The Palm-Woeld. 537 



Palms have a wonderful development of the organs of 

 fructitication — a single individual bearing half a million 

 of flowers. Yet the number of trees representing a species 

 is not in proportion. This is mainly due to the fact that 

 the fruit is frequently aborted, or forms the food of hosts 

 of animals — insects, birds, and mammals. Some species 

 flower annually ; others only once in a life-time. Palms 

 furnish man with many important products — wood and 

 leaves for habitations, bark and leaves for cloth and cord- 

 age, buds and fruit for food.* 



At the beginning of this century, only twenty-three spe- 

 cies of Palms were known to the scientific world. Now, 

 mainly through the labors of Humboldt and Bonpland, 

 Spix and Martins, Poeppig, Wallace, Spruce, Wendland, 

 and Griesbach, in the New World, and of Blume and Grif- 

 fith in the Old, we distinguish nearly 600 species. These belt 

 the earth between the latitudes of New Zealand and South 

 Carolina. Humboldt was right in calling South America 

 " the most beautiful portion of the palm-world." Certain- 

 ly, it yields to no continent in exuberance and variety. 

 Europe has but one species, and Africa comparatively few; 

 India is the only rival. There are 275 American forms, 

 and, probably, 75 of these are peculiar to the Amazonas.f 

 Palms have small power of migration ; and it does not ap- 

 pear that any species is able to cross the ocean without 

 the aid of man. They are distributed between the sea- 



* Dr. Spruce discovered an "alternation of function" in Palms. "In May, 

 1852, 1 found a small plot of ground in the forest covered vi'ith plants of a 

 delicate Palm, a species of Geonoma, growing about ten feet high. The 

 plants were all females, and bore young fruits. On revisiting the spot in the 

 same month of the following year, I saw, to my astonishment, the very same 

 plants all bearing male flowers alone! But the mystery disappeared when, 

 on examination, I made out that male and female spadiees must have alter- 

 nated all the way up the stem." 



t Quite a number of Palms on the Andean slopes of Ecuador and Peru 

 still remain undesciibed. The true Palm climate is that of the Amazons 

 valley, 81°. 



