H 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 307. 



man, that it has every appearance of being indigenous on 

 the shores of east tropical America. 



The Cocoanut Palm is a magnificent plant, well named 

 "a prince of the vegetable kingdom," with tall slender 

 columnar stem eighty or a hundred feet high, and rich 

 pale yellow-green leaves which are thirty or forty feet long 

 and flutter and rustle with every breath of wind. 



The Cocoanut grows only near the shore, where its roots 

 penetrating the sandy soil may drink freely from clear 

 underground springs. Of all trees it is the most useful to 

 man, furnishing food, shelter and employment to hundreds 

 of thousands of the human race. In tropical countries, 

 especially in southern India and in Malaya, the Cocoanut 

 supplies to whole communities the chief necessities of life. 

 Every part is useful ; the roots are considered a remedy 

 against fevers ; from the trunk houses, boats and furniture 

 are made ; the leaves furnish the thatch for houses and the 

 material from which baskets, hats, mats and innumerable 

 other articles are made ; the network of fibres at their base 

 is used for sieves and is woven into cloth : from the young 

 flower-stalks a Palm-wine, called toddy, is obtained, from 

 which arrak, a fiery alcoholic drink, is distilled. The value 

 of the fruit is well known. From the husk, which is called 

 coir, commercially, cordage, bedding, mats, brushes and 

 other articles are manufactured. In the tropics, lamps, 

 drinking-vessels and spoons are made from the hard shells. 

 The albumen of the seed contains large quantities of oil, 

 used in the east for cooking and in illuminating ; in Europe 

 and the United States it is often made into soap and can- 

 dles, yielding, after the oil is extracted, a refuse valuable 

 as food for cattle, or as a fertilizer. In some parts of the 

 tropics the kernel of the seed forms the chief food of the 

 inhabitants. The cool, milky fluid which fills the cavity 

 of the fruit when the nut is young, affords an agreeable 

 beverage, and the albumen of the young nut, which is soft 

 and jelly-like, is nutritious and of a delicate flavor. 



As might be expected in the case of a plant of such value, 

 it is often carefully and extensively cultivated in many 

 countries, and numerous varieties, differing in the size, 

 shape and quality of the fruit, are now known. The Co- 

 coanut is propagated by seeds ; the nuts are sown in nur- 

 sery-beds, and at the end of six or eight months the 

 seedlings are large enough to plant. The plants are usually 

 set twenty-five feet apart each way in carefully prepared 

 beds filled with rich surface-soil. Once established, a plan- 

 tation of Cocoanuts requires little care beyond watering, 

 which is necessary in its early years to ensure a rapid and 

 vigorous growth. In good soil the trees usually begin to 

 flower at the end of five or six years, and may be expected 

 to be in full bearing in from eight to twelve years. Thirty 

 nuts from a tree is considered a fair average yield, although 

 individual trees have been known to produce an aver- 

 age of three hundred nuts during a period of ten years. 

 An application of manure increases the yield of the trees, 

 although, probably, the value of the additional crop ob- 

 tained in this way is hardly large enough to justify much 

 expenditure. 



In recent years the Cocoanut has been cultivated on a 

 very large scale in British Honduras, Jamaica and other 

 parts of Central America, as well as on the northern 

 coast of South America and the West Indies. The con- 

 sumption of cocoanuts in the United States has become very 

 large, as many as twenty millions being imported to this 

 country every year. They are brought largely in steamers 

 with other cargoes, although there are sailing vessels en- 

 gaged in this trade exclusively, and last month two 

 schooners discharged in this city, respectively, 170,000 

 and 260,000 nuts. Those which come from San Bias are 

 considered the most desirable, since they shell more 

 easily, while the meat is richer in oil and retains its 

 flavor longer than others. Those from Baracoa are 

 larger, but they lack oil and flavor, and cost less. After 

 they are unloaded the nuts are sorted here and di- 

 vided into three grades, according to size. The present 

 price for select nuts from San Bias is $28.00 a thousand, 



from Jamaica $25.00, and from Baracoa $20.00, while the 

 other grades are correspondingly lower ; the lowest class, 

 known to the trade as "eggs," brings only $16.00 a thou- 

 sand. More than one-half of all the cocoanuts imported 

 are bought by the confectioners, a single firm in New 

 York using as many as forty thousand a month, and it is 

 possible to fill this large standing order because importa- 

 tions are made all the year round. Of the remainder the 

 larger portion goes to the desiccating establishments, while 

 only a few are now sold in the stores in their natural con- 

 dition. 



The Mexican Ash. 



OF the beautiful Mexican Ash, Fraxinus Berlandieriana, 

 Mr. C. G. Pringle, who has lately returned to his 

 home in Vermont from another successful Mexican journey, 

 chiefly devoted to exploring the flora of the state of 

 Jalisco, writes : 



In October I visited Michoacan once more, and made a 

 longer tour than ever before through the mountainous regions 

 beyond Patzenaro. There, at last, I found the Mexican Ash in 

 its native habitat. It was nowhere abundant, but widely scat- 

 tered over the hills and in various situations, quite in the way 

 of Fraxinus Americana on the hills of Vermont. Similar con- 

 ditions to these in which I found the Ash extend eastward 

 from Michoacan through the states of Mexico and Puebla and 

 Hidalgo on the left-hand, and Guerrero and Oaxaca on the 

 right ; and, without doubt, the range of this species extends 

 through the highlands of all these states. As might be ex- 

 pected, its size when growing in natural conditions was not 

 very large. 



In the cities of the Mexican table-lands, excepting in Chihua- 

 hua, no species is so much planted in parks, plazas and 

 avenues as this Ash. Along streams beyond the city limits it 

 is to be found, probably disseminated from the town-planted 

 trees. It is worthy of being so generally used in plantations, 

 for it attains noble dimensions and presents a broad head of 

 dense dark green foliage. The color of the bark is darker 

 than that of Fraxinus Americana ; it is hard, only an inch or 

 an inch and a half thick even on the oldest trees, and its fur- 

 rows are shallow, interrupted and about an inch apart. The 

 largest specimen I have seen overshadows half the plaza in 

 the city of Guadalajara ; it is about fifty ieet tall, and the trunk, 

 five feet above the surface of the soil, has a circumference of 

 17 ' , feet. The trunks of two specimens which form part of a 

 long avenue of venerable trees in the same city measure re- 

 spectively I3 2 3 feet and wyi feet in circumference. 



It is this Ash which visitors through the valley in which 

 stands the city of Mexico always admire, and which they 

 speak of as one of the most beautiful of shade-trees. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



Yms Coigneti.e. — Considerable interest in this plant has 

 been aroused in England since it became known that it is 

 the same as a vine which has been in the collection of Mr. 

 Anthony Waterer, at Knap Hill, many years, and which, 

 while it has delighted every one who has seen it in its 

 brilliant autumn colors, has persistently refused to be 

 propagated. The Knap Hill plant is an enormous speci- 

 men, and clambers over a building and an old tree-trunk, 

 and the brilliant red of its thousands of large leathery 

 leaves in September or October is worth going a long way 

 to see. A well-known English amateur who had lately 

 seen the plant at Knap Hill came to Kew to inquire about 

 it, for, to use his own language, he "could not sleep since 

 he saw the plant and was informed that he could not obtain 

 a specimen of it. " The information recently published in 

 Garden and Forest concerning V. Coignetia? has this week 

 been copied into the Gardeners' Chronicle. The plant is 

 certain to become a favorite here. 



Pueraria Thunbergiana. — The magnificent specimen of 

 this plant represented in the picture in Garden and Forest, 

 vol. vi., p. 505, is likely to call the attention of horticul- 

 turists to its value as a hardy climber. I have known the 

 plant about ten years, but never saw it except at Kew, 



