Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 21, 2025
This and the Cyathea excelsa of the Mauritius, are the most majestic of all the fern-trees described by botanists. The total number of these gigantic cryptogamous plants amounts at present to 25 species, that of the palm-trees to 80. We observed that the fern-trees are in general much more rare than the palm-trees. Nature has confined them to temperate, moist, and shady places.
The "Tchenden," or funereal cypress, again, is valued only for the odour of its wood: Pinus excelsa, "Tongschi," though common in Bhotan, is, as I have elsewhere remarked, not found in east Nepal or Sikkim; the wood is admirable, being durable, close-grained, and so resinous as to be used for flambeaux and candles.
More gregarious in their habits than most other palms are the urucuri palms Attalea excelsa groves of which beautify the higher lands, and grow in vast numbers under the crowns of the more lofty ordinary forest-trees; their smooth columnar stems being generally fifty feet in height, while their broad, finely pinnated leaves, interlocking above, form arches and woven canopies of elegant and diversified shapes.
Davison remarks that it is "very fond of working its way up to some conspicuous post to the top of one of the long flower-stalks of Lobelia excelsa, for instance where it will halt for a minute or two, and then, after making a feeble attempt at a song, will dive suddenly in the brushwood and disappear." Shrikes or butcher-birds are hawks in miniature, as regards habits if not in structure.
In living majesty he shares the honours with the deodar, but he is merely good to look upon; his timber is useless and in his decay his fallen and lightning-blasted remains lie rotting on these wild hills, while the precious trunks of the deodar and the excelsa are laboriously collected, and floated and dragged to the lower valleys, producing much good money to Sir Amar Singh and the best of building timber to the purchaser.
They belong to Bertholletia excelsa, a tree which grows sparingly I have never seen it wild in the southern part of the island, but plentifully in the forests of Guiana, and which is said to be one of the tallest of all the forest giants.
We found in the village a few juvia-trees which furnish the triangular nuts called in Europe the almonds of the Amazon, or Brazil-nuts. We have made it known by the name of Bertholletia excelsa. The trees attain after eight years' growth the height of thirty feet.
The fruit, also, is largely consumed; while the wood is excessively durable in water. Two lofty trees, closely allied to each other the Lecythis ollaria and the Bertholletia excelsa produce enormous capsules full of nuts. The first, called the sapucaya, yields these curious capsules known as cuyas de maccao, or monkeys' drinking-cups.
Above the hardier deciduous trees appeared the Pinus excelsa, the silver fir, and the spruce; higher yet the stately grace of the deodar clothed the hillsides; and above the forests rose the snow mountains of Tilail, pink in the sunrise.
The velocity of the current being 6.3 feet in a second, we had to struggle against the turbulent waves of the Raudal. We went on shore, and M. Bonpland discovered within a few steps of the beach a majestic almendron, or Bertholletia excelsa. The Indians assured us, that the existence of this valuable plant of the banks of the Cassiquiare was unknown at San Francisco Solano, Vasiva, and Esmeralda.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking