468 WEST AFRICAN FORESTS AND FORESTRY 
of the one from which the original seed was obtained. A similar 
process takes place on a bigger scale in the more distantly situated 
forests, where the natives do not collect the fruit at all. Here, all 
the nuts gradually fall off the tree, more or less forming a circle 10 to 
15 feet away from the trunk. If any clearings take place in these 
localities, they rapidly appear to become filled up with Oil Palms, 
which in reality were already there as little tiny seedlings amongst 
the herbs and undergrowth, ready to make use of any additional 
light or growing space to develop fully. 
4. FrRvIT-BEARING AGE oF Ou Patm.—Under these conditions, 
where the seedling Oil Palms stand only a few inches, or at the most 
4 or 5 feet apart, the growth is very constricted, with the result that no 
flowers or fruit appear before the fifteenth or twentieth year. Each 
stem is excessively thin, and tends to grow upwards like an ordinary 
forest tree, rather than forming a very short, almost negligible length 
of stem, but nearly 1 foot in diameter, as is typical of the palm family 
in the earlier years of its growth. Contrary to the above, where 
the Oil Palm comes up in a more open place the leaves do not tend 
upwards, but outwards, arching over with the leaf stalk at an 
angle of about 45° to the ground. The leaves themselves, instead of 
being long and thin and with a long length of green stalk, soon spread 
out fully 20 inches on either side of the main stalk, thus giving the 
plant more food material and making it grow more quickly. Then, 
in the fourth or fifth year, bunches of fruit, each containing from 
twenty-five to thirty nuts, are formed out of the female flower. Each 
bunch, which is the size of a man’s fist at this age, increases to nearly 
2 feet in length and 1 foot in diameter at maturity. However, each 
bunch of fruit, having been formed against the stem of the palm and 
in the axil of the leaf stalk, is very much compressed, especially at 
the base. As an experiment, when the fruit is beginning to ripen, 
the leaf stalk just immediately below the base of the fruit stalk is 
removed; gradually then the bunch of fruit droops a little and 
develops more fully at the base, owing to having more space. More 
light thus reaches the fruit sideways, and the period of ripening 
is accelerated by three weeks. 
5. Or Pam PLANTATIONS AND Crops.—<As a result of the greater 
spreading out of the leaves of the young palm and the more sessile 
habit of the stem in the earlier stages of growth, light penetrates more 
intensely into the fruit-bearing axils of the tree, thus increasing the 
size of each bunch. 
In the Calabar Arboretum, some Oil Palms were cleaned and the 
ground thoroughly cultivated in two successive years. In the first 
year one tree bore fourteen bunches of fruit, and in the second year it 
bore twenty-two bunches. No manure was placed on the ground, 
and the soil was distinctly poor and sandy—in fact, the natives in 
