Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Young Branches Have
An Agreeable Taste, Though Somewhat Astringent.
Next to the curucay
and enormous trunks of hymenaea, (the diameter of which was more
than nine or ten
Feet), the trees which most excited our attention
were the dragon's blood (Croton sanguifluum), the purple-brown
juice of which flows down a whitish bark; the calahuala fern,
different from that of Peru, but almost equally medicinal;* (* The
calahuala of Caripe is the Polypodium crassifolium; that of Peru,
the use of which has been so much extended by Messrs. Ruiz and
Pavon, comes from the Aspidium coriaceum, Willd. (Tectaria
calahuala, Cav.) In commerce the diaphoretic roots of the
Polypodium crassifolium, and of the Acrostichum huascaro, are mixed
with those of the calahuala or Aspidium coriaceum.) and the
palm-trees, irasse, macanilla, corozo, and praga.* (* Aiphanes
praga.) The last yields a very savoury palm-cabbage, which we had
sometimes eaten at the convent of Caripe. These palms with pinnated
and thorny leaves formed a pleasing contrast to the fern-trees. One
of the latter, the Cyathea speciosa,* grows to the height of more
than thirty-five feet, a prodigious size for plants of this family.
(* Possibly a hemitelia of Robert Brown. The trunk alone is from 22
to 24 feet long. 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.
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