Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
Nature here is not strong enough for the fructification of the palm, so at given seasons the pollen is removed by cutting off the male spathes; these they dry for twenty hours, and then they take the flower twigs and deposit one or two in each bunch of the female blossom.
Between the leaf and the stem there issue several horny spathes, or sheaths, out of which spring clusters of panicles that bear small white flowers, These flowers are followed by the dates, which grow in a dense bunch that hangs down several feet." "But how do people manage to climb such a tree as that," asked Malcolm, "to get the dates?
There were fruit-orchards and olive-groves on the foothills, and clear streams ran murmuring down through glistening oleander thickets. Wild flowers sprang in every untilled corner; tall spikes of hollyhocks, scarlet and blue anemones, clusters of mignonette, rock-roses, and cyclamens, purple iris in the moist places, and many-colored spathes of gladiolus growing plentifully among the wheat.
In a few minutes the last monkey on the chain, with his teeth and hands, had separated the foot-stalk of the spathes, and the great clusters two of them there were fell heavily to the bottom of the tree. The marimondas on the ground ran forward; and, in the midst of loud rejoicings, began to pull off the "peaches" and devour them. But the monkeys above did not cease their labours.
The fruits of the crescentia and the lecythis serve as vessels for containing food, while the spathes of the palms, and the bark of trees, furnish caps and garments without a seam.
In a few minutes the last monkey on the chain, with his teeth and hands, had separated the footstalk of the spathes, and the great clusters two of them there were fell heavily to the bottom of the tree. The marimondas on the ground ran forward; and, in the midst of loud rejoicings began to pull off the "peaches" and devour them. But the monkeys above did not cease their labours.
Orchids spread broad spathes of scented bloom from grey trunks of courtyard trees, and cascades of crimson and purple creepers tumble over arch and wall.
At sunset, when the camp was made outside the gates of the new city of Archelaus, on a hillock among the corn-fields, he came to his mother with his hands full of the long lavender and rose and pale-blue spathes of the gladiolus-lilies. "Look, mother," he cried, "are they not fine like the clothes of a king?" "What do you know of kings?" she answered, smiling.
There were all shapes and sizes of baskets made of palm-leaves, dates in profusion, fuel of the dried spathes, the male spathes for fructifying the palm, and palm-leaf matting the only furniture, and sometimes the only roofing of their comfortless huts. The costumes were dazzling in their brilliancy and quaintness.
The wintry weather passed away with its storms and continuous rains and floods, which hindered the progress of the great lode or drain, and then came the spring sunshine, with the lads waking up to the fact that here and there the arums were thrusting up their glossy-green spathes, that the celandines were out like yellow stars, and that the rustling reeds left uncut had been snapped off and beaten down, and had rotted in the water, and that from among them the young shoots of the fresh crop were beginning to peep.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking