106 PALMS OF THE LLANOS. 



bute this difference to the shelter afforded by the palnvfcrees, 

 in preventing the solar rays from drying and burning up 

 the soil. I have seen, it is true, trees of this family, in the 

 forests of the Orinoco, spreading a tufted foliage ; but we 

 cannot say much for the shade of the palm-tree of the llanos, 

 the palma de cobija* which has but a few folded and palmate 

 leaves, like those of the chamaerops, and of which the lower- 

 most are constantly withered. We were surprised to see 

 that almost all these trunks of the corypha were nearly of 

 the same size, viz., from twenty to twenty-four feet high, 

 and from eight to ten inches diameter at the foot. Nature 

 has produced few species of palm-trees in such prodigious 

 numbers. Amidst thousands of trunks loaded with olive- 

 shaped fruits we found about one hundred without fruit. 

 May we suppose that there are some trees with flowers 

 purely monoecious, mingled with others furnished with her- 

 maphrodite flowers ? 



The Llaneros, or inhabitants of the plains, believe that 

 all these trees, though so low, are many centuries old. 

 Their growth is almost imperceptible, being scarcely to be 

 noticed in the lapse of twenty or thirty years. The wood 

 of the palma de cobija is excellent for building. It is so 

 hard, that it is difficult to drive a nail into it. The leaves, 

 folded like a fan, are employed to cover the roofs of the huts 

 scattered through the Llanos; and these roofs last more 

 than twenty years. The leaves are fixed by bending the 

 extremity of the footstalks, which have been beaten before- 

 hand between two stones, so that they may bend without 

 breaking. 



Beside the solitary trunks of this palm-tree, we find dis- 

 persed here and there in the steppes a few clumps, real 

 groves (palmares), in which the corypha is intermingled 

 with a tree of the proteaceous family, called chaparro by the 

 natives. It is a new species of rhopala,t with hard and 

 resonant leaves. The little groves of rhopala are called 

 chaparales; and it may be supposed that, in a vast plain, 

 where only two or three species of trees are to be found, 



* The roofing palm-tree (Corypha tectorum). 



f Resembling the Embothrium, of which we found no species in Soutk 

 America. The embothriums are represented in American vegetation by 

 the genera Lomatia and Oreocallis. 



