OCCASIONAL PAPER No. 8 FAIRCHILD TROPICAL GARDEN

LETTERS FROM THE PHILIPPINES Cf3y DAVID FAIRCHILD

COCONUT GROVE, FLORIDA April 1, 1940 Left- The seed packing room in th e Bahay Kubo at Mt. Makilin g Nat . Forest Park where mos t of th e seeds collected in Luzon were pack ed, labelled and de­ scr ibed. Hugo Curran and the author, David Fairchi ld are at work.

Junk Cheng Ho

Right-The veranda covered with seeds and fruit s in proce ss of being clean ed by Gui lelmo for shipment to Coco nut G rove by air express. FOREWORD: These letters, printed here completely or in part, have been received by the Director and members of the Fairchild Tropical Garden from its President Emeritus, Dr. David Fairchild. With Mrs. Fairchild, he has spent some months plant-exploring in the jungles of the Philippines before leaving for the Moluccas and Spice Islands on the Archbold-Fairchild Expedition for the Fair­ child Tropical Garden. They have now left Manila with Mrs. Anne Archbold of Washington, D. C., the expedition's sponsor, on the junk Cheng Ho which she had built in Hong Kong as a floating laboratory. More of Dr. Fairchild's finely written obser­ vation11 on plant life in the South Seas will appear in subsequent Occasional Papers.

We are indebted to the National Georgraphic Society for the photographic enlargements reproduced herein. ,•::t.r8.if't:~::..,,. . ··•~•.f' .

,,,t. LUZON, NOVEMBER 16, 1939 fruits of this Ficus megacarpa and to take a few thousand seeds from them for the air p~st. J wish it were within the power of this feeble Suddenly I heard a yell from Sulit, "Palin­ pen of mine to give the members of the Fair­ dan," "Palindan." He had spied back from the child Tropical Garden some faint idea of what path a tall palm of Orania palindan and was cut­ collecting in these virgin forests is like. To tread ting his way _to it through the jungle. I followed. the leaf-carpeted floor of a Dipterocarp forest There was the handsome palm 40 feet high with is in itself an experience to look back to. The leaves as splendid as those of a coconut, each hav­ still coolness of its shade, ·the endless and fas­ ing a base even larger than most coconut leaves cinating variety of the forms of life that com­ have. Instead of the usual bunch of coconuts pose it, the sounds, the calls of the horn bill there was a big cluster of fruits · the size of golf that break the stillness, are factors in the ex­ balls born on a large branching inflOl'escence. perience. The palm was perfectly straight, with no ten­ I have knelt in great cathedrals and li stened dency towards swelling at the base. I knew we to the chant of the choir boys or the tinkle of wanted seeds of this. the High Priest's little bell while my eyes It was our only chance perhaps to get them. counted the number of windows in the "Oriole" We had traveled days by auto, rail and boat to or the figur es carved in the marble pillars but reach this place and had been given for the day for me a Dipterocarp forest produces a far the use of a logging railroad-gasoline-motor to deeper feeling of religiou s ven~ration, and gives take us back deep into the forest. I had a feel­ me a sense of beauty that is infinitely greater. ing that never again would I stand almost with­ There is nowhere a single sign of the work of in reach of the fruits of this palm. I saw in my man's hands. Nowhere does a sense of lack of imagination seedlings of it growing in Coconut proportion anywhere in the scene confront me Grove and of watching them grow up. The idea in its vastness. Its incomparable variety thrills of leaving those fruits behind was unthinkable. me as nothing I see in the haunts of ~an is able Even so when Sulit began hacking at the trunk to. I wandered on Sunday morning here in the with his bolo (for neither he nor I could climb province of Camarines Sur in such a forest. The it and Conicosa, the tree -climber, had been left experience will remain always in my memory. behind) a feeling of curious melancholy over­ Mr. Sulit the Philippine botanist was with me . took me. It was perhaps mere sentimentality . But and our eyes wandered constantly from side to here we were felling the only Palindan palm we side of the harrow footpath searching for fruits had found in the dense still forest on this Sun­ or seeds, for palms of any kind especially. 'J'he day morning. Spiny Calamus palins had no fruits, but even The crown quivered and Sulit gave the last so were attractive with their splendid plumes. holo stroke and the magnificent palm crashed I have seen them planted in beds and without through the undergrowth falling flat down on trees to climb and they ate fascinatingly inter­ the ground . (Unlike a forest tree its crown of esting. Of course one has to keep away from leaves did not support its tip. The leaves broke their swinging leaf tips or get one's clothes torn to pieces.) I tried to photograph it as it fell to pieces. Calamus ornatus has most decorative but couldn't because of the small trees and faint fruits, brown, scaly affairs that any flower -ar­ light but I did stand over it and get the pictures rangement woman would 'rave over. Suddenly necessary to show its characteristics of enlarged on the path I saw some fruits the size of golf leaf bases and inflorescence golf ball like fruit. balls. They were black with mould and soft But the moment will remain always as an un­ and unattractive. They had fallen from a tall pleasant memory even though we did gather a climbing Ficus vine and by peering up into the bag full of fruits which were cleaned by Guil­ tree tops I could see a lot of them silhouetted lielmo, the boy of the Bamboo House (The against the sky. To get them would have re­ Bahay Kubo) and were packed in spagnum moss quired a trained monkey or a half hours work and are now enroute to the Fairchild Tropical with an axe. Those on the ground appeared to Garden. have seeds as I peered at them with my lens For hours we wandered along these trails so I took them. Later I had occasion to see fresh finding above our heads at one plac e a brilliant

5 scarlet fruit of a Sterculia-so striking in its is the Oriental Mangrove representative, Rhizo­ color and form that anybody would be delighted phora mucronata, which if it grows will interest to have it fruiting on his place in Florida. I botanists although it looks much like our R. could not determine its name. I do not know if mangle. They are not a circumstance to what we its seeds are edible as are those of Sterculia expect to get as time passes for believe it or not, f oetida. I have not seen its blooms either hut I there are more species of trees on Makiling am ·contented that its seeds ( only 3 or 4 un­ Volcano where the "Bahay Kubo" stands than fortunately) are on their way to Coconut Grove. there are in the whole of the U. S. It is bewilder ­ Although the tropical sm1 heat down on the ing to look at them, great towering things, each forest cover above us it was cool there in the with different flowers and fruits, each known shade as it usually is. No insects of any kind by a different Tagalog name and each a pos­ were about and on every side were the tall sible asset for Florida gardens. The Pongamia trunks of the splendid forest trees, each species pinnata, the Leucaena glauca, the Premna odor­ with its characteristic bark. ata, Albizzia lebbekoides and several handsome Hugo Curran had discovered an amazing Ficus species have done very well with us and thing! He came up the track jubilant over his many more deserve to be tried. discovery. And nobody knows with certainty We are the guests of the Director of the Bur­ yet what it is'.''W e have called it in our notes that eau of Forestry, De.an Florencia Tamesis, here have gone with the seeds Freycenetia hut I sus­ in this new bamboo house which has never be­ pect it will turn out to belong to another genus fore been occupied. He loves plants as few for­ of Pandanaceae. Its immense ~'t fi:(~reen flower esters do. I mean house plants and palms in cluster two feet long and its yellow berries will particular. Beside the steps to the charming perhaps put it · in the genus Sarranga · but as house stand specimens of a new and most decora­ Merrill told us before I left, "The order of Pan­ tive shade loving palm, Pinanga maculata which danaceae needs a lot of work done on it and you has not yet made its debut in the horticultural will find many fine forms in the Philippines." world hut when it does will create a sensation, Anyhow I stood Hugh up against a tree with his I predict. Immense orchids of V andiopsis deco­ find in his hands and have a photograph of its rate the lawn in front of my window here and long slender, dark green leaf and its immense as I look out I can see a giant aroid with cut cluster of grey green flowers and young fruits. leaves and a decorative habit which would strike Some day may some of the thousand or so our garden clubs with an awe that would almost seeds grow into pretty plants perhaps down near put them to bed. It is Alocasia portei and I shalJ the sea somewhere in south Florida. get some propagating material for trial in Florida. But standing against the wall outside is the November 27th petiole of another giant aroid, a close relative of the one which forms the frontispiece of "The Of the hundred species of plants how can World was my Garden." It is fifteen feet long words convey any idea of them? There are tall­ and four inches through at its base. Its leaf very tall-palms one with indigo blue fruits, blade which I had to cut off is taller than I am others with scarlet fruits and graceful plumes and four feet across. I once boasted about the of foliage. There is a climbing fig with fruits Cyrtospermum senegalensis which I collected in like a golf ball but ·rusty brown red. Then there the Cameroon and which is growing at the Sole­ is a new Eugenia with delicious sour fruits. dad Garden and appears in the book as I have There are a score of screw pines, pandans, never said. Dr. Merrill heard me and remarked "Fair­ before introduced into Florida, with scarlet fruits child, while getting a big aroid why didn't and one with - handsome pink "flowers." There you get the biggest? "It is Cyrtospermum merk­ are great cli1'nhing aroids from wet lands that usii and it grows in the Philippines." I put the grow 15 feet tall, imagine it! name down in my little red note book but for­ There are the climbing Freycenetias, relatives got just where Merrill said it was until Sunday of the pandans, which scramble up tree trunks last as we were lunching on a gray volcanic and blooms and fruit in the branches and there sand beach at Puerto Real. I walked back from

6 the beach and discovered myself in an "aroid such as Crotons and Acalyphas (for, alas, these forest" so to say, for on all sides of me rose have disfigured the garden here as they do in leaves whose gigantic leaf blades towered above Florida) really appear to have enjoyed the my head. I tried to clasp their petioles of dark storm. Here comes the sun and soon the only fascinating green but my hand could not reach reminder of the two days storm will be the roar around them. I tl_1en realized I was in a clump of the mountain torrent in the gorge behind us. of the largest of all the giant aroids. It was an This should be by rights the last of the typhoons amazing sight, one I shall never forget. this season. Th~y usually stop in November we I have claimed and I now claim again that understand. after once getting a real taste of the beauties However, it is about the last trip through of the palms one should journey to the lands Luzon that I wanted to write you. A diary of it where they tower into the sky and e~joy the in­ would fill a volume and like some botanical describable sensations which they create in the descriptions of a plant fail utterly to give you soul and try to le.arn something from the amaz­ any picture of the things themselves. I shall ing variety of forms of life which still wait for content myself with a very few glimpses. human eyes to see and appreciate. We had no sooner landed in Manila than our From this Bahay Kubo a hundred species acquaintances told us to go up to Baguio, that peer in at -the windows and these are only the Baguio was the place of places here. Being here fringe of three thousand species of forest trees for palms we postponed going up into the pines. which compose the cover of foliage of this On the Kampong I have growing the Benguet wonderful National Park with its ten thousand pine (Pinus insularis) so I imagined I was some­ acres set aside for a preserve. what acquainted with it. True, my specimen is only two feet high eve1i if it is twelve years old. We drove out across the plains where the Bahay Kubo on the edge of the for est of happy harvesters were gathering the rice heads Mount Makiling, Laguna, Luzon. and flirting with each other in the golden light December 19th, 1939. which seems to hang .over ripening grain fields, Through villages where the houses were al­ I have gotten up at the screech of dawn and most all like this Kubo built of woven bamboo opened the shutters of this Bamboo Bird Cage and thatched with Nipa palm leaves, we wan­ under the great Malay papaya tree to see what dered in the car talking of what charming things the typhoon has done to it and to the great these doll houses, which a dozen men can lift orchids which sit in tin cans on the ground be­ on their shoulders and carry away, would be in low. To spend two nights in a hut thatched with Coconut Grove, and stopping to discuss with Nipa palm leaves and hear the rain come down one of the manufacturers how we could import in torrents making a steady rattle on the thatch the walls of these houses which he weaves from is to be conscious of what the environment of the thin walled bamboo called Boho (Schizo­ primitive man was during the long period of his stachyum Lumampao) and sells for $9 for a roll life among the palms and before he learned to of 100 square meters. build something more substantial than palm Up over the winding roads that lead to the shelters. mountain town of Baguio we drove and just as As I look out of the large square window I evening overtook us we found ourselves at the see everywhere signs of the storm, not worthy charming home of Mrs. George Fairchild-the the name typhoon perhaps but a real storm. It home of one of the greatest woman gardeners is remarkable though how little the bamboo is of the whole tropical zone. And what a place! affected. Its great yellow shoot keeps on shooting Its great plate glass windows look out through skyward just · as if nothing had happened. The tall brown barked trees of the Benguet pine and beautiful fern baskets hanging at the windows these frame some of the finest mountain scenery were not blown down. The gigantic Alocasia of the island of Luzon. Out across the moun­ portei which Ling the gardener is this minute tains which today are the sites of gold mines, fussing about and which towers above his head, where, beneath the rocky mountain sides, deep seems unhurt and the gay leaved foliage plants down in them, nearly 20,000 lgarots and other of

7 the Philippine population spend their days at races like these, or any terraces worth the name. rock mining for the stamping mills. Those of Aetna and the Canary Islands and Of Baguio as a modern American town I shall the Balearic Islands and Java all seem a bit say nothing for it is well known in America amateurish beside these built by the Igarots of and stands in many peoples' minds for the Bantoc and Banaue who are past masters of Philippines I fear, even though its spotlessness the art. and activity did make me a bit homesick for the It was enroute to see these terraces that we cleanliness · and brilliancy of the "American had come to Baguio hut the weather was rainy civilization." and so cold that we enjoyed the hot water bottles It would he surprising to me if many Florida and the quilts with which Mother Fairchild women have seen such a thing as a real terrace had provided the beds and the open fire made garden such as Mrs. Fairchild's, perched as it is us gather round it as the rain came down in far up the mountain slope and extending so far torrents as it does during the fall and summer down its side that it would make them dizzy months so often. I felt like a very poor sport to even look down the flight of steps which when I watched from the windows the Igarot leads to it and which Mother Fairchild climbs gardeners at work in the rain all day long stoop­ up and down ·many times a day to examine with ing and weeding and sweeping the leaves etc., her Igarot gardener,. ~-·· the masses of Agapanthus but I noticed that every one of them had on a and Calla lilies and the long terraces filled with wonderful rain mantle made of the leaf of the native orchids, bedded in masses of moss which Analiau palm (Livistona rotundifolia) and compose this amazing flowe1> ~%rden of the that this stuck out behind as they stooped and Fairchilds'. · - · covered their hinder parts well as they bent I say compose it, hut I would not convey the over. I have one which I bought for a song from idea that these spectacular flowers aominate a man on the road which will grace the walls even the hundreds of species which are every­ of the Palm Products Museum some day. There where about. Bignonia magnifica over the dining are various kinds of these and I hope that room, Bougainvilleas with trunks two feet the Palm Museum will become a center for through forming arbors, the flame vine in flower their display. below the living room and wherever one looks, Finally the sun shone on Mother Fairchild's orchids of the rare species applied to the trunks terraces and the handsome trees of the Goa of the pine trees. Down the terraces a ways is Cedar ( Cupressus lusitancia) and the pretty her large orchid house, an arbor with hundreds pink foliage of a native V accinium tree ( V. of the orchids suspended in the usual way but cumingianum) and the blue flowers of the Aga­ alas few were in bloom when we were there. panthus, not to mention the bracing air of the Step after step, like a giganti~ broad stairway mountains, made me almost decide to stop her terraces sweep downward almost out of sight thinking of the coastal region of my beloved and their dark brown soil which would make Florida and settle right down here. any Floridian envious because of its apparent But the terraces! How in the mime of heaven fertility, is dotted with the new plantings of were they made? carnations and tuberoses and dahlias and Chry­ It happened that the Municipality was build­ santhemums which are being grown for th e ing terraces in front of it s new building in Bag ­ flower shop which Mother Fairchild has started uio and with cameras in hand Beckwith whose in order to help make the Manila resident s cousin, Cameron Forbes, was the great pione er more conscious of th e beauty of flowers in their of this mountain town, and I went to see how homes. the terracing was done. The workers were real And as you laboriously descend these terraces, experts, lgarots from Kiangan, and the sight which are not more than a few feet wide and was amazing to us. Instead of making a dirt seem ideal places in which plants can be grown terrace and then walling its upright sides, they because of the drainage and the ease with which laid the walls in ditches and built them up they can be irrigated, you wonder why it is that gradually against solid dirt which overhung nowhere within the confines of the United tho se ditches in a way which baffies my power States or Canada have the gardeners made ter- of word description.

8 Next day, Mr. Tamesis and his Botanist, Mr. later on the sand dunes of Paoay after we came Sulit, and the Expert Tree climber, Conicosa, down from the mountains I hope to see some­ arrived with the official cars of the Forestry day when it spreads over our owh sandy sea Bureau. coast; and of the pretty scarlet fruited Trico­ Marian and I thought we had done all sorts santhes which Marian discovered hidden in the of mountain switch back trails in Morocco and dense vegetation of the forest and which it took Sumatra and Java, not to mention ·the sweeping Conicosa to secure, I expect to see clusters in the ones over the great Smoky and Shenandoah Na­ Flower Arrangements of the garden clubs some­ tional Park but those to Bontoc and Benaue and time or other. through the Cervantes Valley and the one to I had asked Dr. Merrill and many others why Legangilang in the mountains back of Vigan on we coµld not grow the Nepenthes or climbing the West coast of this island of Luzon eclipsed pitcher pJants in Florida and nobody seemed in the sensations they gave us, all of these. For to know. I was looking for the plant in some it is one thing to swing up on"1 of the National tree or other but when on the bare clay bank Forest roads and stop where it says "View" and of a cut in the mountains I saw here and there quite another to have the car's front wheel graze splendid specimens of Nepenthes alata I could the edge of a road and find you are looking down not believe my eyes . For if the plant can grow 2000 feet into a tangled mass of green tree ferns, on hills which in the dry season are s<:>dry that rattan palms, tree tops and giant lianas that the soil cracks open, then why cannot we grow make a wall reaching to what you know would them on our oak trees, or at least find places out be eternity if anything happened. of doors where they will be as happy as here at The game of hunting plants from a newly rather low altitudes on the clay banks. So when made road is exciting. You sic _and move your Mr. Sulit brought me a great spray of the brown head continually from side to side in order to pods and dusted thousands of long brown seeds catch some bit of color or form in the masses of from it I felt that the trip to the Philippines vegetation through which you travel that reveals was already almost worth . while, even though the presence of seeds or fruits or flowers. "S~op, there is, as every plant person knows, many a Stop" someone calls and everyone piles out and slip twixt the cup and the lip. if the plant is near enough gathers it for exam­ But the terraces of Bontoc and Benaue ! Words ination. If down the steep slope, it is a job for fail. That a hundred terraces, one above the little Conicosa who is about the most fearless other, should have been built, or perhaps little fellow that I have ever seen, not hesitating "sculptured" is the word, out of the mountain a minute to scramble down among the creepers sides of a great valley from the stream below up or out along lianas over a precipice in order to into the clouds above struck me as perfectly gather the desired specimen . If the tree is too amazing. As we came over the divide the Be­ far down the precipice he is let down with a naue Valley burst into view. rope and hauled up again with his seeds. Women on ladders were weeding the ~alls of This was not our first time together with Mr. certain terraces made of soil only. Men on lad­ Tamesis, the Director of Forests, so we were soon ders carrying rocks weighing fifty pounds were at work as we sped along towards Bantoc, the climbing up and depositing them on the partly center of the lgarot civilization. finished edges of others, the rock terraces. In I cannot refrain from gloating a bit over the the distance men and women were walking along seeds of a pretty palm new to the gardens there the narrow trails between the maze of terraces which is a charming Pinanga that I happened to and here and there a worker was weeding in the see out of my reach down among the lianas and mud of the rice fields with which most of the which Conicosa secured. I think it is W oodiana terraces are covered. For it is a striking fact but it has not yet been determined. And two that these masterpieces of engineering have been Raphidophoras, relatives of the Monstera that built for the culture of only two crops, viz. rice should some day grace our patios there; and and sweet potatoes. Like those tiny little ter­ Aralia bipinnata, which seems to me far prettier races in the Balearics or in Sicily they are used than Aralia spinosa and may be so in Florida. for the cultivation of crops which we in America Of the Vitex trifolia (var. ovata) which we got grow by the thousands of acres using tractors

9 and planting and harvesting machinery to do shall carry and we are hoping to have the luck the work. of not needing them. I would like to tell my Florida friends that I cannot yet believe that this great experiment. already the Avocado is coming onto these ter­ is really coming off. I feel so sure that there races, just as it came centuries ago onto the edges are many things for us in Celehes, Ternate, of those of the Mayas and that the Chayote has, Batchian Island, Halmaheira and Ceram, that since the Americans came to the Philippines, unless something blows up inside of one of us become a popular vegetable. FQr the Philip­ we shall get to those islands and seetue some pinos are even quicker I would say, to take up fine plants for South Florida. ·new vegetables, than are the Americans even with the surprising array of delicacies which In Front of the Village they have already. of Tidore in Tahoena Bay , Sangi Island. On Board, Junk Yacht Cheng Ho , January 3-0, 1940. January 6, 1940. It is a rainy morning. The rainclouds · hang so Yesterday · lit luncheon we looked up and there low on the volcano and the hills about it that was the Junk making for the breakwater. She they almost reach the still waters of the hay. had only been four and a half days out from Coconut plantations clothe the shores and far Hong Kong and the weather h ~5k;JJ?t been very up the slopes. It is early and the crew is just good either so we could scarcely believe our stirring - the Chinese crew, I mean. I can hear eyes. Everybody who knows boats seems much them preparing their chow on the little pottery interested in her and approves of her build and stove here on deck forward. The swaying of the her performance between Hong Kong and here, boat makes the water swish onto the deck with which has tested the Diesel engines out and each swing and it pours down like the water proved the seaworthiness of the craft and the front a rain spout. Now the boys begin washing trustworthiness of the crew. As we stood on her the deck with their brooms. Sam comes and deck looking her over, Admiral Hart in his su­ asks if he can put up off the wet deck onto the perb launch from the Flag Ship, stopped and hatch an immense flower cluster of a plant that came on hoard and told us that he considered was named years ago after a Dutch friend of everything safe for our projected cruise in the mine, Prof. Boerlage of Buitenzorg. A little hoy Dutch East Indies. So in a few days now we brought it in his small outrigger from somewhere shall he off on the real expedition of which our in the forest and sold it to me for a box of stay in Luzon has been just a preliminary affair. matches. It ranks as one of the strangest flower Tomorrow we shall take aboard all of th ~ clusters in the world for it produces great masse s photographic materials and the hooks for the of infertile fruits that look just like fruits hut little laboratory which I hope is to he my work­ which do not develop any mature embryos .. ing home for the next six months. It is a dear These are supposed to attract the great doves little place, all windows to give plenty of light and they come to get them and as they light on amidships where the motion will he less and the immense head of flowers their wings brush where I can pack up seeds and study the litera­ against dozens of upright orange colored flowers ture about them in a satisfactory way. Hugo which stick up above the level of the aborted Curran, the botanical collector, is on hand ready fruits which the doves are greedy for, the pollen to he off, too, and we have a pair of climbing in .great masses is left on the under feathers of irons for him to scale tall trees with . Fenton their wings. · Whe11 they fly to some other great Kilkenny, too, will help in this work. flower head they carry the pollen and cross fer­ Our plan now is to make Mena do our ·next tilj.ze it. Oh, if only we can get some ripe seeds . headquarters and have mail sent down there of this Boerlagiodendron ! So far 11011e here from Manila. The doctor of the Health Service, seem to he ripe. There are many species in the Dr. Howard Smith, an old veteran in the island s, Moluccas so we shall get the seeds eventually is taking a keen interest in the medicines we and then some day somebody will flower it in

10 Coconut Grove and give a party, for it is about of large fruits that were as large as duck's eggs . the showiest tree when in bloom that I have yet But there was not a single ripe fruit visible and seen here. Perhaps the F. T. G. will be the first we could not tell what color the fruits would be to flower it. when they did ripen. Were there other palms But back to the boat. The deck is loaded with like it anywhere? As I asked "di mana lagi ?" a flower clusters of all sorts, brought to us yester­ little hoy picked up a brilliant red fruit from day by a great crowd of men, women, boys and the little stream which flowed through the K.am­ girls. They all came off in their gracefully fash­ pong . It was unmistakably the fruit of this palm ioned canoes with bamboo poles lashed to them and I shall never forget the thrill I got as he as outriggers and a more jovial laughing merry handed me the superb red fruit and in my imag­ lot of folks I never saw in mr; life. To bargain ination I saw a specimen of this palm fruiting in with them was a circus for small change gave out the Fairchild Tropical Garden or in someone's and I had to resort to boxes of cheap matches. patio in Coconut Grove. To tell some smiling expectant little chap that Further on we found enough fruits and seeds I already had the kind of seed he wanted me to to satisfy us and after studying and photograph­ buy I found a bit difficult, but a box of matches ing the fruits in the hands of a smiling old man costing 1½¢ made his face lighten up with who had a whole handful of them, for it was in pleasure for he knew that he had often to bring his yard that the trees were growing, we traveled a burning ember from the fire with which to on, Hugh and I, up the mountain side to see the light his father's cigarette . Sago Barok, a certain spineless species that we Let me give some idea, if I can, of the variety have not yet determined. At last above us the of plants and seeds which came pouring in on us man who was guiding us pointed out a tall palm from the shore, each in its little prau with two in bloom, its drooping clusters of young fruits brown boys paddling it. The representative of seeming at this distance perhaps a foot or so the Rajah of Manganito came bearing a section long. After some bargaining the man took Hugo of a palm stem from which hung great clusters up the mountain side and I sat down to talk of handsome fruits and flowers; a species of with the head man of the village and learned of Pinanga different from any that we had seen, the visitation of a scale insect to the island years Hugo and I, in the Philippines. But alas the ago which had devastated the coconut trees, seeds were not ripe and it was not until later making their leaves turn brown and of how the that a little boy brought the seeds of it in a experts from the Dutch Government have intro­ paper cornucopia, unmistakably the same spe­ duced some other insect that had completely cies. But with this palm the Rajah sent a fruit parasitized this . pest. My Malay was not good cluster of another and a quite amazing palm, its enough to discover what the parasite was but I fruits being as large as a lemon; but alas green. shall find out in Menado where we- go in a day It took a forenoon on land to chase down this or so. new large fruited Areca with Hugo and a gang As I sat talking to the men I heard a crash of boys of the village. I put a specimen of the and knew that Hugo and his guide had felled green fruit the Rajah had sent tog ether with the "Sago Barok" palm, then a rattling noise fruits of the Pinanga palm and a single tree and Hugo appeared with the gigantic palm top snail, in a cellophane envelope and took them on on his shoulder. He looked like a giant beside land and in my poor Malay explained that we his guide who trailed him, dragging the eight­ wanted seeds "massak", which means ripe, of foot cluster of green fruits along the ground. both the palms and specimens of the snails Stopping there in the neatly swept dooryard we which climb the trees in the forest. I explained took a photograph of its superb foliage and gi­ my wants to a man in a little shop and he gantic fruit cluster for the collection of the seemed to know where the big fruited palm grew Museum of the F. T. G. and accompanied us to a tiny little village called But as we tarried there a man appeared with Tidore and there, back of a pretty little house, a beautiful bamboo basket which was loaded raising its crown into the air so that we could hi gh with Ramboetans, those gorgeous red fruits see it against the clouds of the overcast sky, like giant red chestnut burs which the Western stood this graceful slender palm with its cluster Hemisphere, strangely enough, has not known

11 until recently and which Popenoe established in climate it is a delight to sleep and which have Honduras from seeds we sent him in 1926. They such colors as one associates with mats or rugs are like lichees, juicy, delicious things, but with made by artists - not of glaring colors such as fruit flesh that clings to the large seed. While one sees so often in America. Travellers to the eating some of them my attention was attracted tropics on great ocean liners have become fami ­ to some Durians in the basket below. "Brapa ?" liar with the delights of bargaining for objects I asked, and the market man came back with brought on board but I doubt if any of them "Satu rupie". Fifty-four American cents for have much idea of the fun we have had with forty ramboetans and a half dozen durians. Since these jolly people bargaining for seeds and I questioned the ripeness of the durian the mar­ plants and snails and other natural objects. ket man broke one open with his hands and Just this minute Mrs . Fairchild is taking the showed me the whitish yellow fruit pulp. I remains _of some snails out of their shells and a smelled it and recoiled from its "fragrance" boy has brought a beautiful parrot-fish and much to the amusement of the crowd. I found, Hugo and Captain Kilkenny are cleaning the however, that everyone in the crowd was crazy seeds from some red-black Pinanga palm seeds, about the durian and as soon as they could, staining their hands deep red in the process. snatched pieces of the fruit away from its owner Mrs. Archbold is arranging for a show of pic­ and .gobble ir''ihem down with as much evident tures to the school on shore and Beckwith is de­ delight as would a picanniny, pieces of his fav­ veloping the last roll of films which Hugo and I orite watermelon. We brought two beautiful exposed, while Fant is arranging some slats to specimens on board but after l.!_;.J~W.~ Mrs. Arch­ keep my books from pitching out of their places bold demanded of the Chinese c~ew that it must on the shelves when we again put out to sea from eat them at once or throw them overboard. So ti1is harbor. While it should be calm and shel­ do the tastes of people differ. Even our Hollan­ tered in this tiny cove, the winds coming down der, Daan Hubrecht, who loves fromage de Brie from the mountains have blown us about so and Camembert and perhaps even Limburger, that orie of the anchor wires, an inch through, recoils before a ripe durian. I have decided was snapped yesterday, leaving an anchor some­ that it is a cultivated taste, in the same <;ategory where in the dark, volcanic sand of the sea bot ­ with the taste for "high" game and highly flav­ tom. Those familiar with boating in the shallow ored cheeses. waters of the Caribbean can hardly realize that Loaded down with specimens of palms and here the anchorages are really deep and that seeds and with a very pretty white flowered labi­ forty fathoms is not at all uncommon even with­ ate, worthy of our gardens, Hugo and I made in a stone's throw of the shore. I must interrupt our way to the beach and in one of the tiny out­ this letter now for the rain has let up and Hugo rigger praus were paddled back to the boat. I and Daan Hubrecht and I must go •ashore and was conscious of a kind of drunkenness which see if we can buy the tall palm that bears the comes to me often when I have seen a host of large red _fruit; the species of Areca - so that we new plant forms and spent hours gazing at them. can get good photographs of all its parts. Galleries of paintings tire me after an hour or two but close up views of tropical vegetation •::• +:- .;-:- -::- dripping with rain or bathed in mists give me a kind of intoxication that no museum or art gal­ Well, we · went ashore in the launch. The roll ­ lery can give ; ers were so high that we had to hunt a spot along I had an idea that a siesta was in order after the coast where we could land without getting lunch . Everybody takes one here. But no soaked. The head man of the village, dressed in sooner was lunch over than the crowd at the white duck coat and sarong, met us and Daan gang ladder became so insistent that I had to explained that we wanted to see a specimen of meet it and spend the rest of the day, until late the "Kavesu" palm which we found out was the into the evening, bargaining for fruits and flow­ Areca palm that we discovered the day before. ers and palm and bamboo ba skets while the It began to drizzle and then to pour and I ladies handled the sellers of native fabrics, such hugged my camera close under my rain coat to as soft woven mat s of Pandan on which in this keep it dry as we waded through the mud and

12 wet grass of the village, followed by the owner if possible from the little library of scientific of a Kavesu palm and a lot of little boys to books on the shelves. whom the rain meant nothing whatever for it Tomorrow at four in the morning we shall pull was only warm rain-water and it rolled off of out of this harbor and move on southward to their brown skins like water off a duck's back. another little one on this same island and after I hated the idea of cutting down so handsome a day or so there, go farther and call on the a palm right in the yard of a pleasant mannered Radja of Siaoe Island where there are roads and man and his wife, but the owners seemed to an automobile or two. Here there is not a single have no special interest in it, for its fruit was automobile nor a carriage of any kind; not an not good to eat, neither was its bud used for electric light, either, and yet the eighty thousand salad and a rupee was worth more · to them than people seem very happy and contented and live the palm. As the rain continued, Daan and I sat in pretty little houses of bamboo, thatched with under the thatched porch of the little house and the Sago palm leaves. -But, there are mango­ Hugo superintended the felling of the palm. steens galore everywhere and Ramboetans, too, When it fell I ran out and with an umbrella and the famous Doekoe and who could be un­ held over me took a number of photographs in happy with such fruits to eat? the rain. It was a rather dreary experience I must con­ Bai van Dago, on Sangi Island. fess, for I hate rain and I loathe mud and we February 1, 1940. had had an hour of paddling about in the rain, stepping in mud puddles every few steps. I re­ The anchor is up and we are leaving the called the days in Coconut Grove wh en the rain charming bay of Dago behind. Mrs. Fairchild came down in torrents without making a single and I are saying to each other that there is real mud puddle and it made me hate mud worse something very sad about the thought that never and worse. again will we set eyes on this beautiful spot in With the specimens of the leaves rolled up in which we have spent delightful hours collecting the handsome long green leaf sheaths we set out on shore and from the launch. As a parting for another reported palm, a Pinanga, seed~ of shot I photographed a dear old man and his which we had secured from the Rajah's friends. wife and two children who had come out in This meant another walk in the rain through the their prau with a rooster and a hen perched on mud and a wait for a bamboo ladder with which the fish spears which are held in a rack above to get high enough up the small palm to take off the outrigger. Nothing could be more delightful a leaf or two for our herbarium. The rain con­ than the water life of these people. Their knife­ tinued as we reached the b eac h where the out­ edged praus with bamboo outriggers are the riggers were hauled up on the shore in anticipa­ means of transportation of all and the tiny chil­ tion of a storm which seemed approaching. One dren seem as fearless in them as though they large prau had just returned with its nets and would never upset. And even if they do, the brilliant colored fishes the size of small perch boys simply hang on to th em, right them, bale and the owners offered to take us on board, so the water out of them with their hands and with our palm specimens we three boarded the crawl back in again. Coming down the tidal prau and with the ease that characterizes the mangrove lined river here this morning in the native handling of these ideal canoes we shot launch we saw two women with a bunch of ba­ through the surf without shipping a drop of nanas on the bow of their prau and we followed water and were soon crawling up the gangway them to offer to buy their bananas but they were like three drowned rats. To drop off on e's mud­ frightened and paddled for dear life and escaped dy clothes and sit down to a luncheon on the up a stream. They must have thought we were Cheng Ho, ,whose cook is an accomplished Chi­ a terrible, white hatted, noisy gang. nese chef, is a luxury that nobody could fail to Two experiences will stand out in my memory appreciate, especially when a cozy little work of the Bai van Dago; the first morning with room on deck with windows on all sid es and Mrs. Archbold and Fenton in the launch, coast­ shallow drawered cabinets and writing desk · in­ ing slowly along the rocky cliffs of the shore, vite one to study one's finds and determine them hunting for plants which _will stand the salt

13 spray and, being able to grow within a few feet since it had commenced to rain, I stayed while of the surf which should be able to stand any of Hugo went after his golden bamboo which the the salt laden winds which sweep across Miami Capella said was called the "Bamboe nipis koe­ Beach and Nassau. We found several things; ning" or King bamboo. orchids of course and the large brilliant red As I sat there trying to recall some of my for­ flowered lxora macrothrysa which will appear gotten Malay there came back to me an incident in our photographic album in the hands of a regarding the papaya that has for over 20 years native of the place who had to be coaxed and ca­ lain--{ _,, -x- -x- break; for Marian just now joled into holding it for us to take. But these whispers in my ear "We are approaching a may all be old. However, we saw on the rocks, smoking volcano that rises right out of the sea covering them with a mat of grey-green roundish and you 1nust come out and see it." "How can leaves, a very pretty plant entirely new td us. one write when there are such interruptions It bore purple flowers reminding us remotely of every minute?" I retort but I do go out and see the Saint Paulia. That so delicate a flower could the volcano. It is 5,800 feet tall and after all o/ grow so close to the salt water seemed amazing if the tiny little thing were transportable to and Fenton scrambled up the cliffs and got some South Florida it would not only "stop the traf­ seed which we hope will reach Florida alive. fic" on Biscayne Boulevard but completely Overhanging i •,the water Mrs. Archbold saw change the climate of Florida, 1nake it a rainier against the light green. of its leaves a cluster of place no doubt. Its cone is almost a perfect one scarlet fruits, a dozen of them or more. They and from the top pours a column of smoke like were the opening pods of a very .handsome Ster- the one that pours from Vesuvius; only this vol-­ ~ ·b'"~:©!·' . culia; pods of that striking shaa ·e~'of scarlet that cano that perhaps no American even heard of, one associates with lacquer and that does not is almost twice as high as Vesuvius. We are go­ tire the eye to look at. Should the seeds we are ing straight towards this smoking volcano and now taking out of the pods grow into trees in in the drawer of my desk here, is a letter of intro­ Coconut Grove they will cause a, sensation when duction in Malay to the Sultan of Siaoe from they flower just as Sterculia f oetida does when the Netherlands Controlleur of the Island of its beautiful red pods open to show its dull Sangi. All volcanos are much alike when seen hlack seeds. from the sea; they have nothing approaching the The second memory of Dago is of the later novelty of the forms of the plants we are seeing afternoon; Hugo, who had been ranging the around here. I shall try to prove this as soon as hills, had discovered a new variety of Areca Marian and Mrs. Archbold and the hoat-minde

14 asked. "By changing the water three times, I gloom we retumed to the shore and bidding the suppose," I said. I remembered all this as I sat crowd good bye fo~ever, and making the little in the little palm thatched Kantor in the tiny fellow happy by giving Mm a box of matches village of 200 inhabitants most of whom were in which a crowd of his little friends crowded about the street looking at the strange human who had to see, we waded through the mangroves to the landed from a Chinese Junk in the bay outside. waiting launch and were soon alongside the Here I was with papayas all about me. Did Cheng Ho with its brilliantly decorated stern these people eat the leaves of the papaya? I and sides and the comforts of dinner and bunks. started in to find out and was surprised to dis­ "When do you want to go ashore tomorrow?" cover that enough ·Malay came back to me to get Mrs. Archbold inquired. Six-thirty was agreed the information I had wanted for twenty-odd upon and before the sun shone over the hills years and get it from the Capella Kampong and that shut in the Bai van Dago the launch was his assista .nt. Yes, the leaves were eaten by headed for a tidal river lined with mangroves everybody. They were cooked and formed a which empties into the bay half a mile away part of the so-called "sayor", that is the vegeta­ from the Cheng Ho. We were a party of seven. ble part of the Rijs tafel. They were only cooked Ah Fook, the boat man, Fenton who ran the ten minutes and the fresh leaves were not con­ engine, Hugo Curran with his bolo and collect­ sidered dangerous at all but they were, the Ca­ ing bags and tags, Beckwith with his wonderful pella Kampong told me, very hitter and I tasted camera all wrapped up in oil cloth to protect it them in his presence and they certainly are very from the rain, Marian with her equipment and hitter. For karpaein as I knew is extremely Mrs. Archbold with hers, and the writer with hitter. Hugo tells me the monkeys eat the leaves his little camera and exposure meter hung about in large quantities in Manila and survive. So at his neck and his collecting coat of many pockets last by making this journey direct to the place in which he is always losing the things he wants. where the papaya leaves are eaten I have satis- It was agreed before I left Coconut Grove that . fied myself that they are good to eat, regardless since the mangrove vegetation of the Oriental of their content of karpaein and of Dr. Powers' tropics, although resembling that of the Western warning which has kept me from eating them world in general appearance, is made up of quite all through the years. Isn't it strange that such distinct and different species of trees, it would a thing as the edibility of the leaves of a food be a very interesting thing to get seeds of these plant so common as the papaya should be prac­ species which compose the Oriental Mangrove tically unknown although it is cultivated and its swamps and plant them on the shores of Biscayne fruit highly esteemed the world over? Bay to see how they would compare in beauty But darkness began to settle down and Hugo and interest with the native species growing returned with clumps of the golden bamboo there now. and then we inquired about the yellow fruited As we headed into the stream at low tide and Areca that he had seen in a yard across the road. I found myself surrounded on all sides with the As soon as the crowd heard we wanted some seed fascinating mangrove trees with their stilt and a tiny little fellow, not over eight, scrambled like aerial upright, breathing roots, I thought there a monkey up the stem of a coconut that stood was something lacking in the scene before me; near the Areca hut in trying to reach over to something which I had come to associate with the the fruits he lost his balance and could not re­ mangroves of the Shark River or places in the cover it and there he hung between the two West Indies. Where were the land crab holes palms twenty feet above the ground. Perhaps it and where were the thousands of crabs which so was his brother, anyway a larger boy, angered enliven the mud hanks of the streams? Where, at the hoy's foolhardiness, shot up the coconut too, were the thousands of snails which live on palm after him and with an irritated sweep of the brown stilt roots of the Rhizophora mangle, his . arm pulled the little fellow out of danger our chief mangrove tree in the western hemi­ and sent him sliding down to the ground. Then sphere? Has the fact that this island is volcanic he struck the fruit cluster and sent it hurtling and that there is not so much lime as there is in over the fence where we could pick up the fruits the calcareous soils of Florida anything to do and put them in our basket. In the gathering with it, I wonder?

15 As we went up the river and were able to The literature seems divided in opinion as to look off into the depths of the mangrove forest whether these Myrmecodia represent true cases on both banks I felt conscious that I had never of symbiosis or not; whether the galleries which seen before so beautiful a stand of these curious run everywhere through their swollen stems and interesting tidal trees. The trees were about were encouraged by the ants or not, whether the forty feet tall and formed "sol 'id stands" of this plant derives anything but a slight protection height. But there was a strange cleanness to the from the ants, whether the ants get anything but trees above their roots which I could not quite an ideal abode from the plant; these are all analyze. I realize only now as I sit down to questions that seem difficult to determine. In make this comparison between the mangrove any case these strange plants of the mangrove vegetation of the Orient with that of the Occi­ forest, inhabited by colonies of ants appear to dent that this striking difference between the be a most striking example of the friendly co­ two; this neatness and tidiness of the Occidental operation that exists between insects and plants mangrove, is due to the complete lack of any and this, too, in the "world of the Jungle" which species of Bromeliads whatsoever. Those pretty to most people is a world of tooth and claw, a red flowered Tillandsias which we search for in world of struggle for existence, a world of the our mangroves were nowhere to he seen. The survival of the fittest. As my old friend Morton Shark river "rriangrove is a tangled mass of plants Wheeler has shown, the examples of mutual aid compared with this mangrove of the Bai de are more abundant in this wild nature than are Dago of the Island of Sangi. Neither were there those of parasitism; much more so. any orchids to he seen commonlx 0 .in the crotches Up the tidal stream we paddled speaking only ~ .-r;:,1,i:··~;.• ' of the trees, and the only palm to be found was in whispers for fear of frightening the Hornbills the Nipa palm and that only in the inner, fresh­ overhead, until we reached the zone oT Nipa er water part of the river, not at its mouth. palms which to my mind makes one of the most As we were wondering if there was light interesting features of the Oriental Mangrove enough to photograph I saw something which I swamp and which alas is yet unknown as an ele­ have always wished to see in the wild. I saw at­ ment of the coastal vegetation of the Western tached to several of the trees near the edge of tropics. This palm is a rather slow growing one the stream curious things which look as Captain and unless you can find a place where the under­ Kilkenny remarked, like roasted ducks with ground stem has been uncovered by the washing their heads on. These fat, brown, irregular of the tides you imagine it to he a stemless palm. things with bunches of green leaves rising from As a matter of fact it sometimes has u rather a neck that crooked down from them and then long stem that is hidden deep in the mud. From curved upwards I recognized at once as plants it arise the graceful green plumes to a height of of the genus Myrmecodia. To me who could re­ twelve feet or so. These are crowded closely call the excitement which the discussion regard­ together and give a characteristic background to ing these plants created when they were first anything in front .of them. Here and there rise studied by Treub and Beccari and the bearing its fruits and male flowers; stunning brown in mind of the fact that they had running all structures that would grace any flower arrange­ through them, galleries in which myriads of ment because 'of their sculptured seed coverings vicious biting ants universally make their home, and their deep dark mahogany color . there came a great thrill in their discovery here As we were admiring these beautiful Nipa and we moved up to the tree where they hung palms along the mud hank on which, he it em­ and began taking pictures of them at once, re­ phasized, we saw scarcely a single snail or crab, gardless of the vicious bites of the tiny red ants someone saw high up in the branches one of which swarmed out of the plants when we lifted tho se ant's nests made entirely of green leaves them off the trees. "Not in the boat. Not here. which have been "sewn" together, so to say, by Drown them before bringing them on board!" the big brown fierce-fighting ants which have came from the ladies. Hugo was alternately learned to utilize the silks which certain larvae brushing his arms and legs to rid them of ants produce _for the making of their coccoons. Thes e and stand;ng as still as he could while we got marvelously intelligent ants take these small close-ups of these strangest of plants. larvae in their mandibles and squeeze out their

16 sticky liquid silks and with it fasten the leaf tic ridges swept from high up the slopes down edges together. The liquid silk, fresh from the to the sea like the folds of a bridal gown. I have spinarettes of the larva, is very sticky and needs approached many volcanos from the sea, Aetna, only to be touched to the surface of a leaf to Vesuvius, Fuji, Camaroon, Stromboli, Saba, and stick to it so that the ant can pass it to and fro others, but with the evening light as it was that from one leaf edge to the other. Some of the day and the clouds as they were at the time, I ants, it has been observed, hold the leaf edges have never seen anything approaching the together while their co-workers pass the silks beauty of the scene that slowly passed before my containing larvae like bobbins, back and forth eyes a~ I sat on the deck of the Cheng Ho and between the leaf edges. watched the swirl of the swift ocean currents Years ago, in Singapore, the discoverer of about the ship and looked off at the shadows these ants, Dr. Ridley, had shown them to me; which grew darker every moment in the deep but it was thrilling to have them right before gullies between the magnificent furrows of wav­ us there in the mangrove swaiµp and to have ing coconuts with which Gunung Api was com­ Hugo, who is afraid of few things in the way of pletely covered, almost to its ash cone. I had insects, calmly hold the nests for us to photo­ stepped out. of my little laboratory here with graph while hundreds of ants were, so to say, the idea that I would take a look and then come "eating him up." He tore one of the nests apart back and finish what I was doing but little had and I captured a number of the ants, togcthe1· I counted on Gunung Api on the tiny island of with some of the marvelous grey ·fabric which Siaoe. For an hour I sat enthralled with the they had woven between the edges of the leaves scene before me while all the old stories of that were far apart. I could see here and there Stevenson and Beck and Lafcadeo Hearn swirled a white larva with ant holding it in its mandibles through my head and I wondered why Marian but disturbed as the ants were, they did not do and I should not stop right here; here where any weaving. · When I returned with these speci­ the world ends; here where springs pour their mens in my cellophane bag too many thing;, fresh waters into the sea and make bathing happened on the Junk and I never returned to places for the people; here where from the port an observation of these, the most intelligent per­ hole every morning I could see the smoking cone haps of all the ants of the world. Loaded down of a volcano nearly 6,000 feet high and hear the with the seeds of three species of trees which lapping of the waves on a tropical shore; here with several others compose the Oriental Man­ where the mangosteens are ripe and baskets of grove vegetation we climbed on board just in them fill my room, here where the sea gardens time to weigh anchor for the next port, the port must entice one to spend hours gazing into that of Oeloe on the Island of Siaoe, our at1proach to other and fairer world, the world of the blue whose smoking volcano which I have already re­ depths of ocean. ferred to. These seeds are already packed away in moistened German peat moss and will be sent by Air Post from Menado in a day or so. Yesterday Daan and I went with the letter of I confess to a certain degree of annoyance at introduction to call on the King; the Rajah of the appearance of that volcano at that particular Siaoe, Parengkuan. We found him in his Kan­ time on the horizon but as the moments passed toor; a dignified, handsome man with a large, and the insistent calls from the poop deck of the striking shaped head and a smiling intelligent Cheng Ho became louder and more insistent, I face. He was courteous and considerate of my abandoned these notes on my typewriter and poor Malay and understood at once Daan's care­ went to see Siaoe, which appears as a tiny speck ful exposition of our mission to his island. We on my Atlas of the Dutch East Indies. had come he understood, to gather "higi di poe­ As the smoking cone, almost perfect in out­ hoen, roepa roepa" (seeds of various kinds of line, like Fuji, rose higher and higher before us trees), and he at once took us for a tour of the in the afternoon light, the furrowed slopes of village. Later, in a bus, he accompanied us in a the mountain came into relief. Clothed almost trip around the island, up and down along the to the cinder cone, 5,800 feet high, with the most coast with its idyllic beaches lined with praus, beautiful of the palms, the coconut, these gigan- and up high among the nutmeg plantations and

17 coconut palms and down again to the coast where of the Rockefeller Institute, has even discovered the Sago palms grow. it to be one of the most interesting of all the As we walked and conversed in rather a halt ­ proteolitic enzymes known to man and one of ing fashion I hit quite naturally upon the topic the chemists of the Department of Agricultur e of the edibility of the leaves of the papaya. "Of in Washington has obtained the pure crystals of course. we eat them," he said. "They are very this remarkable enzyme and the meat packers good indeed. We all eat them and eat them have begun to use it as a "meat tenderer" cmn­ every few days. We usually cook them and serve mercially. And yet, I have had to come to this them as greens but you can eat them . raw if you far away place, this corner of the world, to dis• do not mind their being very hitter. They can• cover that it is not only the fruit of this re­ not hurt anyone.' In fact, when I feel tired I markable tree which is a food but that the leaves often drink the bitter water which is usually as well form an integral part of the diet of hun­ thrown away when the cook prepares the p~paya dreds of thousands of people who to all appear• leaves for the table. It is good when I feel tired. ances are unusually healthy and vigorous. As I It is good when one has fever, too." By this write these lines I can hear the happy voices of time we had arrived near the house of the Tuan the crowds of children here on the shore close Schoolmaster, a very intelligent man and after a hy. As I lay in my bunk pondering over this few words of '•conversation with him about the situation I determined to do something about it. papaya leaves he invited us to come in and taste I recalled the movie pictures which I staged the leaves which his wife had just then cooked once in the hack yard of Mrs. Secretary Lansing for his luncheon. "These are of Jh.~ male papa• during the Great War whex{ it was thought de­ ya," he explained. "The leaves o'ft ifa male plant sirable to teach people to use dried vegetables. are not so bitter as are those of the female Why not stage a picture of the Rajah and his -wife plant," he declared. "It is my favorite "soyer" eating the leaves of the papaya and get him to (greens). I have it nearly every day. And, the write me a letter stating that they are good to children like it, too, when the cook does not eat. When the Rajah came on hoard I laid the make it too bitter,-does not fail to throw away plan before him and he was pleased and his two waters in which it is cooked." wife, whose laugh is the most contagious I think Here I was among the papaya leaf eating I have ever heard, received the proposal that we people which my old friend, Koorders, of my take pictures of her husband eating the leaves Buitenzorg days had written about and which of the papaya, with roars of laughter. So this twenty-five years ago I had read about. The ro• morning Edward and I, both armed with cam­ mance of the situation filled my mind. Here were eras, appeared at the door of the Rajah's hand­ people wh,o for generations had been eating the some dwelling and there for nearly an hour kept cooked and even raw leaves of a plant which my our cameras going in an attempt to portray ihe friend, Dr. Powers, the great chemist, had dis­ Rajah and his wife in the act of eating both the covered contain large quantities of karpaein, a raw leaf and the cooked leaf as it is used as drug as stimulating· to the heart as digitalis. I "greens". His Highness even suggested that he seemed to see Dr. Powers' face as he held up his he taken drinking the water poured from the test tube half full of the white crystals of kar• greens which is of course very bitter. He said paein that he had gotten out of a few leaves of as he did so that he often took a drink of this papaya that I had sent him from Coconut Grove. water when he felt tired or feverish. Then the strangeness of the situation dawned up• He seemed to grasp the full import of my on me. Here was one of the most remarkable mission to teach the people of Florida that the tropical fruits in the whole world, grown from leaves of the papaya are not poisonous as eaten Panam to Australia and from Brazil to South­ by the people here. The bitterness of the raw ern China, and now in recent years become one leaves here does not differ from that of the of the favorite fruits of the newly inhabited re• leaves in Florida, furthermore, so that it is not gion of South Florida. Volumes in the aggregate a question of the papayas elsewhere containing have been written about it. Its papain has be­ the alkaloid Karpaein and those here not hav• come the subject of hundreds of chemical in P.;it. So I shall send this short account of an studies. The great research chemist, Bergman, overlooked use for the papaya to my friends in

18 Florida where in the course of time perhaps it walked on they followed us, singing all the time. will have an effect of some sort. Either these Had I been the Pied Piper I am sure I could not people here are doing a dangerous thing hy eat­ have been followed hy half so jolly a crowd of ing the leaves of the papaya or we i~ Florida children. And when I discovered that the path and elsewhere are stupid in overloo .king a per­ led through a small planting of a vegetable that fectly good new vegetable which we grow in was entirely new to me, the "Gedi," and I wanted great quantities and deliberately throw away. to take a photograph of it the whole crowd of­ The fact that although we served papaya greens fered to stand beside the hush. Unfortunately for luncheon today and that Edward Beckwith all but one little tot of a boy and one sweet little refused to even .taste it has nothing to do with girl were dressed in white and as white clothes the case. Like many Americans and others he will not do anything to a photograph hut spoil does not like to taste new things. I have a very it, I waved them all aside and then begged the close friend who has all his life refused to learn two who were dressed in reds and browns to to eat cheese of any kind whatever. I found the pose for me. This selection seemed to give a dis­ greens most excellent and so did Mrs. Archbold tinction to these two little people that was quite and Fenton Kilkenny, even though Ho, the cook, tremendous. I could not help wondering if the had not washed out as much of the hitter prin­ distinction would last long and whether my little ciple as he could have. All of the bitter can be girl would seem more lovely to her beau than easily washed out hy three changes of water. l she had before because of it. know this for I have done it. And so I send this But the vegetable! It looked like some sort little story out into the contentious world of of a papaya hut bore no fruits or flowers and taste. It has taken me a quarter of a century the people told me that it never does; that they to gather the data for it and I trust it will he always plant cuttings of it. Down the hillside ,given sufficient publicity to reach the ears of there was a hoy gathering a mess of the leaves Florida papaya growers at least. for luncheon. I tasted them and unlike the leaves of the papaya they were not in the least * * bitter hut they were rather slimy, perhaps · more Approaching Menado, Northern Celehes. so than the leaves of the Talinum which we have February 5, 1940. learned to so cook that it is delicious; I have cuttings here on board to send tomorrow from Yesterday was Sunday in the little island of Menado for the gardeners of Coconut Grove to Siaoe and it seemed as quiet on shore as in some grow. I shall find out what it is from the ex­ American country village for the people are perts in Menado. mostly protestant Christians and go to church. Having exhausted our trail we returned to Edward Beckwith and I went in search of one town and tried the other direction in the auto- . of the four automobiles and it took us over the mobile, but a few days ago a mountain torrent hand-made roads, so narrow that the driver could had washed a hundred yards of it into the sea, not turn around easily, up to a tiny village on so we took to the coast, walking over the bould­ the mountain side where it stopped because a ers to the sandy beach. As we were walking rain storm had washed out the road ahead. We along, I looked up and saw outlined against the got out and walked down the hillside over a sky, an enormous tree with a trunk four feet in pretty path into a charming valley followed by diameter with scores of the characteristic white a crowd of the jolliest children I ever saw. As translucent fruits of Hernandia peltata. How the crowd grew larger the little girls and boys the sight of them transported me back to "The began to sing. Song after song they sang, keep­ Kampong" in Coconut Grove and reminded me ing perfect time and key. The melody was sug­ of the strand we visited in 1926 on the tip end of gestive of some religious song that I used to Sumatra where Marian and I got the seeds from know in my childhood hut the words were Ma­ which our tree in "The Kampong" grew! This lay. One tiny little girl not over five or six, tree was really enormous. It had been blown threw as much enthusiasm into her singing as over by a storm so that its branches almost hung any artist could and impressed me immensely by over the water at high tide. When the little boy her flow of -spirit and her gaiety. When we who climbed up and got me a bunch of the fruits

19 began to blow across one of them and made a As I started this account of our last day in musical note I could imagine he was my grand­ Siaoe, dawn was breaking and ahead lay the vol­ son, Hugh Muller, for he must have been about canos of Celebes. Their cloud caps were lighted the same age. One of the hopt;s I had in walking by the rising sun and a great rain cloud reflected along that beach was to find a new form of pan­ its pink shades in the sea and the panorama was dan, seeds of it, for the beaches of Florida, and one of those gorgeous things which tropical sun­ I was not disappointed for there, back of the ac­ rises at sea alone can prod~ce. We shall soon tual strand, stood the handsomest species so far anchor off Menado and then the real entrance as its leaves are concerned, I have ever seen. to Netherlands India will commence and, after These leaves were over six inches wide and all these years of dreaming about Minahassa I glossy and of a dark green color and over six feet shall see its charms and be able to wander long. The tree itself was perhaps _ 25 feet tall through its forests, noted in the annals of both and clothed with these great leaves almost to the English and Dutch history as one of the most ground. "Suka bigi di itu" I kept repeating and beautiful regions in the world. Now the burn­ the boys who were along (for there seem to be ing question is how soon does the mail steamer boys everywhere on this island) scurried around leave for Macassar on the South West coast of under . the dead leaves and brought out some Celebes where the air planes take off for Bata­ quite enornib'us seeds, each one of them with via, Singapore and America, for our collections rather large sprouts attached to it. Judging ~vhich are here on the desk must catch that boat from the size of the individual seeds the fruits or wait here in this tropical climate another must be something quite enorm.Jl,M,t~,) fear these week. Of course the longer the sojourn in their will not carry alive to America · b11tI am going packages in the tropics the less are the chances to try the experiment for it would be a splendid of the seeds living and growing when they arrive addition to the ornamental trees of _South Flo­ in Coconut Grove. This getting the seeds we rida if it succeeded there. I do not know its collect off is always something of a race for time. botanical name, of course.

Edward and I returned to the Junk to find -::• -::- -::- that Mrs . Archbold and Marian had been off in the glass bottomed boat with the Rajah and Menado at last and what a disappointment! "Rajahress" viewing the gorgeous sea gardens Here we are rolling about in one of those har­ which lay only a stone's throw from the boat. bOI"s where there is always a nasty swell and There are few experiences more restful than that of gazing down deep into the great caverns filled where anchorages are always things to he ner- , vous about. If th ~ outlook from the boat were with bright colored fishes and corals and imag­ ining -one an inhabitant of that quiet, almost pleasant the case would be different l?,ut here we noiseless world instead of a resident of this aerial are cheek by jowl to a lot of rusty corrugated one which nowadays has become so noisy. By iron-roofed Godowns. There are several mfn the time the Cheng Ho hoisted her anchor, the whose inventions, practical as they are, have al­ noise of the children swimming and boating ways annoyed me intensely. One was ihe in­ about the Junk and looking into the port hole s ventor of' Mansard roofs and the other was the had become annoying hut as she left the noises discoverer of corrugated iron, for these two men of the shore behind and the smoking cone of have ruined the landscapes of more places which Gunung Api and the verdure covered cone of might be pleasing and even beautiful than have Tamata stood out against the clouds of the late any other two human beings. Then, too, no mail afternoon, we all agreed that we wer~ leaving boat leaves this harbor until the 12th and our behind one of the loveliest spots on earth and precious seeds must stew and wait. I say stew one filled with the gayest, jolliest lot of children for this is really a hot, muggy place and we are in the world. The two volcanos were on the only l½ degrees North of the Equator. rim of what must have been sometime an enor­ -::- mous crater across whose deep waters we sailed away for the great Island of Celehes, only a ni ght' s journey south 1 of u s.

20 Sunday Morning in Menado, Feb. 11th. height of a hundred feet or more. Perhaps some were 130 feet, we could not well estimate. Here I am in a corner room of the Wilhel­ The books give this height as their limit. The mina Hotel or rather, on the open porch in front roadway wound up the hill and down into a val­ of it, for all the Dutch hotels here in Nether­ ley and as we crossed the divide and looked down lands India have open porches on which the into that valley the sight of several tall Pigafet­ guests live and they are a great comfort. This tia palms standing in a group near the road com­ one is unfortunately made noisy by a near-by pletely took my breath away. I thought I had radio and two large dogs but fascinating by two seen beautiful palms before, such as the Royals love-making brilliant parrots and one of those in Cuba and Dominica and Rio, and the various great white cockatoos with yellow crests. Fruit palm species in the palm quartiers of Peradinia trees such as the Governor's plum, the Lang­ and Buitenzorg. The tall Washingtonians in sat and a Mangosteen fill the patio and some Palm Canon, the graceful date palms in Arabia immense orchids from New Guinea are in boxes and Egypt and Morocco; . all these recollections near the Manager's quarters. We have come swam .through my mind as I stood there with down from a visit to the highlands where we Anne Archbold and Marian and Edward Beck­ went for a few days and where I hoped to see with gazing down on that valley as the afternoon what I came here to see,- the Pigafettia palm. light gradually faded away . I hate comparisons The Minahassa region of the Celebes is its home but I have to be frank with myself and admit and I hoped, notwithstanding the wide spread that those Pigafettias impressed me at that mo­ destruction of the forest here to find it some­ ment as beyond any doubt the handsomest where. As we drove in the automobile with top palms my eyes had ever rested on. down we swept the horizon with our eyes but It was to see them, it is true, that we had come for some time saw nothing which answered to my here. I had been since 1926, when I saw the idea of this palm. I had only seen it in the Sibo­ specimen in Sumatra, longing to see the palm langit Garden in North Sumatra; the specimen in its forest habitat and had been fearful that from which we finally secured the seeds through it might prove disappointing; and now that it Walter Bangham that grew at Chapman Field stood there in all its beauty I was quite naturally and I trust are still growing there. I was looking delighted to find it far more beautiful than I had for a medium sized palm like the one in Suma­ dared to dream it might be. I recalled that the tra. "There it is," screamed Marian, often the upper third of the palm I saw in Sumatra was first to spot a new thing. Rising twenty feet up of a deep bright green color with rings at irreg• through the undergrowth on the side of the ular intervals around it. Here these larger speci­ road, a steep hillside, and straight as an arrow mens exhibited that striking character to such a shooting for sixty or more feet skyward above it degree that it was quite imperative that color stood the first mature specimen I ever saw of this photographs and movies in color be taken of the magnificent ·feather palm. An eighty-foot palm palm. The w:eather was not good. Rain clouds of any species is something to admire but this hung over the valley. It took several visits on one has other characters to give it class. different days to get good views and even the~ The cameras got into action and should show the sunshine was not first rate. But perhaps this first specimen well but we were to see others these views of my favorite among the palms will and finer ones that afternoon as we strolled up prove sufficiently good to prove what I contend: the road from the little hotel at Noongan 'forty that the Pigafettia is the queen of the feather miles in the interior of Celebes. I shall never palms. Its height, its perfectly straight columnar forget that first afternoon with the Pigaf ettia trunk, its brilliant green upper part of the trunk, elata palms. The afternoon light lit up their its crown which arises without any narrowing of magnificent crowns for they have leaves as large the trunk below it and the handsome markings as those of the coconut. These leaves are densely in grey, irregular grey narrow band,, which covered with brown spines that look as slender characterize it, are the points which I would as cambric needles densely set all over their emphasize. May this palm prove adapted to bases. There they were stretching their magnifi­ growth in South Florida and may it grow as cent heads above the forest; some of them to a rapidly there as it does in Celebes. A palm that

21 was eighty feet high here was testified to by the peat as soon as we can discover when the next natives as not over twenty years old. It is a very mail goes from Menado. rapidly growing species, given plenty of water This disconnected account of the voyagings of and a tropical climate. . the Cheng Ho up to date is so fragmentary that As I write these words I look at the calendar I hesitate to send it to the members of the garden and see that it is now early February in Florida and did I not feel that they all know how frag­ and I cannot help wondering what low tempera­ mentary any kind of a life is I would not do so. tures have visited those little palms in the Chap­ From Celehes, where we shall he for several man Field garden and whether they have suc­ weeks perhaps, we expect to work our way cumbed, in which case my dream of the estab­ across to Ternate and down among those islands lishment there of this queen of the palms be ­ which lie along the West coast of Halmaheira comes merely a dream. But the Pigafettia palm until we reach that wooded island of Batchian is not the only beautiful palm of this Minahassa about which nearly a century ago Alfred Russell region. We soon discovered this, for, peering Wallace was so enthusiastic. down from the forest above the winding road ­ The greetings of Anne Archbold and Marian way, Marian saw the red stem of something and Fairchild accompany this letter and to it I may it turned out to he the red leaf-sheath of a spe• add those of Captain Kilkenny, our "Liaison Of­ cies of Arec~~···which when Hugo got the fruit ficer", Daan Hubrecht, First Mate Fant and Fen­ clusters of it, proved to he quite an a1iiazing ton Kilkenny, who at the present moment are palm. It has tall stilt roots that raise it several busy substituting bamboo poles for the wooden feet above the ground. Its le~.£.f.,~ 'l.~aths are a battens with which the Cheng Ho's sails are beautiful lacquer red, resembling ii1 color those stiffened. Of the excellent work ofmy assistant, of the famous "Sealing Wax Palm". But unlike Hugo Curran, I have already spoken. I wish this it has a fruit cluster that is throughout a that the members of the Garden might see him beautiful lacquer red and its inch-long fruits are as he clambered up giant liana into the top of a of the same color. Those of the •Sealing Wax forest tree after the yellow fruits of it which still Palm are black and the stems of its fruit cluster remain unidentified on my desk on the Junk. are of a pinkish hue. It is with a feeling of With affectionate regards to the members of great pleasure that we shall mail a lot of the the Fairchild Tropical Garden, I remain, very seeds of this red fruited palm packed in moist sincerely, DAVID FAIRCHILD.

22 Right- The Bahay Kubo from the roadway.

Below-The famous terrac es of Banaue whi ch hav e been built by the Jga rot s.

Right -Marian Fairc hild an d Dav id Fair­ child stand in g on th e edge of th e steep hil !side which overlooks th e famous terraces of Banaue which have been built by th e Igaro ts and which are today the mos t extensive and perfr ct ag ricul ­ tura l terra ces in the world. Rice and sweet potatoes are almost Lhe onl y agri­ cultura l crops grow n on the se terr aces which have cost such unt old human effort. Whether some da y or ot her a grea ter va rie ty of crops will be grow n h ere is a question that only tim e can answer.