Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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(* The Sensitive-Plant Mimosa Dormiens.) The
Same Breed Of Cows, Which Fatten In Europe On Sainfoin And Clover,
Find Excellent Nourishment In The Herbaceous Sensitive Plants.
The
pastures where these shrubs particularly abound are sold at a higher
price than others.
To the east, in the llanos of Cari and Barcelona,
the cypura and the craniolaria,* (* Cypura graminea, Craniolaria
annua, the scorzonera of the natives.) the beautiful white flower of
which is from six to eight inches long, rise solitarily amid the
gramina. The pastures are richest not only around the rivers subject
to inundations, but also wherever the trunks of palm-trees are near
each other. The least fertile spots are those destitute of trees; and
attempts to cultivate them would be nearly fruitless. We cannot
attribute this difference to the shelter afforded by the palm-trees,
in preventing the solar rays from drying and burning up the soil. I
have seen, it is true, trees of this family, in the forests of the
Orinoco, spreading a tufted foliage; but we cannot say much for the
shade of the palm-tree of the llanos, the palma de cobija,* (* The
roofing palm-tree Corypha tectorum.) which has but a few folded and
palmate leaves, like those of the chamaerops, and of which the
lower-most are constantly withered. We were surprised to see that
almost all these trunks of the corypha were nearly of the same size,
namely, from twenty to twenty-four feet high, and from eight to ten
inches diameter at the foot.
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