copal-tree

Updated: May 16, 2025

The coffee-shrub, like the copal-tree, belts Africa from east to west from Harar, where I saw it, through Karagué, where it grows wild, the bean not being larger than a pin's head, to Manywema, in the Congo valley, and to the West Coast, especially about the Rio Nunez, north of Sierra Leone. It is of the finest quality, second only to the Mocha; but what hope is there of its development?

Sir Richard Francis Burton - To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II: A Personal Narrative

Here also are found the copal-tree, the palma-christi, the ipecacuanha the root of which is so extensively used in medicine the liquid amber, as well as caoutchouc. Here the vast ceiba, or silk-cotton-tree, is abundant, from which canoes are frequently hollowed out. Indeed, a considerable number of the trees found on the banks of the Orinoco and Amazon here also come to perfection.

William Henry Giles Kingston - The Western World: Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North: and South America