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We had many an interesting stroll round the sultan's gardens at Al Koton, and watched the cultivation of spices and vegetables for the royal table, or rather floor; the lucerne and clover for his cattle, the indigo and henna for dyeing purposes, and the various kinds of grain. But on the cultivation of the date-palm the most attention is lavished; it was just then the season at which the female spathe has to be fructified by the male pollen, and we were interested in watching a man going round with an apron full of male spathes. With these he climbed the stem of the female palm, and with a knife cut open the bark which encircles the female spathe, and as he shook the male pollen over it he chanted in a low voice, 'May God make you grow and be fruitful. No portion of the palm is wasted in the Hadhramout: with the leaves they thatch huts and make fences, the date stones are ground into powder as food for cattle, and they eat the nutty part which grows at the bottom of the spathes, and which they called kourzan. On a journey a man requires nothing but a skin of dates, which will last him for days, and, when we left, Sultan Sal
The stem shows, at b, a little below the spike, remains of a lateral appendage, which is supposed to indicate the beginning of the spathe. The fossil has been referred to the Aroidiae, and there is every probability that it is a true member of this order. There can at least be no doubt as to the high grade of its organisation, and that it belongs to the monocotyledonous angiosperms. Mr.
All smoke, however, and men, women and children equally enjoy their huge cheroots, composed of the inner bark of certain trees mixed with chopped tobacco, which are rolled into the form of a cigar in the spathe of Indian corn or some similar husk, and no meal would be considered to be properly set out without the red lacquer box containing betel, which is universally chewed.
In contrast with the smooth or softly undulating outlines of the spathe of Mediterranean Araceæ, one species stands out in relief, in which the sharply-marked fold of the spathe almost corresponds to the forms of the ornaments which we are discussing. It is Dracunculus vulgaris, and derives its name from its stem, which is spotted like a snake.
All the joints and angles are coffered with strips of split rattan sewn neatly on. The lid is covered with the brown leathery spathe of the Areca palm, which is impervious to water, and the whole box is neat, strong, and well finished. They are made from a few inches to two or three feet long, and being much esteemed by the Malay as clothes-boxes, are a regular article of export from Aru.
We find the spathe, again, sometimes drawn like an acanthus leaf, more often, however, bulged out, coming to be more and more of a mere outline figure, and becoming converted into a sort of background; then the spadix, generally conical in shape, sometimes, however, altogether replaced by a perfect thistle, at other times again by a pomegranate.
It encloses, as in most palms, a branched spadix covered with innumerable round buds, most like a head of millet, two feet and a half long: but the spathe, instead of splitting and forming a hood over the flowers, as in the Cocorite and most palms, remains entire, and slips off like the finger of a glove.
Look for you require to look more than once, sometimes more than twice here, up the stem of that Cocorite, or as much of it as you can see in the thicket. It is all jagged with the brown butts of its old fallen leaves; and among the butts perch broad-leaved ferns, and fleshy Orchids, and above them, just below the plume of mighty fronds, the yellow fox's brush, which is its spathe of flower.
Had you entered the establishment about this time, you would have observed many odd articles and implements, most of them quite new. You would have seen boxes woven out of palm leaves, and bags made of the fibrous, cloth-like spathe of the "bussu," filled with the soft, silky cotton of the bombax, to be afterwards spun and woven for shirts and dresses.
At last we reached an outlying camp, belonging to one of our party who was superintending the making of new roads in that quarter, and there rested our weary limbs, some in hammock, some on the tables, some, again, on the clay floor. Here I saw, as I saw every ten minutes, something new that quaint vegetable plaything described by Humboldt and others; namely, the spathe of the Timit palm.
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