1 Mar., 1898. ] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 201 
Popular Botany. 
OUR BOTANIC GARDENS. 
No. 4. 
By PHILIP MAC MAHON, 
Curator. 
We left off our chat last month in the middle of a group of Palms—those 
“Princes of the Vegetable Kingdom,” as Linnzus has so aptly named them. 
And do they not deserve the title? See how they shoot aloft, tall and stately; 
how gracefully their leaves droop, every curve displaying what the old-time 
painters called “the line of beauty and of grace.” How symmetrical their 
stems, which might serve, and probably haye served, as models for the 
architect ! 
Structurally, the Palms are closely allied to the Rushes on the one hand, 
and to the Arums and Aroids on the other. Look at that huge bunch of 
round fruits which hangs so gracefully from amongst the foliage of the 
Feather Palm on the hill above you. It is of a rich orange-yellow, and is very 
beautiful. You will notice that there is a long woody sheath which enclosed 
the flowers at first, until one fine day it burst open and let the bees take 
up the task of distributing the pollen from . the loaded pollen-bearers 
to the stigmas of the flowers, taking toll as they went. As a result we 
now have the fruit ready, to reproduce the stately palm. ‘The woody 
spathe or flower-sheath, when it falls off, makes, by the exercise of a 
little ingenuity, a beautiful and _ lasting flower-basket, and any of your 
lady friends can, with a very Jittle expenditure of time and trouble, soon 
make from one of these a much. more beautiful basket than can be purchased 
in the shops. Well, having carefully examined your palm-sheath and the 
bunch of fruit, turn to the flower of any of the Aroids, say the MJonstera 
deliciosa, which a minute’s walk will take you to, as it is putting forth its 
marvellous flowers in the shade garden (bush-house) near at hand. You will 
note that the arrangement is almost exactly the same asin the palm. There 
is the sheath (we will call things by English names where possible) ; and 
while in the Palm the flowers, and subsequently the fruits, are gathered in a 
drooping cluster, in the Monstera they are gathered on an upright stalk. ‘They 
look, in the case of the Aroid, like one fruit, but they are really, as in the 
pineapple, a collection of fruits arranged round a central axis. 
Every palm is beautiful, most of them eminently so. Once seen in their 
native homes, they are never forgotten. He who has navigated the great rivers 
of India, which look more like inland seas than mere rivers, can shut his eyes, 
even after the lapse of many years, and recall, as vividly as if the scene were 
before him, the feathery Wine Palm standing out against some quaint temple, and 
loaded with the strange pendent nests of the sociable weaver birds, attached to: 
the very tips of the leaves as a security against their wily enemies, the snakes. 
Or, who does not remember, who has been in the tropical jungle, the Rotang, 
stretching diagonally onward and upward, its curved thorns taking fast hold 
wherever it pushes its way amongst the trees; the lower leaves dying away as 
the younger ones are protruded into the light and air. And then you 
remember, as your vessel lay in the Eastern seas, near some low coast 
amongst— 
Those treacherous isles that lie 
In the midst of sunny deeps; 
Where the cocoa stands on the glistening sands, 
And the dread tornado sweeps. 
