PALM 



4462 



PALM 



Habits of Growth. Most of the members of 

 the palm family are towering giants, some of 

 them reaching heights of eighty to 100 feet, 

 with straight, branchless trunks surmounted by 

 magnificent tufts or rosettes of waving leaves, 



a -Date Palm 

 b-Cabbage Palmeiio 



Of threads of palm was the carpet spun 

 Whereon he kneels when the day is done, 

 And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as one ! 



To him the palm is a gift divine, 

 Wherein all uses of man combine 

 House and raiment and food and wine ! 



And, in the hour of his great release, 

 His need of the palm thall only ceate 

 With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace. 



"Allah II Allah !" he sings his psalm, 

 On the Indian Sea, by the Isies or balm ; 

 "Thanks to Allah, who gives the palm !" 



WHITTIER: The Palm-Tree. 



and sheathed in shaggy masses, composed of 

 the dead leaves of other years. The doom 

 palm, cherished by the Arabs, is almost the 

 only variety possessing a branched stem. There 

 are dwarf palms, growing very low; palms that 

 creep like vines; and still others, like the rat- 

 tans (or ratans), that have stems hundreds of 



feet long and leaves with hooked ends, by 

 means of which the plants climb from tree to 

 tree. 



The small greenish or yellowish blossoms 

 that hang in great clusters on the palm tree 

 are enclosed in sheaths which in some species 

 literally explode into bloom. In many varieties 

 the male and female or staminate and pistil- 

 late flowers grow on different trees, and na- 

 tives, following the custom handed down from 

 father to son, though without knowing the 

 scientific reason, fertilize the blossoms of one 

 tree by placing among them the blossoms of 

 another. 



A Servant cf Man. There is a poem of Whit- 

 tier's called The Palm-Tree which tells some of 

 the many hundreds cf ways in which the palm 

 makes itself useful to mankind. He describes 

 a ship on the Indian Sea a ship made of palm 

 wood, with its sails and ropes woven from palm 

 fiber, its master eating and drinking the prod- 

 ucts of the tree, his dress and turban fashioned 

 from the fiber of its leaves, and the very prayer 

 carpet on which he kneels spun from "threads 

 of palm." A part of the poem is given under 

 the illustration accompanying this article. 



From the trunk of the date and palmyra 

 palms, especially, comes timber for houses, fur- 

 niture, fences, ships, spars and wharves. The 

 palmetto is particularly useful for wharf piles, 

 since its corky wood is not easily rotted by 

 water or destroyed by barnacles. The stems of 

 the rattan furnish the flexible material from 

 which wicker furniture and men's walking sticks 

 are made. 



From the pithy trunk of the sago palm and 

 cabbage palmetto is secured the starchy meal 

 called sago. The bud that grows at the top of 

 the cabbage palmetto is sometimes cut out by 

 natives, even though to do so means destroying 

 the tree ; boiled, this bud tastes much like cab- 

 bage. The sap of different species yields palm 

 sugar, or jaggery, palm honey, palm wine, vine- 

 gar, or the spirit called arrack. The spines, 

 which in some branches of the family grow 

 from the leaf scars on the trunk, serve as 

 needles for the women and as arrowheads and 

 fishhooks for the men. In other varieties the 

 scars exude a valuable resin or, as in the case 

 of the wax palm of Peru, a vegetable wax, 

 which is used in making candles. 



The great leaves of the palmyra and most 

 other palms are used for thatching native dwell- 

 ings and for walls, screens and bedding. In 

 South America a mother will put her baby to 

 sleep in a cradle made from a gigantic palm 



