106 
PALMS OF THE LLAKOS. 
bute this difference to the shelter afforded by the palm-trees, 
in preventing the solar rays from drying and burning up 
the soil. I have seen, it is true, trees of this family, in the 
forests of the Orinoco, spreading a tufted foliage ; but we 
cannot say much for the shade of the palm-tree of the llanos, 
the palma de cobija,* which has but a few folded and palmate 
leaves, like those of the chamserops, and of which the lower- 
most are constantly withered. ¥e were surprised to see 
that almost all these trunks of the corypha were nearly of 
the same size, viz., from twenty to twenty-four feet high, 
and from eight to ten inches diameter at the foot. ^Nature 
has produced few species of palm-trees in such prodigious 
numbers. Amidst thousands of trunks loaded with olive- 
shaped fruits we found about one hundred without fruit. 
May we suppose that there are some trees with flowers 
purely monoecious, mingled with others furnished with her- 
maphrodite flowers ? 
The Llaneros, or inhabitants of the plains, believe that 
all these trees, though so low, are many centuries old. 
Their growth is almost imperceptible, being scarcely to be 
noticed in the lapse of twenty or thirty years. The wood 
of the palma de cobija is excellent for bu il d in g. It is so 
hard, that it is difficult to drive a nail into it. The leaves, 
folded like a fan, are employed to cover the roofs of the huts 
scattered through the Llanos; and these roofs last more 
than twenty years. The leaves are fixed by bending the 
extremity of the footstalks, which have been beaten before- 
hand between two stones, so that they may bend without 
breaking. 
Beside the solitary trunks of this palm-tree, we find dis- 
persed here and there in the steppes a few clumps, real 
groves (palmares), in which the corypha is intermingled 
with a tree of the proteaceous family, called chaparro by the 
natives. It is a new species of rhopala,t with hard and 
resonant leaves. The little groves of rhopala are called 
chaparales; and it may be supposed that, in a vast plain, 
where only two or three species of trees are to be found, 
* The roofing palm-tree (Corypha tectorum). 
+ Resembling the Embothrium, of which we found no species in South 
America. The embothriums are represented in American vegetation by 
the genera Lomatia and Oreocallis. 
