284 THE FLORA OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA part hi 



The coco-nut palm, however, is more restricted in distri- 

 bution than in utility. The natives have a proverb that it will 

 not grow out of sight of the sea ; this is practically correct, 

 although we found a grove at Charra on the Tana, a day's 

 march from the coast, and the missionaries have also planted 

 some trees a day farther inland at Borabini, where they 

 yield, however, only a scanty crop of fruit. The coco-nut 

 palm is replaced in the interior by the branching Dum Palm 

 {HypJia^ne thebaica, Mart.), known to the Suahili as the 

 " mlala." It forms dense forests a few miles from the sea, and 

 extends for a considerable distance inland along the banks of 

 the larger rivers ; in British East Africa, for example, it 

 occurs at Tzavo, 130 miles up the course of the Sabaki, and 

 there is a small clump of dwarfed forms at the southern end of 

 Basso Narok.^ Emin ^ reports them in the Nile Valley as far 

 south as Lado in latitude 5°'20 N. In full-grown specimens 

 of this palm the stem bifurcates, and each branch may divide 

 again once or twice, so that it appears very different in form 

 from the familiar coco-nut or date palms. The fruit consists of 

 a cluster of hard brown nuts (more correctly drupes), which 

 in colour and taste resemble ginger-bread full of chopped-up 

 horse-hair. People who have been accustomed to this as food 

 seem able to thrive on it, but to others it is poison. Our 

 men on the Tana would at first insist on eating it, but as 

 it led to severe attacks of dysentery we had to prohibit its 

 use. 



The third palm common on the coast zone is the most grace- 

 ful of the three — the Borassiis flabellifer, Linn., the " mvuma " 

 of the Suahili, the " doleb " of the Nile, and generally known as the 

 Palmyra Palm. Its most striking feature is the spindle-shaped 

 stem, which is thickest at about half its height from the ground, 

 and tapers both to root and crown. In Eastern British East 

 Africa it does not appear to extend far inland ; I did not see it 

 farther from the sea than a little above our camp at Vuju on 

 the Tana. It occurs, however, on the Nile farther south than 

 the dum palm, for Emin^ found it at Dufile, a short distance 

 to the north of Mwutan Nzige (the Albert Nyanza). 



The only palms that seem to thrive in the interior are a 



^ Shown in Hohnel's view, Zum Rudolf-See, p. 705. 

 - Emin Pasha in Cetit>-al Africa (1888), p. 401. ^ Ibid. p. 11. 



