letter iv.] THE 11 SCREW PINE:' 



4* 



the situation of the tree. There is one variety I saw to-day, 

 the " screw pine/' which is really dangerous if one approaches 

 it unguardedly. It is a whorled pandanus, with long, sword- 

 shaped leaves, spirally arranged in three rows, and hard, saw- 

 toothed edges, very sharp. When unbranched as I saw them, 

 they resemble at a distance pine-apple plants thirty times 

 magnified. But the mournful looking trees along the coast 

 and all about Hilo are mostly the Pandanus odoratissimus, a 

 spreading and branching tree which grows fully twenty-five feet 

 high, supports itself among inaccessible rocks by its prop-like 

 roots, and is one of the first plants to appear on the newly- 

 formed Pacific islands.* Its foliage is singularly dense, 

 although it is borne in tufts of a quantity of long yucca-like 

 leaves on the branches. The shape of the tree is usually 

 circular. The mournful look is caused by the leaves taking a 

 downward and very decided droop in the middle. At present 

 each tuft of leaves has in its centre an object like a green 

 pine-apple. This contains the seeds which are eatable, as is 

 also the fleshy part of the drupes. It is from the seeds of this 

 tree and their coverings that the brillant orange leis, or gar- 

 lands of the natives, are made. The soft white case of the 

 leaves and the terminal buds can also be eaten. The leaves 

 are used for thatching, and their tough longitudinal fibres for 

 mats and robes. There is another kind, the Pandanus vacoa, 

 the same as is used for making sugar bags in Mauritius, but I 

 have not seen it. 



I think the banana comes next in beauty, and I see it in 

 perfection here for the first time, as those in Honolulu grow in 

 " yards," and are tattered by the winds. It transports me into 

 the tropics in feeling, as I am already in them in fact, and 

 satisfies all my cravings for something which shall represent and 

 epitomize their luxuriance, as well as for simplicity and grace 

 in vegetable form. And here it is everywhere with its shining 

 shade, its smooth, fat, green stem, its crown of great curling 

 leaves from four to ten feet long, and its heavy cluster of a 

 whorl of green or golden fruit, with a pendant, purple cone of 

 undeveloped blossom below. It is of the tropics, tropical ; a 



* I have since learned that it is the same as the Kaldera bush of 

 Southern India, and that the powerful fragrance of its flowers is the .subject 

 of continual allusions in Sanskrit poetry under the name of Ketaka, and that 

 oil impregnated with its odour is highly prized as a perfume in India. The 

 Hawaiians also used it to give a delicious scent to the Tapa made for their 

 chiefs from the inner bark of the paper mulberry. 



