220 



main trunk of about 12 to 25 feet in height up to the first 

 branches, whence the main axis persists in diminished volume, 

 but usually erect and easily recognizable, to the top of the tree- 

 The main trunk, especially if one includes the basal buttresses, often 

 has an enormous girth. According to Cook and Collins (/. r.) 

 " a specimen near Ponce measured 36 meters at 4 feet from the 

 ground, by following the sinuosities of the trunk." The main 

 branches are very long, widely spreading and nearly horizontal, 

 so that the horizontal diameter of the crown is sometimes more 

 than twice as great as the total height of the tree. This feature 

 is excellently illustrated in the Porto Rican tree of which a pho- 

 tograph is published by Cook and Collins (/. c. pi. 2^) and less 

 well by our Figures 2 and 6. The great spreading branches of 

 the tree shown in our Figure 3 — a photograph of a tree standing 

 on the bank of a river on the borders of the city of Ponce, Porto 

 Rico — were put to good service at the time of the destructive 

 Porto Rican hurricane and flood in August, 1899, when, it is 

 said, many people saved themselves from drowning by taking 

 refuge among the branches of this great tree. In Cuba and 

 Jamaica, however, according to various reports, the Cdba (" seiba" 

 or "saba") sometimes takes on another form, the massive trunk 

 running up to a height of from thirty to eighty feet * without a 

 branch and then deliquescing into a comparatively small crown. 

 Our Figure 4 illustrates such a tree growing at Mandeville, 

 Jamaica. Mr. Norman Taylor, recently returned from a collec- 

 ting expedition to the Sierra Maestra, near Santiago, Cuba, 

 informs the writer that this form or one with a less flattened 

 crown, is the prevailing one in the forests of that region. Pro- 

 fessor Carl F. Baker, botanist of the Estacion Agronomica 

 Central of Cuba, also has told the writer that the form with the 

 long trunk and less widely spreading crown is common in other 

 parts of Cuba. The following paragraph from Macfadyen's Flora 

 of Jamaica (93. 1837) gives a graphic description of this tree as 

 it occurs in that island : 



"This is a tree of rapid growth, and is readily propagated from 

 stakes or posts planted in the ground. A superb row of these trees at 



*Lunan, Hortus Jamaicensis i: 243. 1S14. Macfadyen, Flora of Jamaica, 92. 

 1837. Havard, Plant World 4 : 222. 1901. 



