The fruits of palms with which people of the temperate regions are best acquainted are dates and coco nuts. But these particular fruits are known chiefly because, besides being available as fruits, they are capable of being transported long distances and of being readily kept for a long time without danger of decay. In their native tropical countries many other palms yield valuable fruits but they do not, as a rule, admit of transportation or delay in using. In the Amazonas valley especially, the inhabitants make a delightful beverage, known as assai, from the fruit of the assai palm (Euterpe oleracea). A stranger visiting the market in Pará for the first time is impressed by the quantities of this thick, purple, chocolate-like fluid on sale. In appearance it is rather repulsive at first, but it improves greatly upon acquaintance. From the fruit of the baccába palm is made a beverage very like that of the assaí. A similar drink, but of a milky color, is made of the fruit of the piassába on the upper Rio manner: FIG. 20. THE NUT OF A PALM USED FOR JEWELRY. Negro. A drink is make from the mirity* palm in quite a different the tree is cut down and a hole cut in the upper side of the prostrate trunk. This opening soon fills with a nearly transparent liquid very like the milk of the coco nut. When allowed to stand and ferment this makes the murity wine-an intoxicating beverage. Along the coast south of Pernambuco, and especially in the State of Bahia, is a palm, known as the dendé, the pulp of whose fruit is used in making oil that is extensively used in cooking. This oil has a bright orange color and is prepared by bruising the pulp of the nuts, putting it in cold water and skimming off the oil as it rises to the surface, after which it is boiled down. Illuminating oil is likewise made from the kernel of the dendé nuts. Many of the palm nuts are covered by edible pulp. Several species of Bactris bear fruits the size of a walnut whose acid pulp is very pleasant when ripe. In the Amazonas valley is a palm known as the This palm, the Mauritia vinifera, is called mirity and murity in the Amazonas region, but further south it is called burity; in the Paraguay valley region it is called mburity. peach palm on account of its pulpy fruit. In the highlands of Brazil a small palm, a species of coco, known as the 'chifre do boi' or 'oxhorn' has a nut about the size and shape of a nutmeg. There is but little hull or flesh on the outside of it, but it is thick, black and very hard—almost impossible to crack. These pits are utilized by jewelers to make brooches, pendants and such like ornaments. For these purposes they are carved into attractive shapes, usually flowerlike, mounted in gold and set with diamonds. The jewelers of Diamantina, in the State of Minas Geraes, are very skilful in the manufacture of this kind of jewelry. FIG. 22. NUTS OF THE Urucury USED FOR SMOKING RUBBER. Urucury Nuts. One of the most peculiar uses to which a plant fruit is put is in the preparation of rubber in the valley of the Amazonas. It is the nut of a particular species that is used for this purpose that of the urucury (Attalea excelsa).* When the milk of the rubber tree is gathered it is of the consistency of thick cream. It is prepared for the market by being dried in the smoke of a fire made of the nuts of the urucury palm. A flat paddle-shaped board is wet in the milk and then held over the smoke as it issues from the top of a chimney-pot-like tile a foot or so in height, resting upon stones and with the fire built beneath it. The nuts of this palm are often carried long distances for this rubber smoking. Many of the palm nuts yield rich oils, and these are used to a greater or less extent, especially in the interior, in cooking, in the manufacture of soap and for illuminating purposes. Special Cases.-The carnaúba palm (Copernicia cerifera, Mart.) grows naturally on the marshy uplands of northeastern Brazil, where it is put to many uses by the natives. The trunk is split for rafters, posts and fences; the leaves are used for food for cattle, for thatch, for cordage and for hats; the fruits and the growing bud are eaten; the roots are used for medicinal purposes, and from the leaves is prepared a yellowish wax that is used for candles. The same palm is abundant through the Gran Chaco region of the Rio Paraguay, where it forms immense open forests that stretch as far as the eye can The nut of this palm is about the size of a man's fist, dry and without a pulpy covering, and the shell is very thick and hard. Whether there is a real virtue in the smoke of the urucury nuts, I do not know; the rubber gatherers insist that smoke made by other palm nuts or with wood will not answer the purpose. 'Notice sur le palmier carnaúba.' Par M. A. de Macedo. Paris, 1867. reach across the vast marshy meadows. In that part of the continent it is not so extensively used,* but it is nevertheless one of the chief building timbers of that region, and its fruits are eaten by the natives, the tender phylophore is eaten as a vegetable, while the leaves are used for thatch, for fans, straw hats and cordage. This carnaúba, or carandá, ac it is called in the upper Paraguay region, is one of a few social palms. The Coco.-The coco palm (or cocoa as we erroneously call it) is not a native of South America, but it is extensively grown, especially along the sandy seashore from Caravellas, Bahia, northward. From Caravellas to the mouth of the Amazon, a distance of about two thousand miles, probably half the way the beach is flat and sandy and is actually used for growing coco palms. And it is worthy of note that these sandy beaches are of little or no value for other agricultural purposes. Almost everywhere these coco-palm groves are thickly though not conspicuously inhabited. The villages and even towns of considerable size that spring up in the groves are made up for the most part of people of the poorer classes who pass here an ideal tropical life. The posts and lath of the houses are made of the palm trunks, the roofs are made of the leaves, their food and drink are taken from the inside coco shells; the nuts are eaten green and ripe in a *Herbert H. Smith thinks this palm different from the carnaúba of Ceará ('Do Rio de Janeiro a Cuyaba,' p. 366), but Barbosa Rodriguez, the Brazilian botanist, says they are the same ('Palmæ mattogrossenses,' p. 1). Morong reports the Copernicia cerifera and describes two new species from Paraguay. 'Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci.,' VII., 245-247. |