BEACH PLANTS 59 



appears altogether, adventitious roots, descending from 

 various heights, forming an elaborate and sure and 

 ever-developing support. The huge, bright orange- 

 tinted fruit of the species known as Odoratissimus is 

 highly attractive in appearance, and to the uninitiated 

 offers pleasing hopes and delicious expectations. It 

 is, however, delusive, being constituted of woody 

 drupes in close clusters collected into a globular head, 

 with meagre yellow pulp at the base of each group, 

 the pulp having an aromatic and unsatisfactory flavour. 

 Each drupe contains an oblong oval kernel, pleasant 

 to the taste, but so trivial in size as to be hardly worth 

 the trouble of extraction unless there is little else to 

 occupy attention save the pangs of hunger. These 

 defects do not detract from the parade of the tree — 

 picturesque, singular, and replete with interest to the 

 observer of the infinite variety of the vegetation of 

 the tropics. 



The cockatoo apple {Carey a australis), which has 

 several useful quaUties, flourishes exceedingly. The 

 ripe fruit, green and insipid, was wont to be eaten by 

 the blacks, bark from the branches was twisted into 

 fishing-lines, that of the roots used for poisoning fish, 

 while the leaves, heated over the fire until the oil exuded, 

 were applied to bruised and aching parts of the body. 

 Extraordinary tenacity of life distinguished the tree, 

 the axe, fire, and poison failing under some circum- 

 stances to vanquish it. 



Another and closely related member of the same 

 Family (Myrtaceae) is Barringtonia speciosa, which, so 

 far as local experience is to be trusted, is restricted 

 to the beaches, growing lustily in pure sand at the very 

 verge of high-water mark. The glossy leaves of this 

 many-branched tree often exceed a foot in length; the 

 flowers, too, are large and singular in style, the petals 



