332 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
A recent publication on the German colonies contains a photo- 
eraph of a group of apparently thriving coconut palms at Misa- 
hoche, in the interior of the Togo colony in West Africa, but no 
statement is made regarding them.4 
Coconut palms are grown in large numbers on limestone soils in 
interior districts of the Yucatan peninsula, especially about the city 
of Merida, and they are also said to thrive on the Pacific side of 
Mexico, around the volcano of Colima. They are also reported by 
Mr. G. N. Collins at Acala, a town in the State of Chiapas, in an 
arid interior district with a natural growth of cacti and other desert 
plants. 
Humboldt remarked particularly the vigorous condition of the 
coconut palms found by him in the interior of Venezuela and Colom- 
bia, which he considered as an anomalous fact in the distribution of 
a’ maritime species. Sir Richard Burton mentions the coconut palm 
as flourishing and very productive in interior districts of Brazil that 
have alkaline soils which he recognized as a practical substitute for 
“sea air.’ ? 
More recent testimony to the existence of the coconut palm in 
interior localities of South America is that of Prof. H. Pittier, a 
special agent of the Department of Agriculture, who makes the 
following statement: 
Until 1891, | had no notion of that species bearing fruit at any great distance from 
the seashore or high above the sea level, but when, on behalf of the Intercontinental 
Railway Commission, I crossed the Azuero peninsula from Remedios to Santiago de 
Veragua, in the present Republic of Panama, I was surprised to see groves of coconut 
palms surrounding the houses in the high savannas of Tolé, more than 365 meters 
above sea level. The sites of many houses in the valley of Tabasara were marked 
by isolated coconut trees, This, however, did not seem so very wonderful on account 
of the proximity of the sea, and at Tolé the inhabitants attributed the fine condition 
of the palms to their being fully exposed to the sea breeze. But in 1905, when we 
entered through Buenaventura into the Dagua Valley of Colombia, we began to 
notice coconut trees as soon as we reached the drier region of the interior, at an alti- 
tude of over 2,000 feet. On the inner watershed of the Western Cordillera, near a 
hostelry and on the brink of a precipitous slope, another beautiful specimen was 
found at about 4,800 feet above sea level. In the Cauca plain, in the interior of 
Colombia, at a mean level of over 900 meters, in a warm, temperate climate, with 
extreme conditions of wet and dry seasons, groves of coconut palms were seen every- 
where. (PI. 66, fig. 1.) The people of the Cauca Valley did not seem to distinguish 
their variety from the one growing on the seashore at Buenaventura, but Dr. Evaristo 
Garcia, a noted naturalist and physician of Calf, assured me that coconuts brought 
into the valley from the seabeach do not thrive. 
In the Cordillera de Santa Marta I have seen several coconut trees on the hills 
around San Andrés at nearly 1,090 meters of elevation, and the palm seemed to be 
quite familiar to the Indians. All over Central America the coconut palm is also 
@ Wohltmann, I’., Kultur-und-Vegetations Bilder aus unseren Deutschen Colonien, 
pl. 52. 
6 Burton, R., Highlands of Brazil, vol. 2, pp. 264, 280. (London, 1869.) 
