News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-03-18
FREAKS OF VEGETATIONl
SOME LITTLE KNOWN WONDERS
OF INANIMATE NATURE.
Inverted Palm Trees-Flowers that
Look Like Ducks - Vegetable
na naonrans-IlI LIZ. I..nonAc

inverted Palm Trees-Flowers that
Look Like Ducks - Vegetable
Daggers-Plants Like Insects.
On first visiting Cuba, writes Frank
Bellen in the New York Star, found
| myself astonished at every turn and cor
ner by freaks of vegetation that were so
common there that no one seems to con-
slider them worthy of notice. Here was
tall palm tree with a trunk bigger at
the top than at the bottom, like an in
verted oil flask or carrot with its point
| stuck in the ground. In another place,
clambering over the garden fence, were
slender deciduous vines laden with
cllmps of fierce tortuous thorns thicker
than the main stem of the plant, resem-
bling clusters of small buffalo horns and
as hard as steel. In the same garden
grew tree about as large as one of our
northern apple trees, and bearing flower
of the size of Muscovy duck, which it
exactly resemb!ed in form, bill, wings,
tail and ALL though in color nearly white,
with portions shading off into delicate
pink. These monster flowers either hung
by their beaks to the limbs of the tree
or lay scattered in profusion on the
grass below, where they resembled
flock of water fowl swimming in pond.
Noticed, too, in Cuba tendency on the
part of vegetation generally to produce
thorns. Several of the larger trees
bristled with these vegetable poniards,
six inches long, all the way up their
trunks and could not help rejecting
sadly that the schoolboy of that land
must have rather rough time of it in the
pursuit of that favorite juvenile pleasure
of climbing trees. They recalled to my
i
pine known as the puzzle monkey, which,
is incased in an armor of thorns, growing
with their points downward in way cal
eulated TO utterly battle the most astute
of quadrumana.
Speaking about the tendency of tropi-
cal vegetation to produce thorns, it is
curious to note how many of their fruits
are either SO protected or with hard rinds
or shells. The fruits of temperate cli-
mates, such as the apple, pear, peach,
plum, with all the berries, can be eaten
whole, skin and all, while those of the
tropics, the orange, pineapple, banana,
prickly pear, and in fact every one, needs
some more or less severe surgical opera
ton to prepare it for mastication.
Why is this thus2 as Artemus
Ward would say. / begin to suspect
that we know very little about the mo-
tives and principles of creation after all.
Why should some plants be made to look
like insects, and some insects to look like
plants2 Why do they go masquerading
in each others clothes2 Does it not look
as though it were intended for good
piece of fun9 Most of us have heard of,
If we have not seen, the wonderful leaf
insect which so closely resembles that
portion of a plant as to deceive the eye on
the closest inspection, while, on the other
hand, many of the orchids take on the
exact form of insects. One resembles a
gaudy butterfly, another a spider, and a
third, called the holy spirit plant, opens
its sphere of white leaves to reveal the
most perfect form of a dove, pure as ala
baster, with wings spread out in the at
titude chosen by artists to represent the
Holy Spirit in sacred pictures. This most
exquisite flower is native of South and
Central America, where it is regarded
with superstitious reverence and employed
in many religious ceremonies. Then we
have plants which eat insects and beefsteak
if they can get it, with various ingeni-
ous traps for catching its prey, which it
will reach out to secure if placed not too
far off. Some plants are perfect glut-
tons, requiring abundance of the richest
kinds of food, while others are most alb
stemious, drawing nourishment from bare
stones or sand, and others again can
support themselves on air alone. One
such they have in Bermuda, known
among the natives as the topper, leaf
of which torn from the plant win flourish
and throw out roots if nailed to the par
lor wall, and even exist and germinate
between the leaves of book. In Barba-
1.1ao kl,n1r L0,r i H.
fish tree, from its producing sound ex-
aetly yy re resembling that culinary ceremony.
/ bling together, and has often led TO dron
mistakes and disappointments to hungry
visitors. Another tree in Barbados grows
huge pod of from eighteen to twenty
four inches in length, which is an
exact model of a South Sea Islanders ca
noe with high PROV In that island
their gooseberries grow on apple trees,
or at least on trees quite as large. There
they have the famous bread fruit, yams,
sweet lemons, horsebunkers, fruit COW
cred with spines; the casava, which
makes delicious cakes, and numerous
other vegetable productions which we
NAV, or may not have heard of, but
which give US pleasant surprise when
we meet them face to face in their native
land. We have all heard of the Austral-
ian cherry with the stone outside, and
their pear with the stem at the wrong
end, while every child has at some time
or other dissected the pod of our Ameri-
can milk weed to discover the exquisite
silver fish inside wrapped in its bed of
silk All these eccentricities of floral
growth impress one with the feeling that
they were created in sportiveness, as toys
for men-something to surprise and de-
light him, and enliven the monotony OF
the set course of nature, showing bene-
fcent consideration for the humorous de-
partment of our intelligence.
II, =, NYorr V0v-Ir