Useful plants : plants adapted for the food of man described and illustrated.

Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Useful plants : plants adapted for the food of man described and illustrated. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    covered with a dwarf vegetation, but possessing also a few species of palms. Foremost among the latter is the mauritia, which may justly be called the sago tree of America. In the region of the Andes we meet with the useful cow-tree, which yields a refreshing, wholesome, and nutritious milky juice ; and the theobroma cacao, the source of our cocoa and chocolate. Among non-edible plants let us name—we can do no more—the cactus, willow, oak, cinchona, alder, and andromeda. Maize and coffee, the cereals, European vegetables, and the potato are also abundant; and a botanist might study the rich growth of the lower slopes of the Andes for many a year and fail to exhaust its stores. Perhaps the distinctive feature of the Virgin Forests is their profusion of lianas, or creeping and climbing plants, which encircle the trunks and branches of the trees, clasp them round in a stifling embrace, suspend their gay festoons and waving ribbons to the boughs, and weave an inextricable network of glossy leaves and glowing flowers. But the trees are also re- markable from their height, their girth, their