544: The Andes and the Amazons. 



has a sack-like spatbe, used for caps and for making cloth, 

 and large, rough, brown, corky fruits. 



OEnocakpus. — The Palms of this group have the pinnae 

 numerously and strongly plicate, a broom-like spadix, and 

 the base of the petioles purplish or lead-colored. The (E. 

 distichus, Mart., or " Baccaba " of the Lower and Middle 

 Amazons, is a stately, elegant tree, sixty feet high, with a 

 straight, smooth stem, and a flattened crown of a dark- 

 green color. The black, oily fruit grows in bunches weigh- 

 ing thirty or forty pounds, and is used like that of the As- 

 sai in making a beverage. (E. minor, Mart., called " Bac- 

 caba-i," is from fifteen to thirty feet high, but not over 

 three inches in diameter, with glossy leaves eight and a 

 half feet long, having about sixty pairs of pinnae, abrupt- 

 ly acuminate and five-plicate. It is found on the Brazil- 

 ian Amazons and Rio ISTegro. (E.pataud, a giant among 

 Palms, stands from eighty to one hundred feet, with leaves 

 nearly half that length. The pinnae are very numerous, 

 and measure four feet and a half long by four or five inch- 

 es wide ; each has fourteen or fifteen deep folds. The 

 veins of the leaf-sheaths are the i-eady-made arrows which 

 the Indians shoot from the blow-gun. The fruit is gray- 

 ish-purple, and affords a creamy, sweetish liquor. It occurs 

 on the Brazilian Amazons and Rio Negro. CE. multicau- 

 lis, Spruce, or " Sinami," grows in clusters (six to ten from 

 the same rhizoma) about Tarapoto, near the Huallaga, fif- 

 teen to thirty feet high, with a diameter of four or five 

 inches. The leaves, about ten feet long, bear sixty pairs 

 of plicated pinnae. 



Raphia tcedigera, Mart., or " Jupati," is famous for its 

 long shaggy leaves, which measure from forty to fifty feet, 

 rolling out from the top in graceful curves, forming a 

 magnificent plume. It is also the only scaly-fruited Palm 

 in America that has pinnate leaves, in this respect resem- 



