332 CONTRIBUTIONS FBOM THE NATIONAL. HERBARIUM. 



A recent publication on the German colonies contains a photo- 

 graph of a group of apparently thriving coconut palms at Misa- 

 hoehe, in the interior of the Togo colony in West Africa, but no 

 statement is made regarding them. a 



Coconut palms are grown in large numbers on limestone soils in 

 interior districts of the Yucatan peninsula, especially about the city 

 of Merida, and they are also said to thrive on the Pacific side of 

 Mexico, around the volcano of Colima. They are also reported by 

 Mr. G. N. Collins at Acala, a town in the State of Chiapas, in an 

 arid interior district with a natural growth of cacti and other desert 

 plants. 



Humboldt remarked particularly the vigorous condition of the 

 coconut palms found by him in the interior of Venezuela and Colom- 

 bia, which he considered as an anomalous fact in the distribution of 

 a maritime species. Sir Kichard Burton mentions the coconut palm 

 as flourishing and very productive in interior districts of Brazil that 

 have alkaline soils which he recognized as a practical substitute for 

 "sea air." b 



More recent testimony to the existence of the coconut palm in 

 interior localities of South America is that of Prof. H. Pittier, a 

 special agent of the Department of Agriculture, who makes the 

 following statement : 



Until 1891, I had no notion of that species bearing fruit at any great distance from 

 the seashore or high above the sea level, but when, on behalf of the Intercontinental 

 Railway Commission, I crossed the Azuero peninsula from Remedios to Santiago de 

 Veragua, in the present Republic of Panama, I was surprised to see groves of coconut 

 palms surrounding the houses in the high savannas of Tole, more than 365 meters 

 above sea level. The sites of many houses in the valley of Tabasara were marked 

 by isolated coconut trees. This, however, did not seem so very wonderful on account 

 of the proximity of the sea, and at Tole the inhabitants attributed the fine condition 

 of the palms to their being fully exposed to the sea breeze. But in 1905, when we 

 entered through Buenaventura into the Dagua Valley of Colombia, we began to 

 notice coconut trees as soon as we reached the drier region of the interior, at an alti- 

 tude of over 2,000 feet. On the inner watershed of the Western Cordillera, near a 

 hostelry and on the brink of a precipitous slope, another beautiful specimen was 

 found at about 4,800 feet above sea level. In the Cauca plain, in the interior of 

 Colombia, at a mean level of over 900 meters, in a warm, temperate climate, with 

 extreme conditions of wet and dry seasons, groves of coconut palms were seen every- 

 where. (PI. 66, fig. 1.) The people of the Cauca Valley did not seem to distinguish 

 their variety from the one growing on the seashore at Buenaventura, but Dr. Evaristo 

 Garcia, a noted naturalist and physician of Call, assured me that coconuts brought 

 into the valley from the seabeach do not thrive. 



In the Cordillera de Santa Marta I have seen several coconut trees on the hills 

 around San Andres at nearly 1,090 meters of elevation, and the palm seemed to be 

 quite iamiliar to the Indians. All over Central America the coconut palm is also 



a Wohltmann, F., Kultur-und-Vegetations Bilder aus unseren Deutschen Colonien, 

 pi. 52. 



& Burton, R., Highlands of Brazil, vol. 2, pp. 264, 280. (London, 1869.) 



