3834 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 
serrate or incised, often irregular in shape; flowers small, in panicled umbels: pedicels 
jointed close under the flowers: panicles 7.5 to 15 em.; bracts minute, deciduous; 
styles 2 (rarely 3), persistent on the laterally compressed fruit, recurved, 
Widely spread in India, the Malay Archipelago, and the islands of the Pacific. 
Cultivated in villages and planted near houses. In Java it is used in the place of 
celery and parsley and as food. The root has an agreeable and strongly aromatic 
smell, tastes like parsley, and is used as a diuretic. In Fiji the bark is scraped off 
and is used medicinally by the natives. « 
REFERENCES: 
Nothopanas friticoswam (1. ) Mig. Fl. Ind. Bat. 1): 765. 1855. 
Panay fruticosum LL. Sp. Pl. ed. 2. 2: 1513. 1763, 
Nupe ((iuam). 
A climbing plant, not identified, the stems of which are used for lashing together 
the framework of houses and sheds. When required for use they are rendered 
Hexible by heating. After the lashing is wrapped they contract and become rigid and 
hard, so that they can not be unbent but must be cut if it is desired to remove them. 
They are durable if kept dry. Another plant with a more slender stem, used in the 
same way, is called ‘ fianiti.’’ 
Nutgrass. See Cyperus rotundus, 
Nyctaginaceae. FouR-0’CLOCK FAMILY. 
This family is represented in Guam by Mirabilis jalapa and Boerhaavia diffusa, 
Nypa fruticans. NIPA PALM, 
Family Phoenicaceae, 
Local NAMEs.—Nipa (Guam, Philippines); Parran (Ponape); Ballang (Sulu 
Archipelago ). 
An interesting, stemless, unarmed palm with pinnate leaves often growing to a 
length of 20 feet. Flowers moncecious, axillary, inclosed ina spathe; fruit a one- 
seeded drupe growing in clusters as large as a man’s head. 
This plant was introduced into Guam from the Philippines for the sake of its 
leaves, Which make excellent thatch. It has established itself at the mouth of nearly 
every stream in the island where the water becomes brackish, its graceful giant 
leaves rising from the water’s edge forming a striking feature of the landscape. The 
plant is of interest to the geologist from the fact that fossil nuts of an allied species 
are found in England in the tertiary formations at the mouth of the Thames, where 
they once floated about and embedded themselves in the mud as they now do in 
Guam and the Philippines. 
For thatching, the leaflets are stripped from the rachis and formed into a thiek 
fringe (tagon) on a reed. After having been thoroughly dried the thateh is secured 
to the framework of the roof by lashings of pandanus leaves split up the middle and 
deprived of their stiff keel. Two men work at a time on each reed, beginning at the 
eaves and working toward the ridge, which is covered with a sort of braided matting 
secured in’ place by pins passing under the ridge-pole and projecting on each side. 
The nipa is far superior to and more durable than cocoanut thatch, and is used for 
the better houses of the island, 
Preparations are made for thatching very much as for a corn-husking with 
us. The housewile begins saving up dulces and other good things months before- 
hand, The nipa leaves are collected, made into fringe, and allowed to dry. 
Pandanus leaves are collected and cured and stripped of their spiny-keeled 
midrib, When all is ready relatives and neighbors are inyited to assist, a pig 
or a bullock is killed, and the work goes on amid feasting, tuba drinking, and 
“Seemann, Flora Vitiensis, p. 115, 1865-1873. 
