102 American Horticultural Society. 



a hiilf above the pround, either raise the stem, as it were, upon a soaffoldinR, 

 or riurrouiKl it with thick butlressed." Far more wuiidcrful accounts of thia 

 strant;e phenomenon have been observed by others. Mr. A. Smitli says of 

 the Iriartea exorrhiza that it " is the tallest-growing species, and its cone of 

 roots is sometimes so high that a man can stand in tlie center witli the tall 

 trees above his head. These ai-rial roots, being covered with little asperities, 

 are commonly used by the Indians as graters." 



Mr. Berthold Seeman tells us that he became acquainted with asinguliir 

 instrument when he made an excursion one evening through Panama. 

 This instrument was used by his native servant to crush cocoa-nut kernels 

 to a pulp to prepare them for food. It had somewhat of a resemblance to a 

 cylinder full of prickles, as we see pins in the barrels of street organs or 

 music-boxes. Seeman would never have imagined what it in reality was. 

 It was an ai-rial root of a palm. Later on he saw the tree himself, and could 

 study more closely its formation ; it was the air-root of the Pashinba or Zi- 

 mara palm (Iriartea exorrhiza). 



Dr. Siegfr Reissek thinks that the trunks of many palms in advanced 

 age die entirely away near the ground, und are reduced to dust, so that 

 nothing remains of the original tree to the height of four to six feet. These 

 are the palms which stand single. It has been asked, how can they stand 

 erect, and continue to grow, being deprived of their supporting base and 

 roots? It has been replied that they have had to create a new pfint iVdppui 

 and new organs of nutrition, and that their stems have thrown out air roots, 

 such as we observe sometimes on the stalks of our corn, and that these they 

 have implanted in the soil during the decay of the base of the trunk. 



We see stems of the Iriartea on conic scaffolds of aC-rial roots which 

 havw fastened themselves solidly in the soil on all sides. The view of such a 

 scaHold of roots maybe compared with the frame of a tent made of conically 

 converging poles. The trunk is now suspended entirely free from the soil 

 on this scailold of roots, and is in this manner raised often six or seven feet 

 from the ground, carrying a stem of sixty or seventy feet free in the air. 



The traits which we have just cited of the siem of the palms show suHi- 

 ciently that they difler entirely from the trunks of our forest trees. This 

 difference extends not only to its external appearance, but also to its internal • 

 structure. We look in vain for wood in palms, as we posses-* it in our trees ; 

 in vain for a bark, as on our trees. No heart, with its yearly layers of rings, 

 is to be found; no bark which can be separated from the wood. Tiio whole 

 body of the trunk of the palm may be considered as a gigantic bundle of 

 fibers inclosed in a hard shell. If we cut a Spanish cane across, we can see 

 very well how the libers run and how the stem is constructed. It may be 

 compared to artificial whalebone, consisting of horse-hair glued and pressed 

 together. 



The peculiar structure of the palm stem, which corresponds with the 

 type of the Monocotyledons, is not without intrinsic influence on certain of 

 •its external phenomena. The trunk of the jiilni is elastic and flexible in a 



