequin had been cultivated and the sisal fiber had been used by the Indians for countless centuries, yet it was not until comparatively recently that it came into general use by the white races. It is a rather coarse fiber, harsh and somewhat brittle, and much inferior to hemp or Manilla for cordage, especially when wet. But some one discovered that it was the best of all fibers for bindertwine used for tying sheaves of grain, and instantly sisal became one of the, world's most important and valuable fibers. Where only a few of the stiff-leaved hennequin plants had been cultivated by the native farmers, vast plantations sprang into existence. The crop increased from a few hundred to tens of thousands of tons of sisal yearly. Railways were built to transport the countless bales of fiber from the inland Plantations to the seacoast. Tiny towns that had been forgotten by the world became transformed to busy
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important seaports. Where only an occasional sailing vessel or coasting steamer had been moored beside ramshackle wharves, scores of great wall-sided iron freight steamships lay alongside concrete and steel docks. Planters who had found it hard to make both ends meet became millionaires, stupendous sums were invested in planting more and more land with hennequin and in erecting mills and factories for manufacturing sisal twine and other products, and from Yucatan the hennequin industry spread to Hawaii, the West Indies, South America, Egypt and the Orient. Probably no other plant of industry and commerce has had such a meteoric career or has risen so rapidly in importance and value as the hennequin or sisal. Another very important fiber known to the trade as coir is made from the outer husks of the cocoanut. In the Pacific Islands and many other tropical lands, coir or cocoanut fiber is used for ropes, twine, and other cordage, but to us it is most familiar in the form of door-mats and coarse heavy carpeting. Then there is the ramie fiber prepared from the inner bark of an Oriental nettle known as the grass-cloth plant. Perhaps it seems strange that a strong, fine silky fiber used in textile manufacture should be obtained from a nettle plant. But all these stinging weeds possess a fibrous inner bark. Our American Indians wove fine and beautiful fabrics from the fibers of our common nettles, and even used the fibers for making their bowstrings, for nettle fiber is almost as strong as flax. Nettles, however are not the only common wild plants and weeds which supply strong and useful fibers.
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Milkweed fiber was widely used by the Indians, as was the fiber of bulrushes or cattails, wild peas, cedar bark and yucca or "Spanish bayonet" plants. Even the common eel-grass which grows in shallow water along our coast yields a splendid fiber which is used extensively in making certain kinds of cloth and toweling. In the Philippines and the East Indies the natives weave beautiful fine silky cloth from the fibers of pineapple leaves, which is also used to some extent in our textile mills, while in other Oriental countries mulberry fiber is an important product. The well-known raffia fiber used in art work and for making baskets and hand-bags, is the fibrous bark of a palm-tree, while another palm-tree supplies the strong, pliable material used in weaving the famous Panama hats. At one time the pita-hemp fiber of South America was one of the most valuable of all, but for some reason. probably because it was more expensive than Manilla or other fibers, it almost disappeared. To-day pita-hemp plantations are being established in various tropical countries and the fiber is again in demand. But by far the strongest and finest of all fibers have never come into general use and the plants from which they are obtained have never been cultivated except on a small scale by the natives. One of these is the snakedagger, a West Indian plant with long, sword-shaped, stiff, fleshy leaves curiously mottled with pale-green and white. It is often grown as a house plant because of its marbled leaves, some of the cultivated varieties being handsomely variegated with brilliant yellow. Throughout the West Indies and elsewhere in the
tropics, this plant is an abundant weed and grows luxuriantly on old stone walls, about ruined buildings and beside the roadways. When fully grown the leaves are frequently five feet in length and are filled with long, soft silken fibers of great strength. Quantities of
Snake-dagger plant( 1/12 )
this fiber are used by the natives, but it has never become of commercial importance. An even superior fiber is that of the so-called silk grass or arrow grass of South America, which is a plant related to the cannas of our gardens. Unlike the agaves which thrive only in the blazing sunshine in dry soils, this plant grows only in the deep shadows of the forests where the earth is saturated with moisture. The
fiber, obtained from the fleshy stalks, is finer than silk, stronger than the best flax, and is from five to eight feet in length. To the native Indians of the jungles it is a most important plant, for its strong soft, fine fibers serve as fishing-lines, bowstrings, cords, and twine. They are also used for securing the heads and feathers to the arrows, hence the common name, and are woven into nets, bags, and textiles. Even more important in some ways than are the fiber plants used for cordage and textiles, are those which make it possible for us to publish books, print newspapers, or write letters. Without paper we would be sadly handicapped indeed. Imagine what a task it would be to write a novel such as Anthony Adverse on clay tablets or to compile a dictionary by inscribing the letters on stone. And think of the size of the library that would be needed to house thousands upon thousands of clay or stone or even metal volumes. For that matter, try to visualize the occupants of a crowded subway train all carrying morning papers of baked clay or made of metal sheets. And how could our post-offices ever hope to handle millions of letters written on bricks? What a vast relief it must have been to the people who first discovered paper to be able to scrap their clay and stone writings once and forever. No one really knows what race was the first to make that epochal discovery, for paper of some sort or another was used by several races in widely separated parts of the world in very remote times. The ancient Egyptians used excellent paper made from the papyrus plant and from the lotus. The Chinese, thousands of
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years ago, used paper made of rice straw, and in the New World the Aztecs and Mayas had been using splendid parchment like paper made from the agave or maguey plants for untold centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards. Moreover, the Aztecs and Mayas, as well as the Chinese and the Egyptians, had learned to write, or at least to record events, ideas, and other matters on their paper, and had large books or codices which were kept in regular libraries. Unlike our books, these Indian volumes consisted of sheets pasted together to form long strips which were folded back and forth much in the manner of a modern motor-highway map. On the other hand, the Egyptians rolled their manuscripts on wooden holders, while the Chinese made books very similar to our own. Although, as I have said, these ancient races had learned to write on paper they had not discovered how to simplify matters by using letters instead of pictures to express words, for the so-called Chinese letters are really characters made up of highly conventionalized pictures. But if the Spaniards had not arrived to destroy the Aztec civilization the Mexicans would soon have possessed a true written language, for at the time of the conquest they had already begun to substitute ideographs and symbols of sounds for the pictographs on their codices. Surely if spirits are capable of emotions, those of the old Aztec and Maya scribes must have felt greatly pleased and elated when the Mexican Government recently decreed that henceforth all Mexican legal and official
documents must be written and printed on paper made of maguey fiber, thus
perpetuating the memory of the Aztec paper makers and their codices. To-day a vast number of plants are employed in making paper. Bamboo, banana leaves, palm fibers, seaweeds, cotton, hemp, jute, Manilla, reeds, mulberry, bulrushes, straw and countless other fiber-plants are ground to pulp and passed between massive rollers to come forth as sheets of paper. But by far the greatest quantity of paper is made from forest trees. Spruce, poplar, fir, cedar, and many other woods may be used for paper-making, but the best of all "pulp" trees, especially for the cheap newspaper stock, are the spruces. Whole forests have been leveled to supply our people with their daily papers, and few persons have any conception of the almost incredible quantities of pulp wood that are consumed in this way. Merely to supply the paper for a single edition of one of the big New York newspapers necessitates the complete annihilation of eighty acres of forest. Multiply that by the number of similar papers of the metropolis, and multiply the result by 365 and we will get some vague idea of the almost inconceivable numbers of trees which are annually felled and converted into paper-pulp. I say "vague" idea, for big as they are, the papers published in New York City are only a very small fraction of the total number of papers published daily throughout our country. More than 14,000,000 cords of wood are required to supply the paper needs
of the United States annually. The United States and Canadian newspapers print annually enough paper to encircle the world with a belt fifty miles wide. If this paper was in the form of the standard roll with a width
of 73 inches, it would be 13,000,000 miles in length. Moreover, vast quantities of trees are used in making cardboard, various composition substitutes for lumber and for crates, boxes, and other purposes, while whole forests are felled to supply the tens of thousands of cords of wood needed to manufacture matchsticks.
Sumac, leaves and fruit
Considering all this we can surely class our fiber- plants as plant wonders. But even when the fiber-plants have supplied us with cloth for our garments and fabrics for our homes, they would be drab and
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monotonous unless colored, and to give them various tints we again turn to the plants for help. As I have said, mineral and chemical dyes have taken the places of many plant-dyes, yet there are certain
dye-plants which are still in demand, and which have never yet been replaced by artificial substitutes. Although the use of indigo has decreased until very little of the once important dye-plant is cultivated, yet no one has ever discovered an artificial indigo that can equal that of the plant for color and fadeless quality. Fustic from the big forest trees of South and Central America is still used in enormous quantities, for it is the best and most durable of khaki dyes. Gamboge, the gum of East Indian trees, is extensively used, both as a dye and a pigment, for no other yellow has the same brilliant transparent color. Another dye or pigment which is of great commercial and industrial importance is the so-called "dragon's-blood" which is made from the sap of various trees found in the East and West Indies, tropical America, and the Pacific Islands. When we use butter or eat Chili con carne as well as other foods, we swallow a dye made from the seed-coverings of a tropical American tree. This is the anotto or achiote, and as the orange-red dye or pigment is harmless and even contains a certain amount of nutriment, it is perfectly adapted to coloring foods. In its raw state it is a vivid red and is used by the Indians for painting their faces and bodies, but when diluted it imparts a deep yellow color. Its principal use is for coloring butter, hence it has become
generally known under the trade name of "butter color." For staining leather and wood and for dyes of certain shades there is nothing to equal the red sanders and Brazil woods which are the chipped woods of jungle trees of South America and the Orient, while hundreds of thousands of tons of logwood are still used every year. Formerly our own native trees supplied many world famous dyes. Butternut-brown was widely used and became famous as the color of the uniforms of the Confederate soldiers during our Civil War. But to-day it has no real commercial value, and the same is true of our yellow or quercitron oak which furnishes a wonderful yellow dye. At one time hundreds of tons of the chipped oak bark were exported to Europe, but to-day its use as a dye has been almost forgotten. Oddly enough although nearly every color of the rainbow may be obtained by the use of plant-dyes, and in many instances red, yellow and blue dyes may be made from the same plant, yet there is no known species of plant which bears both red, yellow, and blue flowers. By that I do not mean an individual plant, but the entire species including its several color varieties. We have red and yellow roses but nobody ever saw a blue rose. Blue and yellow violets are both common but a red violet is unknown. There are zinnias with flowers of every imaginable shade of red and yellow, but no horticulturist has ever been able to produce a really blue zinnia. Probably the columbines and the pansies come the nearest to being exceptions to the rule, for there are so-called red columbines as well as blue and yellowish varieties, but the red flowers are not actually red nor are the blue blossoms a true
blue, but rather a purple or lavender. It is the same with the pansies, there are true blue and true yellow pansies but the nearest approach to red is a reddish-purple or orange yellow. Just why this should be so no one knows. It is just another of the wonders of wonderful plants. Even when plants have supplied us with wood for our houses and furniture and fabrics for our garments, our carpets, our draperies and the upholstery on our chairs and couches, and other plants have yielded the stains, dyes, and pigments with which to color them, we still need oils, varnish, and wax with which to finish the woodwork. And when it comes to these important and essential substances we are compelled to rely on plants to supply them. There is no substitute for linseed-oil except other vegetable oils. No one has been able to manufacture a synthetic varnish to compare with those made from copal, couri, or other plant gums and saps. Turpentine and resin from pine trees still hold their own against all competitors made from petroleum or other chemicals, while tung oil is the basis of all our finest quick-drying lacquers, enamels, and varnishes. It is the same with the various kinds of vegetable wax. Who wouldn't prefer a bayberry wax candle made from the aromatic berries of the seaside bayberry bush to a paraffin or tallow candle? What would scientists do without oil of cloves for use in microscopy and Canada balsam from the fir trees for mounting their slides and cementing the lenses of their instruments? Palm-oil and palm-wax have never given way to synthetic products of the laboratory. And finally there is the oil from the
castor-bean plant. No doubt many a youngster wishes the broad-leafed tropical plant had never been discovered, but the thick white oil from the plants' mottled seeds has many other uses besides that of medicine and possesses properties unlike those of any other oil. It never thickens, no matter how cold it may be; it never becomes thin even under the terrific heat of
high-speed motors when used as a lubricant, in which respect it exceeds all other oils, and it is practically non-inflammable. But it has one important use which few persons suspect, for it is castor oil that makes sticky fly-paper remain sticky and prevents the combination of resin and gum from drying up. To the ladies there are many plants which are of tremendous importance, for they supply the feminine population of the world with scents and perfumes, hair tonics and washes, face powders and toilet soaps, creams and other aids to beauty-even with their lip-sticks and eyebrow pencils, and mascara. Quite aside from the innumerable flowers used in manufacturing perfumery there are many other plants vital to the industry. The leaves of the West Indian bay-trees supply bay-oil from which bay-rum is made. The seed of a South American tree, soaked in rum and dried is the tonka bean which imparts such a delightful odor to garments when placed in a drawer or chest with them. Orris, so widely used for sachets, to impart a delicate odor to face and tooth-powders and many similar purposes, is the pulverized roots of an iris or fleur-de-lis plant. Lavender and sandalwood are both well-known plant perfumes, while the West Indian rose-apple seeds give out a rich enduring odor fully equal to perfumes made of attar of roses. Myrrh, which is used to impart a pleasant
aromatic taste to mouth-washes, is the gum of an Arabian shrub, while frankincense is made from the gum of an Oriental tree of the same name. To us, all of these plants have pleasing odors, but tastes in scents and perfumes differ as much as tastes
in food and drink and people of other lands often prefer odors which we would find most unpleasant. In Ethiopia, the people think the odor of the mouse-plant is the most delightful and alluring of perfumes, and the dusky ladies are never really happy unless they smell like much-used mouse-traps. It may seem strange indeed for human beings to like the odor of the little rodents, but it is far more amazing that any people should desire the taste of mice in their food. Yet in China there is a variety of rice which tastes and smells like mice and is considered the most desirable of all rice by the Chinese. On one occasion when I was visiting a tribe of primitive Indians in the South American jungles, the women and girls gathered about my camp-fire chatting and sniffing the air as Sam, my black camp-boy, prepared my dinner. Presently, having peeled and sliced an onion, he tossed aside the waste. Instantly there was a wild scramble among the brown-skinned belles followed by squeals of delight as the lucky ones smeared the fragments of odorous bulbs over their faces and naked bodies. That gave me an idea. I was short of trade goods, especially beads and knives, and had been unable to secure many of the ornaments and other ethnologic specimens I desired for my collections. But the women's fondness for onion perfume solved the problem, and for
the next thirty minutes or so I did a rushing business doling out sections of onions in exchange for weapons and implements, musical instruments and feather work, bead aprons and jaguar teeth necklaces. But our stock of the bulbs was soon exhausted and there were still many objects I wished to acquire, while
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many of the Indians were still minus a supply of the perfume they so greatly desired. "Can't you dig up any more onions, Sam?'' I asked while the Indians stood about laden with possessions they wished to trade. "Perhaps some got into the potato bag by accident." The Negro dumped out the contents of bags and boxes and searched diligently. "No, sir, Chief," he replied at last. "Ah 'spec' they complete finish. But Ah come 'pon little garlic, Chief, an' they sure do smell a-plenty." The little bulbs certainly did "smell a-plenty" and how those Indians did clamor for them! To them the odor of garlic compared to that of onions was as delightful and desirable as attar of roses compared to the cheapest rose-water would be to any white woman. They were willing and anxious to exchange anything or everything they owned for a mere fragment of garlic, and had I possessed a few pounds of the bulbs I could easily have purchased the entire village with all it contained-including the entire feminine population-had I so desired. Taking all things into consideration, perhaps it was just as well that our supply of garlic was so very limited. It may seem astonishing that Indian women should have been so fascinated by the odor of onions that they were perfectly willing to give anything and everything they owned for a fragment of garlic. But after all is it any more remarkable or
incomprehensible than the fact that many a well-to-do white woman of our own race will willingly pay twenty-five dollars or even more for a tiny phial of some new or stylish perfume which,
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together with the ornamental container and velvet or satin box, may possibly have cost the manufacturer a dollar or two? Moreover, we must bear in mind that the original and primary reason for using perfumery was to conceal the odor of the body. Surely for this purpose garlic and onions are far superior to the most delicate and costly perfumes ever concocted in the laboratories of Grasse. Almost if not fully as strange as the Indians' garlic odor complex is the custom of the women of certain African tribes to chew the Kilakilolo wood. The resinous, volatile oil in the wood permeates the entire body and exudes from the pores of the skin, causing the women to reek with the odor of cedar. There are few persons who will not agree that the scent of cedar is preferable to the odor of garlic. In fact, if taken in reasonable doses, the odor of cedar is very agreeable and delightful, although it is most repugnant or even fatal to certain insects, hence the use of cedar-chests to protect woolen fabrics from moths. But enough is enough, and who wants to smell like a cedar-chest anyway? Yet, come to think of it, these African belles may have hit upon a really good thing. Perhaps by transforming themselves to living cedar' chests they keep pestiferous insects at a respectful distance.
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Chapter XVIII
THE FIRST OF ALL CALENDARS
No one knows what race was the first to invent a calendar or to divide time into years, months and days or days into hours, for many very ancient races in various parts of the world possessed excellent and accurate calendrical systems thousands of years ago. Our own calendar is fairly recent, for it dates only from 1582 when the old calendar was revised by Pope Gregory. But ages before then the Mayas had devised a calendar even more accurate than our own, the Aztecs had a very exact calendar, and the Incans and pre Incans of Peru had an equally good system of measuring time. Yet all of these calendars devised by human beings, ancient as they may be, were very modern and new compared to the calendar which has been used by plants for millions of years. It may not seem strange that plants should know and recognize the seasons or that they should know the difference between day and night or even between bright sunshine and cloudy weather. But it is truly remarkable that many plants should be able to tell the time almost as accurately as a clock or a watch. Yet many plants do this and if you watch the plants in a garden and note the time when certain plants open their flowers and the time when others close, you will find
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that they are seldom "slow" or "fast." In fact it is quite simple to have a floral clock such as that devised by the great naturalist, Linnaeus. Of course, the "time" as told by these flowers, will vary according to the location, just as there is a difference in our time in various places, and a plant, which in its customary location opens at a certain hour, may be fooled and may open earlier or later if grown farther north, south, east or west than where it belongs. But once it gets the "hang" of its new environment, it will vary only slightly in its time-keeping. Do not expect your flower timepieces to adopt daylight-saving time during the summer, for like the railways they keep to "standard" time throughout the year. If you are an early bird, and providing you live in the latitude of our Central Atlantic states or southern New England, you will find the dandelions waking up and opening their yellow eyes almost on the stroke of four. An hour later the poppies, day-lilies, and several other plants decide it is time to begin the day, and between five and six o'clock the morning-glory flowers will open. Promptly at seven the lettuce plants and African marigolds unfold their blossoms. Various pinks think eight is early enough and the lazy wild marigolds stay in bed until nine. Between nine and ten dozens of plants decide that day has come at last, but the star-of-Bethlehem waits until eleven, and the common ice-plant doesn't tumble out of bed until high noon. By this time many of the early risers are ready to call it a day and quit work. The dandelions, hawkweeds, pinks and some of the thistles fold their bright blankets and go to sleep between twelve and two o'clock,
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although a few more wakeful and energetic individuals may remain open for hours after their fellows. But by mid-afternoon practically all of the early rising flowers have closed, while the nasturtiums, clovers and various other plants retire for the night about six o'clock. The day-lily doesn't become sleepy until an hour or an hour and a half later, while the little chickweed is as bright and wakeful as ever until nine or ten. But that does not mean that all members of the plant community have gone to bed. The lazy four-o'-clocks didn't appear on the scene until their appointed hour. The evening primroses waited until sundown before waking, while the jimson-weeds and moon-flowers, the cereus and other cacti and a host of other plants are real night-hawks and wait until after dark before blooming. Of course, plants are not infallible as timekeepers. Even our railway trains are often late, and human beings often oversleep, or retire ahead of their customary hours. Moreover, the plants keep "sun time" and may be deceived by dull or cloudy weather or by unusually cold or unusually warm mornings or evenings. In the autumn the morning-glory vines often wait until the sun is well up before opening their flowers, which then remain open throughout the greater part of the day. And on very dull dark days or when the heavy black clouds of a thunderstorm turn daylight into twilight, the primroses, jimson-weeds and others frequently think the sun has set and open their flowers. But on the whole they keep wonderfully good time and vary little in their hours of opening and closing. Every one knows that certain plants bloom at certain seasons of the year. No one would expect to find
wood-anemones starring the woodlands in the autumn, nor goldenrods and asters in blossom in April and May, and while certain flowers may blossom from spring until frost, while others may overlap or a few individuals may hang on long after their fellows have gone to seed, the great majority abide quite strictly by the calendar. But even if we all know the flowers we may expect to find in spring, summer, and autumn or even during certain months, how many of us realize that we can determine the seasons by the colors of the wild flowers? Yet if we stop to consider the matter we will find that certain colors predominate at certain times of the year. In the early spring we have mostly white or palecolored flowers-anemones, saxifrage, liverworts, bloodroot, white daisies, spring beauties, wild lilies-of-the-valley, azaleas, laurel, shade-trees and others. A little later the blue and yellow flowers predominate and we have the violets and gentians, the Robert daisies and forget-me-nots, and the blue flags together with the soft pinks of wild geraniums, the arbutus and moccasin flowers, and the golden buttercups and cowslips and the wild pinks. As late spring emerges into summer the wild flowers assume richer, more voluptuous hues. Fields glow with the orange-yellow, rudbeckias or black-eyed Susans and the flaming orange meadow lilies. Cardinal flowers gleam like living coals beside woodland streams, poppies fairly blaze in the hot sunshine, fireweed and butterfly-weeds flaunt their intense colors, and scarlet painted cups and burnt orange devil's paint brushes gleam in the meadows. Then as summer wanes, the purple asters and the goldenrods drape the countryside in royal robes, and we know winter will soon be here.
But even winter has its plant colors, for we all know that the glossy green leaves and scarlet berries of the holly, and the soft green of princess pine, are symbolical of the season of ice and snow and Christmas cheer. Not only do the plants maintain a calendar of their own, but they record the events of their lives with greater accuracy than will be found in our written histories. Human historians may err, they may disagree as to important events and important dates, and they are all too often biased and make little of certain incidents and exaggerate others. But the plants never err, they record each event as it occurs and do not rely upon others or upon hearsay evidence, and they are absolutely impartial. Every school-child knows that the age of a tree may be determined by counting the rings of growth visible on a cross section of the trunk. But the rings that tell us the tree's age do far more than this, for they reveal a complete history of the major events which have taken place during the life of the tree. Every severe storm, each period of drought or floods, even unusually severe winters or abnormally hot summers are indelibly recorded by means of these records. Hence scientists or others who are skilled in interpreting the tree's diary may unravel the entire detailed story of its life and of the conditions of the locality where it grew for hundreds, even thousands of years past. By this means, too, scientists have been able to establish the age of ancient ruins of cliff dwellings and pueblos in the southwest and elsewhere. How do they accomplish this feat of seeming legerdemain? Quite simply and easily. By carefully measuring the rings of
a newly felled tree and making enlarged graphs of the variations in growth indicating weather conditions recorded by the tree, and by comparing these with the growth-rings on timbers from the ancient ruins, they can link the two tree histories and so determine just when the ancient timbers were cut. For example, if a living tree is found with rings plainly recording a flood or a drought eight hundred years ago, and if a section of an ancient timber from the ruined village shows identical records, it is a simple matter to count the rings indicating the years that the ancient tree recorded between the time of the flood or drought and the time it was cut. Thus if it is found that the timber was cut two hundred years after the momentous event occurred, then we may be certain that the Indians felled the tree to be used in their building six hundred years ago. But far more remarkable than the fact that trees are the most accurate of all historians, and that by means of their records we can determine just what weather and meteorological conditions existed thousands of years ago, is the fact that some plants are weather prophets. Moreover, there are certain plants that foretell the weather so accurately that even meteorological experts in weather bureaus find them most valuable assistants. This may sound incredible, yet at the Kew Gardens near London, England, there is an established weather-plant observatory which, on several occasions, has foretold weather, as well as other events, more accurately and further in advance than the scientists in the government Weather Bureau. Although this amazing plant weather bureau contains a great
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many species of weather-wise plants gathered from all parts of the world, yet the chief of the plant observatory is a native of India known to botanists as Abrus precatorius which means an Abrus used in prayers. This is more appropriate than its common name Indian licorice, for in India its scarlet and black seeds are made into prayer-beads or rosaries. They are also used as weights and another interesting bit of romance is added to the remarkable plant because the famous Kohinoor diamond was weighed by means of these pretty seeds. Although the East Indians have long known of the seemingly mystic powers of the plant, its amazing ability to foretell weather, electrical disturbances, and even catastrophes, yet it was not known to the outside world until about fifty years ago when Professor Nowack, the Austrian scientist, astonished his fellow scientists by proving that the magic plant could predict weather two days in advance. His demonstration was so convincing and was considered of so much importance that the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII of England) arranged for Baron Nowack to go to England and establish the strange plant weather bureau at Kew. It would be astonishing enough if this little vine did nothing more than to foretell weather, but it is extremely sensitive to magnetic and electrical conditions, even when at a great distance, and any approach of atmospheric or other disturbances is indicated by the movements of the leaves of the plant. Again and again Professor Nowack "beat" the trained meteorological experts by means of his weather-plants, even predicting cyclonic disturbances and earthquakes. But the greatest
feat of the astounding plant was its forecast of a catastrophe which no human weather prophet could have foretold, for the plants at Kew actually predicted a fire-damp explosion in British mines which caused the loss of many lives.
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Chapter XIX
THE MOST WONDERFUL PLANTS
OF all the wonder plants which are the most wonderful? Are they the plants which supply us with our clothing, our homes, our dyes and the thousand-and-one necessities and luxuries of life? Are they the plants which make possible our letters, our books and magazines, our libraries and our daily newspapers? Are the most wonderful plants those which appear to possess real intelligence or those which capture insects in cleverly designed traps? Perhaps you feel that the plants which are used as medicines or those which supply us with food and drink should be considered the most wonderful of all. But none of these, not even the plant giants that have lived for thousands of years and tower hundreds of feet in the air, are the most wonderful. On the contrary the most wonderful of all plants are the smallest of all plants, real plant pygmies so minute that they are invisible to the unaided human eye, so inconceivably small that a thousand of the plants could find lodgment upon the head of a common pin with room to spare; so immeasurably tiny that they can be detected only by means of the microscope and very powerful microscopes at that. Not only are they the smallest of all plants, but they are also the most numerous and most widely distributed, for they are everywhere. They swarm by millions in every square inch
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of earth, they teem in every drop of water in every stream, lake, pond, swamp, and in the sea. They float by myriads in the air we breathe and they inhabit the fluids and the tissues of our bodies, the bodies of all living creatures and all other plants. Moreover, they are by far the most important and valuable of all plants, for without them there would be no life on earth, nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no vegetation. Yet on the other hand they cause sickness, disaster, pestilence, and death. Probably by now you have guessed that the most wonderful of all plants are those known as Bacteria, man's greatest, most useful friends as well as his deadliest enemies. Without bacteria many of our important industries would be as impossible as would life itself. Butter, cheese, vinegar, yeast, bread, alcohol, tobacco, cocoa, beer, wine, liquors, and countless other useful and essential substances, foods and beverages are all made possible by the minute bacteria plants. How do they produce these? By breaking down chemical and atomic combinations and rebuilding them to produce new and totally different combinations and forms. Just how they accomplish such seeming miracles we do not know, for even our greatest scientists with all their modern instruments and appliances have never been able to duplicate much of the work of these minute plants. And in many cases when chemists and others have succeeded, their success was the result of calling upon other bacteria to aid them. When an animal dies it soon decomposes, but what we call decomposition is the activity of millions of tiny plants busily absorbing or devouring the animal tissues,
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separating the chemicals of which the creature was composed, and rearranging them to produce useful fertile soil for the benefit of plants. And when these plants fade and wither and die and "rot" as we express it, the ever-busy bacteria plants are merely working their magic and are giving back to the earth and the air the chemicals which the dead plant absorbed and used in life. Were it not for the army of industrious microscopic plants, the rubbish of our homes and cities would overwhelm us. But almost as fast as the offal and waste accumulates it is broken down and transformed to useful soil and to essential chemicals by the trillions of bacteria. To be sure, there are certain substances which even these wonderful plants cannot destroy. Glass, bakelite, iron, brass, and other metals resist these minute plants, for bacteria are impotent when it comes to breaking down the chemical combinations of many materials made by man. But there are no natural objects or substances which do not give way to their activities. Even the enduring rocks fall to their attacks and crumble away to form soil. But if they cannot unaided destroy iron and steel they can employ their chemical allies to do so. Bury a piece of iron in the earth or place it under decaying vegetation and it soon becomes eaten away and vanishes, although a piece of the same metal exposed to the open air may merely rust and may remain fairly well preserved for years after the buried portions have vanished. Why? Because the bacteria in the soil and vegetation have been working steadily in their laboratories and have released chemicals-gases and acids-which have eaten away and destroyed the metal.
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In fact the greatest services these microscopic plants render us are their activities as chemists. Plants require nitrogen and this is supplied by countless bacteria which possess the power of absorbing the vital chemical and distributing it in the soil. All farmers know that by planting a crop of beans, alfalfa, or peas on exhausted land they enrich the soil, but it was not until quite recently that the "whys and wherefores" of this were learned. The puzzle was solved when scientists discovered that certain nitrogen-absorbing bacteria thrived upon the roots of leguminous plants, forming little clusters, and that it was these minute funguslike plants which by releasing nitrogen enriched the soil where legumes were grown. As every one knows, animals breathe oxygen and exhale carbon-dioxide, whereas plants absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. But there is only a definite amount of oxygen and carbon-dioxide in the air, water, and earth, and if these gases had not been restored and used over and over again, the supply would have been exhausted and all animal and plant life would have vanished from earth ages ago. How has this restoration been accomplished? By the wonderful bacteria plants. Swarming on dead vegetation they break down the tissues, extract the chemicals of which the plants were composed and return them to the earth and air, thus providing the carbon-dioxide ready to be absorbed and transformed to carbon by the plants, and to release the oxygen essential to animal life. Moreover, during this process the busy bacteria release quantities of "marsh gas" which decomposes substances containing sulphur,
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thus preparing them for the activities of other bacteria who transform them to sulphates. Numerous forms of the wonder-working plants absorb light and cause the phosphorescent glow known as "fox fire," while others produce the heat which we so often find in compost heaps and the interior of hay stacks. At times these plants even produce fire by spontaneous combustion. But the damage they cause in this way is more than offset by the benefit man derives from their heat-making powers. Tobacco is made fit for use by means of these bacteria whose heating powers are used in the tobacco "sweating" process. Others serve a similar purpose in sweating the cacao beans and various other products. Still others produce brilliant colors, some of which are of great value to man, while many more constantly wage a war of extermination with their fellow bacteria which cause diseases and death. Perhaps you wonder what these truly wonderful Plant pygmies are like, whether they have roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and seeds. Some do have seeds or properly speaking, spores, which under favorable conditions sprout or germinate very rapidly, and under unfavorable conditions will remain dormant but alive for years. The majority, however, increase by dividing or splitting, each half then becoming an independent plant which in turn splits in half forming two more plants. In this way they increase with almost incredible speed. Under normal conditions one of these tiny plants will reach maturity and split in thirty minutes, and within twenty-four hours this single bacteria will have produced billions of new plants.
In appearance they bear little resemblance to other members of the plant world for they are simple things despite their amazing powers and importance. Some are straight and rod like and are known to scientists as "bacilli." Others are round or globular and are called "cocci," while still others are curled or twisted and are referred to as "spirella." Many are fixed or rooted like ordinary plants, but there are many kinds of bacteria which move freely about in liquids by means of countless vibratory hairs or "cilia." Moreover, they move with incredible speed in proportion to their size. It is not unusual for them to travel a distance of four inches in fifteen minutes or sixteen inches an hour. That may seem almost a snail's pace, but remember that the little traveler is scarcely one fifteen-thousandths of an inch in length. In other words it covers sixty-thousand times its own length in moving four inches, or at the rate of about four thousand times its own length per minute. Who says that isn't speeding? If human beings could run at that speed they would travel over four miles a minute or about three hundred miles an hour. Imagine being able to hot-foot it from New York to San Francisco between breakfast and dinner! Just as some ordinary plants are tender, delicate things and wither and die unless they have just the proper amount of moisture and the right temperature, while others are tough and hardy and will grow anywhere and will endure blazing sunshine and bitterly cold winters, so we find both tender and hardy members of the bacteria plant family. Some can only exist where it is damp, dark, and cool. Others prefer dry open spots and brilliant light. Some are very sensitive to heat while
others are killed by cold. But on the other hand there are many of these minute plants whose spores will survive the most intense cold and terrific heat. They will germinate and produce more bacteria even after being frozen in liquid air at a temperature of over four hundred degrees below zero, and they are equally unharmed by being subjected to a bath in boiling water. But most remarkable of all is the fact that members of this amazing group of plants have actually been found in meteorites. That does sound absolutely impossible, for it would mean that they had withstood the searing terrible heat of molten metal. How is it possible for any organic substance to resist combustion under such temperatures? But reputable scientists have claimed more than once that they had discovered traces of bacteria in these fragments of celestial bodies. In that case these plants have the right to be considered the most wonderful plants in the entire universe for they are the only ones ever to have traveled from other worlds to ours. But even if the scientists have made a mistake and bacteria have never occurred in meteorites, they certainly are the most wonderful plants on earth, for without them no other plants would be possible.
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INDEX Acacia. and ants, 118, 119, 120 Acacia trees 633 224 Achiote, 264 Aconite, 63 African marigold, 272 Agave, fiber. 261 Air-cabbage, 220 Air-plants, 105. 220 249 Alder, 186 Algae 5 Allspice, 150 Almond. 153 American senna. 236 Andean corn. 156 Anotto, 264 Ant farmers. 121 Ant tree of Java, 8 Ants 15, 118, 119, 120, 122 Apa-Apa, 81 Apocynum cannabium, 206 Apple, 149, 153, 186 "Arrete le neg," 120 Arrow grass, 293 259 Arrow-head, 79 Artichoke. Jerusalem. 2,11 Arum, giant, 80 Asafetida, 189 Ash 217 Aster 211, 2151 231 Aster, wild, 229 Atropine. 63
Bachelor's button, 221 Bacteria. 3. 280 Balsam fir, 266 Balsa wood. 137 Balsas, 137 Bamboo. 28. 83 Banana, 20, 46-50 Banyan, 76 Baobab, 76, 202 Barberry, 239 Barley, 153 Barrel cactus. 17.1 palm, 39, 40 Basswood, 217 Batchelor's button, 222 "Batata.", 145 Bearberry, 20,1 Beech drops, 4, 249 Beenas, 184 Beggars' lice, 211 Beggars' ticks, 211 Belladonna, 63 Bergamont, oil of, 196 Bhang, 205 Bindweed, 247 Birch-bark canoes, 131
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INDEX Bitter cassava. 66 Bitter-root, 55 Black drink, of Cherokees, 170 Black-Jack. 224 Blackberries. 153 Bladder-nut, 221 Bladderwort, 128 Boneset, 236 Brazil wood, 261 Bread-root, Indian, 243 Broma, 168 Buckeye. 191 Bulrushes, 258 Bull-briar, 241 Bullet-tree. 136 Burdock. 211. 236, 239 Bur-marigold, 211 Burr-grass, 211 Bush ropes. 136 Buttercups. 231 Butterwort, 126 Cabbage-palm, 26 "Cacahua," M Cacao. 163. 161 Cacao plant. 161 "Cacaoquahtl," 161 Cacti, 2, 533 174 giant, 83. 84, 173 Saguaro. 81. 173 Caffein, 174 Cahosh, 238 Calabash, 30 Caladiums, 184 California hyacinths, 242 Calisaya, 59 Camote, 1,17 Camphor, 199 Canal Zone, water-hyacinths in. 111 Cannabis. 200. 206 Cannon-ball tree, 30 Capsicum, 149 Carolina tea, 170 Carrot, wild, 239 Cashew nuts 65. 66 Cassareep, 67 Cassava, 66. 176 Cassiri, 176 Castor-oil bean, 198, 266 Cat-briar. 230. 247 Catchfly, 246 Catnip, 196 Cattails. 258 Cayenne pepper. 150 Cecropia tree, 134, 136 Cedar bark. 258 Cedar of Lebanon. 75 Ceiba, 202, 216 Centipede tree, 99 Century-plant. 23, 176 Cereus. 16, 273 Chaulmoogra tree, 63 Cherokee black drink, 170 Cherry pits, 217 Chestnut, horse-, 188 Chicha, 176 Chickweed. 273 Chicle, 25 Chicory, 240 Chili pepper. 150 China brier. 211
Camas, 242 Camelia, 168

INDEX Chincona, 57, 59 "Chocalatl," 164 "Chocli," 156 Chocolate. 163. 161 Indian, 242 root, 242 Cicely, sweet, 188 Cigarette tree, 26 Citronella, 198 Clematis, wild, 215 Clover, 273 Cloves, oil of, 266 Club-moss, is Coffee, 161 Java, 218 Coir, 257 Cola nut, 178 Columbine, 265 Coontee, 241 Copal, 201, 266 Coreopsis, wild, 231 Corn, 157 Indian, 153 Spanish, 259 Syrian, 157 Cotton, 19, 216, 254 Couri gum, 266 Cowslip, 241 Cow-tree. 22 Cocaine. 60. 62 Coca leaves, 60 Plant. 61 Cockle-bur, 211, 230, 239 Coco, 168 Cocoa, 163, 161 butter, 168 shells, 168 Cocoa nuts. 164 Cocoanut fiber, 257 palms, 24, 32, 33, 77, 160 twin, 42 Cow-tree, 22 Crab-tree, 198 Cucumber. wild, 21,7 Curare poison, 64 Cypress. 75 giant, 174 Cypress of Chapultepec, 71 Cypress trees of Mexico, 74
Daisies, 231 ox-eye, 240 white, 229 Dandelion, 281. 236, 272 greens. 241 Dasheen, 81 Date-palm. 40 Day-lilies, 272 Deadly nightshade, 63, 143 Devil-doer. 174 Devil's anchors. 211 thread, 218 Diatoms, 2, 8 Digitalis, 63 Dittany, 236 Divinini reds, 186 Dock, 224 Dock root, 239 Dodder, 218 Dogwood, poison, 65 "Dragon's blood," 264 Dugout canoes, 133, 131 Dutchman's breeches, 179 Dutchman's pipe, 179, 244 Dwarf trees, 86
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INDEX Eddoes, 179, 238 Edible fungus, 3 Eel-grass, 258 Egyptian corn, 157 Elephant's ears, 81, 179 flower, 179 foot 179 Elm 217 Etah palm. 26. 103 Eucalytpus, 16, 93 Euphorbia, 194 Evening primrose, 16, 278 Everglades, water-hyacinths in. 11 Gatun lake, 105 Goat-nut. 242 Goldenrod, 211, 229, 231, 239 Gomier trees, 25 Goofahs, 131 Gooseberry, 186 Gourd plant. 170 Giant arum, 80 cacti, 83, 84, 173 cypress trees, 74 fig trees, 75, 76 junipers of Virginia, 75 lilies of Guiana, 88 redwood trees, 76 tree cactus, 173 Grass. marram. 227 pigeon, 234 sand-, 212 silk, 259 squaw-, 242 Grass-cloth plant, 257 Grapes, 159 Greenheart, 186 Grugru palm. go. 39 worms, 39 Guarana', 174 Gulfweed, 8 Gumbo, 17 Gum-ellemi, 25, 201 Gumplant, 236 Gunnera, 82 Gypsy combs. 246 1 Hammamelis, 186 Hashish. 205 Hawkweed, 2313 272
Fan-palms, 27, 41 "Farine," 67 Ferns. 2. 133 149 247 883 204, 223 Fig trees. 75. 76 giant, 75, 76 wild, 250 Fire-pink, 245 Flag, sweet, 183 Flax, 19. 254 Floating islands, 101-113 Four-leaf clover. 186 Four o'clock, 16. 273 Foxglove, 63 Frankincense, 267 Fungi, 2, 8, 5, 11 Fungus, 12 raised by ants. 122 Gamboge. 264 Ganja, 205
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INDEX Haws, 217 Hawthorn. 186 Hazel, 186 Heather, white, 188 Heliotrope trees, 79 Hemlock, poison, 6,1 Hemp, Indian, 205, 296 Manilla, 29, 46, 132, 255 Oriental, 205 pita, 158 plants, 205, 255 Henbane. 63 Hennequin, 255 Hibiscus, 216 Holly, 98, 170 Hop vines, 168 Horse-chestnut, 188 Houseleek, 222 Hurricane trees, 131, 136 Hyacinths, 108-112 Hydroidea, 3 Hydroids, 2, 16, 17, 18 Hyoscyamine, 63 Iceland moss. 13 Ice-plant, 272 llex, 170 Indian bread-root, 243 chocolate, 242 corn. 153 hemp, 205, 296 licorice. 277 millet, 242 pipe, 4, 249 potatoes, 242 turnip, 65
Indigo, 264 Insect powder, 199 Irish cobbler, 189 moss, 8 potatoes, 143-146 Ivory-nut palm, 41 Ivy, poison, 64 Jack-in-the-pulpit, 65, 245 Java coffee, 218 Jellyfish, 17 Jerusalem artichoke, 241 Jewel-weed, 221, 239 jimson-weed, 63, 230, 236, 273 Jojoba, 242 Juniper. 159 giant. 75 Kapok. 19, 189 Kelp, 8 Khat, 173 Kilakilolo, 270 Kinnikinnick, 204 Kite tree 31 Krakatoa, 12 Lace-bark tree, 23 Lady's slipper, 181 Laudanum, 63 Lavender, 196, 267 Leaf-carrying ants, 122 Leek, house, 222 wild, 242 Legumes, 3 Letter-wood, 186
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INDEX Lianas, 20. 22, 136, 250 Lichens, 10. 11, 12, 153 88 Licorice, Indian, 277 Life-leaf plant, 222 Lilies. giant. 88 Sego, 242 Linden seeds, 217 Litmus, 13 Lizard tree. 2. 99 Locust seeds. 224 Logwood, 261 Lotus, 260 Love apples, 149 Mary's hand, 63 Mazetta tree, 194 Meadow-rue. 239 Mealies, 157 Medicinal plants, 56 Mesquite, 242 "Metapee," 66 Mildews, 231 Milkweed, 213, 21,1 fiber, 258 Milkwort, 222 Millet, Indian, 242 Mistletoe. 185, 186 Moccasin flower, 181 Molds, 231 slime, 4 Moon-flower, 273 Morning glories 16, 87, 146, 227 Morphine, 63 Mosses, 8, 10, 11, 13, 249 "Mountain cabbage," 38 Mouse plant, 268 Mucanyoko tree, 194 Mulberry fiber, 258 Mullen, 191, 229, 231, 236 Mushrooms, 2, 3, 5, 249 Musk. 196 Myrrh, 267
Macutos, 41 Madder, wild, 239 Maguey, 176 fiber, 261 Maidenhair ferns, 1,1, 88 Mai Yang tree. 201 Maize, 153 Manchineel tree. 65 Mandrake, 183 Man-eating plants. 129 Mangroves. 224 Manioc, 66, 143 Manilla hemp, 29, 46, 132, 255 Maple-tree seeds, 217 Marguerite. 240 Marigold, marsh-, 241 wild. 272 Mariposa tulip, 243 Marjoram, 188 Marram grass,. 227 Marsh-marigold, 241 Mate, 170
Nasturtiums. 273 Nettles, 230 fiber. 257, flowers, 239 New Jersey tea, 170 Night-blooming cereus, 16, 273
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INDEX Nightshade. 230 Nux vomica, 63 Paraguay tea, 170 Peach palm, 39 Peaches. 153 Peanut, 151, 152 Peas. wild, 2473 258 Pejibaye palm, 39 Pennyroyal, 236 "Pepper pot," 67 Peppers, 149 red, 150 sweet, 149 Persian insect-powder plant, 199 Peruvian bark, 57 Pickerel weed, 79 Pigeon grass, 234 Pigweed, 211 Pimento, 150 Pimiento, 151 Pine, 275 Pineapple, 69 fiber, 258
Oak. Quercitron, 265 Oak-trees and mistletoe, 186 Oats, 153 wild, 242 Oil of cloves, 266 Okra, 217 Old man's beard. 250 Onions, 199 wild 9.42 Opium, 204 Orange, Osage, 198 Orchids 15, 88, 105, 115, 179, 219 Oriental poppy, 201 hemp, 205 Orris, 267 Osage orange, 198 Ox-eye daisy, 240 Pita hemp, 258 Pitcher-plants, 128, 125 Paddle tree, 28 Painted cup, 217 Paiwarie, 68. 176 Palm cabbage, 33, 88 Palmetto, 30 Palms, 13, 20, 25, 26, 33, 38, 39, 42, 43-45, 77, 78 Panama hats, 258 Pansies, 221 Pansy tree, 79 Papas, 14,1 Paper, 260 Paprika, 150 Papyrus, 260
"Pits", 217 Piva palm, 26 Plantain. 231 wild, 15, 27 Plants 'spread by whalers, 132 Plasmodium, 5 Poinsettia, 247 Poison dogwood, 65 hemlock, 6,1 ivy, 64 sumac, 65 Pokeweed, 236, 288 Poplar, 216
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INDEX Poppy, 63, 281, 272 Oriental, 204 white, 201 Potato "balls," 147 Potatoes. Indian, 212 Irish or white, 143, 146 sweet, 143. 146, 148 Primrose, evening, 16, 273 Princess pine, 275 Protoplasm, 5 "Pulp" trees, 262 Pulque, 176 Purple-heart tree, 28 Purslane, 241 Pyrethrum, 199 Quamash, 242 Queen Anne's lace, 239 Quercitron oak, 265 Quarries, 57 Quinine, 57, 59 Resin, 266 Resurrection plants, 52 Rhodium, 196 Rice, 158 Rice straw. 261 Rockweed, 8 Ruse-apples, 267 Rose of Jericho, 52 Roses, 153 Royal palms, 33, 38, 77 Rubber-trees, 22 Rue, meadow-, 239 Rusts, 231 Rye, 153 St. John's wort, 87, 238 Sandalwood, 267 tree, 201 Sand-box tree, 222 Sand-grass, 212 Sand-reed, 227 Sanders, red, 264 "Sara," 156 Saguaro brandy, 86 cactus, 84, 173 Sassafras tea, 170 Saw-palmetto, 33 Seaweeds, 6 Seda virgen, 23 Sego, wild, 242 Sego lily, 242 Sensitive plants, 91, 98 Sequoia trees 72 Sheep-nut, 242 Shrew-tree, 191 Silk-cotton tree, 188 Silk grass, 259
Raffia, 258 Rafflesia flower, so Ramie, 257 Raspberries, 153 Rattan, 21 Red buckeye, 194 pepper, 150 sanders. 26,1 Sea, 6 snow, 6 willow, 204 Redwood trees, giant, 75 Reed boats, 187 Reindeer moss, 18
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INDEX Silky cornel, 204 Sisal, 255 Slime molds, 4 Sloths, 6 Smuts, 231 Soap-bark tree, 29 Soap-berry bush, 29 Soap-plant, 191 Soap-vine, 29 Soredia, 11 Sorrel. 221. 238 seeds, 234 Snake-dagger. 258 Spanish bayonet, 258 corn, 157 moss, 249 Sphagnum, 10 Spruces, 262 Spuds,143 Squaw-grass, 242 Star of Bethlehem. 272 Starry campion, 245 Sticktight, 213 Stop the Negro, 120 Strawberries. 153 Strychnine, 63 Sugar-cane, 153. 159 Sumac berries, 204 poison. 65 Sun-bittern, 14 Sundews, 88, 126, 128 "Sun" flowers, 16 Sunflowers. wild, 239 Sunroot, 241 Swamp moss, 10 Sweating cacao, 166 Sweet briar, 231 cassava, 66 cicely, 188 fern, 201 flag, 183 peppers, 149 potatoes. 146. 148 Syrian corn, 157
''Tagua," 41 Talipot palm, 43-45 Tanier, 81 Tansy, 236 Tapioca, 67 Taro, 179 Tea, grades of, 169 New Jersey, 170 of Gauchos, 173 Paraguay, 170 sassafras, 170 Tea plant, 168 Teasel, 239, 241 Tefeldi tree. 202 Thistles, 215, 230, 272 Toadstools, 64, 249 Tobacco, 19, 202, 209 Tomatoes. 148. 149 Tortoise plant, 179 Touch-me-not, 221 Travelers' palm, 20 Tree cactus, 173 Tree-ferns, 11, 21 Trefoil, 188 Trumpet-creeper, 90 Tulip tree, 217 Tumbleweeds, 187, 219 "Tuk-eya-heya," 26 Turkey mullen, 194 Turkish wheat, 157
Page 296
INDEX Turnip, Indian, 65 Twin cocoanut, 42 White daisies, 229 heather, 188 poppy, 201 Willows, 51 red, 201 weeping. 51 Witch-apples, 187 Witch-balls, 187 Witches'-besom, 187 Witch-broom, 187 Witch-alder, 187 Witch-elm, 187 Witch-grass, 231, 236 Witch-hazel, 186 Wood sorrel, 221 Worcestershire sauce, 67 Wurali poison, 61
Umbrella ants, 122
Vanilla bean orchid, 115 Venus's fly-trap, 125 Verbena tree, 79 Vetch, 239 Viburnum, 238 Victoria Regia, 80 Vines, hop, 158 north and south of equator, 90, 913 92 soap, 29 Violet trees., 79 Violets, 221 Virgin's bower, 215
Walking fern. 2, 228 Walking leaves, 4 Walking-stick insects, 1 Water-hyacinth, 108-112 Wax-palms, 25, 42 Weeping willow, 61 Whale-boats. 132 Wheat. 153
Yams, 148 Yaretta, 200 Yarrow, 235 Yaupon, 170 Yantias, 81, 179 Yeast plants. 158 Yellow-wood, 239 Yerba mate, 170 Yucca, 29
Zinnias, 265
Page 297

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WONDER PLANTS AND PLANT WONDERS

With foreword by Rod Turner

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Rod Turner August 2005

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

ii iv 1 19 33 46 56 71 89 102 114 180 110 158 179 192 211 228

253 271 279

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

But can we?

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Diatom (greatly magnified)

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Edible fungus on grub

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

plant world, for they embody many animal characteristics.

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Various form of fungi (1/3)

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Hydroid and jellyfish (X 3)

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders

Turner Williams Group Pty Ltd 2005

WonderPlants and Plant Wonders