A lecture on the geography of plants / By John Barton.

  • John Barton
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A lecture on the geography of plants / By John Barton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    87/120 (page 75)
    Amboyna, Ceram, Celebes, and Borneo. Sago is not the fruit of the tree, but is produced withinside the trunk. The Wax-Palm* is a native of the Andes. It is so named from its trunk being covered with a kind of varnish, possessing the chemical properties of wax. It rises to the vast height of a hundred and sixty feet, and differs from the other Palms in bearing a much colder cli- mate. They extend, in tropical America, from the level of the sea to an elevation of about three thousand feet, and are not to be seen higher: the Wax-Palm is not capable of sup- porting the heat of the plain, or of the lower part of the mountains, but is confined to a region between six thousand and nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, where it grows among Oaks and Walnut-trees, at an elevation exceeding that of the .Hospice of St. Gothardf. The Cocoa-nut-tree is also of the Palm tribe. It rises to the height of fifty or sixty feet, with leaves ten or fifteen feet long and three feet in width. It is found plentifully on the islands of the South Sea, and often furnishes an useful beacon to the mariner, by pointing out the situ- ation of the rocks of coral just level with the * Ceroxylon andicola. + Geographic der Pflanzen, p. 60-