490 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Indians along the Amazon River _ as 

 Cereja de Sicopira, which means Sico- 

 pira beer. The beer is said to foam 

 very copiously, and to be exceedingly 

 bitter. The wood to be identified is 

 slightly bitter, which is a character in 

 favor of Boii'dichia. Kalsch^' deter- 

 mined the specific gravity of Sebupira 

 wood to be 1.348. The sample to be 

 identified has a specific gravity of i.o, 

 which is considerably lighter than the 

 wood Kalsch investigated. The dif- 

 ference in weight, however, does not 

 prove that these are different woods. 



The transverse section shows struc- 

 tures that appear, on first glance, to be 

 successive rings of growth having parts 

 corresponding to early and late wood. 

 There is, however, a very marked dif- 

 ference between these two structures. 

 The part corresponding to late wood is 

 very dense and has a wavy outline. A 

 tangential section may therefore show- 

 both the more dense and the less dense 

 portions. Since the latter is composed 

 of wood-parenchyma fibers, one might 

 infer that the wood is light in weight 

 and rather soft; yet. on account of the 

 unusually thick walls of wood paren- 

 chyma, it is decidedly hard and very 

 brittle. The width of these tangential 

 bands varies from one-half millimeter 

 to one and one-half millimeters, with 

 an average of about one millimeter. 

 Careful observations show that these 

 contrasting structures frequently meet, 

 which proves that they are not con- 

 centric zones (annual rings). These 

 bands have such different characters 

 that the radial section shows alternat- 

 ing dark brown and lighter streaks 

 which consist, respectively, of the denser 

 and softer layers of tissue. This struc- 

 ture is so well definied in the radial 

 section that it often resembles the wood 

 of palms. 



So far, the anatomical study pre- 

 sents a great manv difficulties. The 

 wood is hard and exceedingly brittle, 

 making it almost impossible to obtain 

 good microscopic sections. The radial 

 surface shows that the wood is com- 

 posed of two kinds of tissue, which, as 

 stated, alternate with each other. The 



"Botanische Zeitung. Januar, 1863. 



darker, close-grained layers are com- 

 posed of very strongly thickened, 

 elongated wood fibers without pits, 

 while the lighter and softer ones con- 

 sist of vessels and thick-walled wood- 

 parenchyma fibers with pits. The wood 

 fibers are very closely cemented to- 

 gether. The wood-parenchyma fibers 

 are compactly arranged, while the ves- 

 sels are found scattered singly or some- 

 times in groups of two to seven in 

 radial direction within the bands of 

 wood parenchyma. The vessels con- 

 sist of numerous segments placed end 

 to end. directly communicating with 

 one another through extended pit 

 canals, but in the older wood these 

 canals are closed up and communica- 

 tion ceases. The vessels which can be 

 seen with the unaided eye in a smooth 

 cross-section are about sixteen one- 

 hundredths of a millimeter in diameter. 

 The groups of vessels within the bands 

 of wood parenchyma become greatly 

 extended, thus rendering the tangential 

 structures very irregular. 



The pith rays in a transverse section 

 are scarcely visible to the unaided eye. 

 They are more strongly thickened and 

 contain more pits than the wood- 

 parenchyma elements. The rays are 

 from two or three rows of cells wide, 

 having one row of rather wide mar- 

 ginal cells above and below. In trans- 

 verse sections they often seem to be 

 only a single cell wide. Within the 

 tangential bands of wood fibers the pith 

 rays cells have a considerablv smaller 

 horizontal diameter than within the 

 bands of wood parenchyma, which can 

 be seen to best advantage in transverse 

 sections. 



For a complete studv of this wood, it 

 is necessary to have, in addition to the 

 transverse and radial sections, two tan- 

 gential sections ; one through the dense 

 layer of wood fibers and the other 

 through that of wood parenchyma. 

 One is first struck by the presence of 

 two kinds of pits: the bordered pits in 

 the vessel walls, and the simple pits in 

 the walls of the pith-ray cells and wood- 

 parenchyma fibers. In longitudinal sec- 

 tions, the vessel walls show long, slit- 

 like pit openings which are almost as 



