THE PALM TREES OF BRAZIL. 



393 



the fronds to their very tips. When the size of the leaves of some of 

 the Amazonian palms is recalled — as large as a man can carry — ^it 

 will be recognized that these bundles must be very strong. 



The fibro-vascular bundles pass out from the palm 

 trunk into the fronds. In Gray's text-book of botany 

 a short longitudinal section of a palm trunk is shown, 

 in which these bundles are represented as coming to 

 the surface very much at random. As a matter of 

 fact they reach the surface only at the leaf scars.* 



The most important use to which palm trunks are fig. 8. Cross section 

 put is probably the manufacture of rattan or 'cane' °'' ^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ 



r r J SHOWING THE USUAL 



used to bottom chairs. The rattan palm (Calamus) arrangement of the 

 does not grow in Brazil, but the Jacitara and Urum- fibro-vascular bun- 



c' ' DLES. 



bc4mba (Desmoncus) are palms of similar habits, 



though they do not seem to lend themselves to 

 this sort of use as readily as the Calamus. 



Foliage. — The foliage of the trunked palm, 

 unlike that of most plants, is all at the summit 

 of the single stem.f 



The fronds of most of them form a compact 

 s\Tnmetrical cluster, but there is one kind of 

 hacdba (Oenocarpus distichus) that has its 

 fronds arranged in a single plane like a gigantic 

 open fan. 



The gracefulness of palms is mostly due to 

 the symmetry of the plants combined with the 

 flexibility of the fronds and leaflets. In the 

 length and size of their leaves many of the palms 

 surpass all other forms of vegetation. In detail 

 the foliage varies quite as much as do the trunks. 

 The palmate leaf from which the 'palm leaf fans' 

 are made is familiar to every one. Some of the 

 palmate leaves, however, reach an almost in- 

 credible size. The great murity of the Amazonas 

 region often has its palmate leaves so large that 

 a man, unaided, cannot lift a single leaf. The 

 palmate leaves are entire, as a rule, but there is 

 at least one species that has the leaf deeply bifid 

 or split down the middle into two equal parts. 



Fig. 9. Section of a 

 Palm Trunk showing the 

 Relation of the Fibro- 

 vascular Bundles to the 

 Frond Basks. 



* Tlie course and growth of the fibro-vascular bundles in palms. 'Proe. Am. 

 Phil. Sec.,' 1884, XXI., 459-483. 



t The branching doom palm of Africa (Hypliaene thebaicaj is the only ex- 

 ception to this rule. There is an Areca that forks near the base, and the date 

 palm puts out shoots at or near the base of the trunk. 



