Chapter V: Uses of Plants to Man (2)

The hemp of the ancients is a tall annual related to our nettles, with rough leaves, and a native of Asia. For centuries an intoxicating drink was made from the herbage of this plant, and this with the narcotic hashish, which is made from a resin exuded by the stems, obscured the fact that _Cannabis sativa_ is a very valuable cordage plant. The coarse fibers are found in the stem, and these are cut and retted, the retting or rotting process separating the fibers from the waste portions of the stem. The fibers are so long and coarse that only cordage, ropes, and a rough cloth are made from them, but enormous quantities are raised for this purpose, especially in Europe. As hashish is now a forbidden product in many countries, due to its dangerous narcotic effects, the hemp plant is more cultivated for fiber than for the narcotic. But in the olden days hashish had a tremendous vogue in the Orient and was known at the time of the Trojan wars, about 1500 B.C. Fiber from the plant was almost unknown to the Hebrews, and it was not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that it came into general use. It is now probably as important as sisal, but not as Manila hemp, the most valuable of all cordage plants. The hemp is diœcious and the female plants are taller and mature later than the male. Two cuttings are therefore necessary in each field.

The Manila hemp is derived from a banana (_Musa textilis_), that is a native of tropical Asia and is much grown in the Philippines. While the fruits of this plant are of very little or no value, the fiber from the long leafstalk is the best cordage material known. Also the finer fibers near the center of the stalk are made up into fabrics, which are rarely seen here, but are said to be almost silky in texture. As a cordage plant, however, _Musa textilis_ is now easily the most important, and from a commercial point of view the Philippine Islands is the only region to produce it in quantity. It has been tried with not much success in India and the West Indies. Methods of extracting the fibers are still very primitive, as it is nearly all scratched out by natives with saw-toothed knives made for the purpose. After the fleshy part of the leafstalk has been separated from the fiber this is merely put out on racks to dry. The finished product has so much value for large cords and ropes that the fiber makes up about half the total exports of the Philippine Islands. Its great strength may be judged from the fact that a rope made from it, only about one inch thick, will stand a strain of over four thousand pounds. No other fiber is anywhere near this in strength and yet of sufficient length to be of use as cordage. There are still thousands of acres suitable for its culture in the Philippines, but the extraction of the fiber awaits some inventive genius who will make a machine for that purpose. Many have tried, but so far the primitive scratching out by natives is the only method in use and it is admitted that it wastes nearly one-third of the fiber. The so-called Manila or brown paper is often made from old and worn-out ropes of Manila hemp, but, as in the case of cordage itself, adulteration with cheaper fibers is common.

From Yucatan, the Bahamas, and some other regions of tropical America comes the most valuable American cordage plant, known as sisal. The fiber is extracted from the thick coarse leaves of a century plant, known as _Agave sisalina_ or _Agave rigida_, which looks not unlike the century plant so common in cultivation. The plant belongs to the Amaryllis family and is native in tropical America. Thousands of acres are planted to sisal in Yucatan and a machine for scratching out the fiber is in general use. The plant produces each year a crown of eight or ten leaves from three to five feet in height, each tipped with a stout prickle. Unlike the common century plant of our greenhouses there are no marginal prickles on the leaves of the sisal. After extraction the fiber is stretched out on racks to dry and is then ready for manufacture into rope.

JUTE

During the late war the Germans were reported to be sending flour and sugar to their armies pressed into large bricks for the want of bags to ship them in the ordinary way. Gunny sacks, or jute bags, as they are more often called, are made literally by the hundreds of millions, as practically all sugar, coffee, grains and feeds, and fertilizers are shipped in them. Jute is a tall herb, a native of the Old World tropics, but suitable for cultivation in many other tropical regions. Practically all the world’s supply now comes from India, probably because of the cheapness of labor rather than any peculiar virtue of the soil or climate of that country. The plant has been experimentally grown in Cuba with entire success, but labor conditions made cheap production of the fiber impossible.

The jute plant, known as _Corchorus capsularis_ or _C. olitorius_, grows approximately six to nine feet tall and is an annual, often branching only near the top. They are not very distantly related to our common linden tree. At the proper maturity the whole plant is harvested and the stems are tied into bundles ready for the retting process. Of all fiber processes this is the most difficult, largely because no machine or chemical has yet been found to

The fiber is mostly derived from _Corchorus capsularis_ and from _Corchorus olitorius_.]

extract the fiber of jute, or flax, and this is accomplished by placing the stems in water, which rots out the fleshy part of the stem, leaving the fiber. Some notion of the difficulty of this task in such plants as jute is gained by realizing that over twelve million bales of finished fiber are produced each year, and that the retting may take from two days to a month. The retting process is aided by certain organisms of decay in the water, by the temperature, and by some other factors not yet understood. The process is allowed to go on only long enough to separate flesh from fiber, which makes frequent inspection of the bundles in the filthy water an absolute necessity. At the proper time the natives are able to split off the bark, which contains the fiber, from the stem, and while standing up to the waist in the water, he picks or dashes off with water the remaining impurities. The fiber is then dried on racks and subsequently, under enormous pressure, packed in bales of four hundred pounds each. An average crop would be about two and one-half bales from an acre of jute, so that in India there must be considerably over five million acres devoted to the cultivation of the plant. While for many years this tremendous output of fiber was sent to England for manufacture, power looms were set up in India about the middle of the last century. There are now over three-quarters of a million spindles there, and some jute is sent to the United States for manufacture here.

Next to cotton jute is probably the most important fiber plant in the world. For hundreds of thousands of people in India and in England it is the only source of livelihood. To the inventor who can eliminate or reduce the costly retting process of jute, or of flax, which goes through essentially the same operation, there is waiting a golden future, for it is largely the cheapness of labor and willingness of its natives to stand in the retting pools that has made India the jute region of the world.

Lack of space forbids mention of the many other fiber plants, some of which, like flax, are of large importance. Their fibers are used in a variety of ways and are found in different parts of the plant. A few of these, together with the names of the plants and the regions where they are native, are as follows:

NAME OF PLANT PRODUCT NATIVE

Bowstring hemp. Bowstrings and Tropical Africa
_Sansevieria_, several cordage. and Asia.
species.

Coconut palm. Coir. Tropical America (?)
_Cocos nucifera._

Flax. _Linum usitatissimum._ Linen. Europe and Asia.

Kapok. Kapok, for stuffing. India.
_Eriodendron anfractuosum._

New Zealand flax. Cordage. New Zealand.
_Phormium tenax._

Paper mulberry. Paper pulp in Japan.
_Broussonetia papyrifera._ Japan.

Pita. _Bromelia Pinguin._ Pita fiber, fabrics. Tropical America.

Queensland hemp. Jute substitute. Tropical regions.
_Sida rhombifolia._

Raffia. _Raphia ruffa._ Cloth and for tying. Madagascar.

Ramie. _Boehmeria nivea._ Ramie cloth. Tropical Asia.

Rattan cane. Rattan, cordage, India.
_Calamus rotang._ and coarse cloth.

Rush. _Juncus effusus._[2] Matting in Japan. North temperate
regions.

Sedge. _Carex stricta._ Rugs and mattings. Northern North
America.

Spruce. _Picea rubens_, Paper pulp. Northern North
_canadensis_, etc. America.

Willows. _Salix_, many Basketry. Temperate regions
_species_. mostly.

No mention can be made here of the hundreds of fiber plants used by the natives of various parts of the world, some of them probably having great commercial possibilities. The extraction of these fibers by machinery or chemically will open up a large commerce in such plant products, the value of which is now unsuspected or ignored. While the value of cotton, jute, and Manila hemp is reckoned in the hundreds of millions, some of these native fibers are found in plants whose wild supply is almost inexhaustible, and some of which are quite as capable of cultivation as the better known fiber plants. Few fields of inquiry offer greater possibilities to the economic botanist than fibers.

4. THE STORY OF RUBBER

Along the north coast of Haiti, particularly near Cap Haiti and Puerto Plata, there are scattered a few plantations devoted to rubber growing; and it is not without interest that Columbus on his first voyage landed at about this precise spot in December, 1492, and found the natives playing a game of ball made of rubber. He wrote: “The balls were of the gum of a tree, and although large, were lighter and bounced better than the wind balls of Castile.” This is apparently the first notice of the use of rubber, a substance now of world-wide importance, and derived from many other plants than the tree mentioned by Columbus. This is _Castilla elastica_, a native of certain islands of the West Indies and the adjacent mainland, and a relation of our common mulberry.

For over three centuries rubber, or caoutchouc as it was often called, was only of very casual use before the process of vulcanizing was discovered by Charles Goodyear, an American, in 1839. This combination of rubber with sulphur transformed a material much subject to heat and cold, and of almost no manufacturing value, into one from which hundreds of articles of daily use are now manufactured. Previous to this it had been used mostly, and in fact almost exclusively, as a waterproofing material for cloth, a process much developed by the firm of Charles Macintosh & Co., who appear to have taken out the first patent for a waterproofing process in 1791, in England. The rubber tree found by Columbus is still grown in considerable quantities and is a valuable source of rubber, but it has been greatly overshadowed by a Brazilian tree which now produces over two-thirds of all the rubber in the world.

Native in the Amazon region, but now much grown in the East Indies.]

This Brazilian tree, a native of the rich rain forests of the Amazon, is _Hevea brasiliensis_, and a relative of our common spurges of the roadsides and of the beautiful crotons of the florist, all belonging to the family _Euphorbiaceæ_. The first important notice of this rubber appears to be by the astronomer C. M. de la Condamine, who was on an astronomical trip to the Amazon in 1735. He described _Para_ rubber, as it has since been called, and by 1827 the export of this gum had grown to 31 tons a year. In 1910 Brazil exported over 38,000 tons, nearly all of which was collected from wild trees. After the discovery of vulcanization the demand for all kinds of rubber increased by leaps and bounds and it became obvious that the wild trees, although tapped regularly, would not supply all of the necessary amount. For years the Brazilian Government protested the export of seeds or other means of growing the plant out of the Amazon, but in 1876 H. A. Wickam chartered a steamer and loaded her with 70,000 seeds of para rubber trees and some crude rubber, and had the ship passed by the Brazilian port authorities as loaded with “botanical specimens.” He safely transported the cargo to the Kew Gardens, London, where only about 4 per cent of the seeds ever germinated. From there the young plants were sent to India, where now, and in the Straits Settlements and the adjacent islands, there are huge plantations of para rubber. From the wildest speculation in rubber shares on the London Stock Exchange, which followed the successful introduction of the plant into British possessions, the industry has now settled down to be one of the most profitable in plant products of the East.

The rubber of both _Hevea_ and _Castilla_ is produced from the milky juice or sap of the trees and is actually a wound response. As the trees are tapped the _latex_, as the milky juice is called, runs out of the wound and upon reaching the air coagulates. This material is removed and a new wound made, a process which is repeated for several years. There is still work to be done upon the problem of how often plantation trees should be tapped to get the greatest flow of latex without injuring the tree, but in many plantations it is done every day or every other day in the season, some rubber planters allowing a resting period during leaf fall, others again tapping almost continually. The actual wound is made by removing just enough bark to induce a flow of latex, but not until the wound is completely healed, a process taking from four to six years, can that particular part of the bark be cut again. With almost daily tappings the problem of finding fresh pieces of bark into which the cut may safely be made has been developed into a fine science. In the wild trees of Brazil it is still done by natives, probably rather wastefully. Rubber plantations in the tropical regions of Asia now total over a million acres, as compared to only slightly over 200,000 acres in the American tropics and from all other non-Asiatic sources. Of this probably 100,000 acres are in Africa. At the present time nearly half the world’s supply of rubber comes from these plantations, the balance still coming from Brazil.

There are two other rubber-producing plants, neither of which are as important as _Hevea_ and _Castilla_. One is the common rubber plant so much grown as a house plant and said to be much cherished for that purpose in Brooklyn. It is a kind of fig tree, known as _Ficus elastica_, a native of India and the source of India rubber. It was used for years, before the days of vulcanization, mostly for lead-pencil erasers. Thousands of acres of it in India were recently destroyed to make room for _Hevea_, although it still produces a respectable amount of rubber, inferior, however, to _Hevea_ and _Castilla_. In Mexico a new source of rubber is the guayule rubber plant, a small shrub native of the drier parts of the Mexican uplands. It does not produce latex, as practically all other rubber plants do, but particles of rubber are found directly in its tissues, mostly in the bark. While of some importance, this shrub, known as _Parthenium argentatum_, a member of the _Compositæ_ or daisy family, is not likely to become a dangerous rival of either Para or _Castilla_ rubber. Wild sources of guayule rubber are already reported as diminishing rapidly, so that its permanent success will depend upon cultivation. At least a score of other plants are known to produce rubber of a kind, but none of them have yet been much developed. From most plants with a milky juice, such as dogbane or spurge, rubber of some sort can usually be recovered. The production of this substance is directly due to a response of the plant to wounds, and there are still great fields of research necessary on this phase of plant activity, upon which a great industry has already been built.

5. DRUGS

Nearly all the drugs and medicines of importance are of vegetable origin, and from the days of Theophrastus the study of plants as possible medicines has been one of the chief phases of botanical research. In the early days all that was known about plants was learned by men interested in medicine, and some of their quaint old books are interesting relics of a bygone day. At present, pharmacognosy, or the science of medicinal plant products, is a highly developed specialty taught in medical and pharmacy schools. And yet the greatest medical college in this country has recently issued instructions to its staff of doctors and nurses to pay particular attention to “old wives’ remedies,” most of which consist of decoctions of leaves and other parts of plants. They have done this because all the knowledge of the scientists regarding medicinal plants has its origin in the habit of simple people turning to their local plants for a cure. The accumulation of the ages, aided and guided by the scientist, has resulted in the wonderful things that can now be done to the human body through the different drugs, nine-tenths of which are of plant origin.

There is almost no part of a plant that, in some species at least, has not been found to contain the various acids, alkaloids, oils, essences, and so forth, which make up the chief medicinal or, as the pharmacists call it, the active principle of plants. In certain of them the most violent poisons are produced, such as the poison hemlock which killed Socrates, and the deadly nightshade. And again the unripe pod of one plant produces a milky juice so dangerous that traffic in it is forbidden in all civilized countries, and yet later the seeds from that matured pod are sold by the thousands of pounds to be harmlessly sprinkled on cakes and buns by the confectioners. Earlier in this book it was said that plants are chemical laboratories, and nowhere has this alchemy been carried to such a pitch of perfection as in the hundreds of drugs produced by different plants. Reference to special books on that subject should be made by those interested, as only a few of our most important drug plants can be mentioned here.

QUININE

The Spanish viceroy of Peru, whose wife, the Countess del Chinchón, was dangerously ill of a fever in that country about 1638, succeeded through the aid of some Jesuit priests in curing the malady, with a medicine which these priests had gotten from the natives. It was a decoction from the bark of a tree, and its fame soon spread throughout the world as Peruvian bark. Even in those days malaria was the curse of the white man in tropical regions, and since then it is hardly too much to say that the discovery of this drug has made possible for white colonists the retention of thousands of square miles of tropical country that without it would in all probability be unfit for occupancy. To the natives, too, quinine has been one of the greatest blessings, and in some of the remote regions of the tropics the writer has found quinine more useful than dollars in getting help from fever-ridden natives, too poor and too remote from civilization to get the drug.

For more than a hundred and fifty years after the discovery of Peruvian bark it was always taken as a liquid, usually mixed with port, and an extremely noxious and bitter drink it made. The fine white powder which we now use in tasteless pellets or pills has made the drug even more useful than before.

The trees from which the bark is used all belong to the genus _Cinchona_, named for the first distinguished patient to benefit by it, and belong to the _Rubiaceæ_ or madder family. There are at least four or five different species. For many years Peru and near-by states were the only source of the bark, and the English became convinced that the great trade in the drug would exterminate the tree, so in 1880 they introduced the plant into India. These cinchona plantations now provide most of the world’s demand, and some idea of what that means may be gleaned from the fact that in Ceylon alone over fifteen million pounds of the drug are produced annually. In India itself the plantations are largely government owned and quinine is sold in the post offices at a very low rate. In cinchona plantations strips of the bark are removed, and after a proper period of healing, the process is repeated. It takes about eight years before it is safe to begin cutting the bark.

ACONITE

Most doctors use aconite for various purposes and it is mentioned here chiefly as illustrating a common characteristic of many medicinal plants. The whole plant is deadly poisonous, and in the root there appears to be a concentration of this poisonous substance, which makes the plant one of the most dangerous known. All of the drug aconite is derived from _Aconitum Napellus_, a monkshood, belonging to the buttercup family. It is a perennial herb with beautiful spikes of purple-blue flowers, not unlike a larkspur, and is a native of temperate regions of the Old World. A related Indian species has been used for probably thousands of years by the natives. They poison their arrows with it and so deadly is the drug that a tiger pricked by such an arrow will die within a few minutes. It is conceded to be the most powerful poison in India. Numerous accidents have resulted in Europe from careless collectors of the roots of horseradish, who sometimes get aconite roots mixed with that condiment, usually with fatal results.

So many other plants are violently poisonous, and yet yield the most valuable drugs, that the greatest care has to be used in their collection and preparation. The habit of many children of eating wayside berries should be discouraged, as some of our most innocent-looking roadside plants are actually deadly if their fruits or foliage are eaten. Fortunately only a very few plants are poisonous to the touch, notably poison ivy and poison sumac, and some of their relatives.

OPIUM AND MORPHINE

Almost no plant product has caused more misery and relieved more pain than the juice of the unripe pod of the common garden poppy, _Papaver somniferum_. From it opium is extracted, the chief constituent of which is morphine. If tea can be said to have precipitated our war of independence, opium was indirectly the cause of the opening of China to the western world. The degrading effects of opium had become so notorious that the Chinese in 1839 destroyed large stocks of it, mostly the property of British merchants, and prohibited further importations. In the subsequent negotiations which ended in war, China was opened up to trade. No civilized country now openly permits the sale of opium, although there is still a good deal of it used in practically all parts of the world. The effects of lassitude, subsequent ecstasy, and stupefaction are due to an alkaloid, the continued use of which forms a drug habit of serious consequences. Parts of China, Turkey, Persia, and Siam are said to be still large users of opium which is chewed, or more often smoked. Until comparatively recently fifteen out of every twenty men in some of these countries were regular users of the drug. The legitimate use of morphine by physicians has done more than almost anything else, with the possible exception of cocaine, to relieve suffering, and there is consequently a considerable trade in the drug.

The home of this poppy is unknown, as it has been cultivated from the earliest days. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew it and the Egyptians grew it for opium. It is still grown in India and China, where, notwithstanding vigorous governmental measures, there is a large opium consumption. After maturity the pods of the poppy, from whose milky juice in its earlier stages the drug is obtained, produce many seeds. From these an oil is pressed which is widely used as a cooking oil in the East, and is perfectly harmless. The seeds are also used as bird seed and by confectioners.

COCAINE

(_Erythroxylon Coca_)

Native in northern South America. The fresh leaves of this are used as a valuable but harmless stimulant by the natives.]

In the northern part of South America the Peruvians and some of their neighbors were discovered by early explorers to be chewing the leaves of a native shrub, apparently with much profit and no evil after effects. It served them much as the betel nut does to the natives of India and other regions of the tropical East. With scanty or no food this apparently harmless intoxicant will carry both men and women over periods of severe fatigue. The shrub bearing these leaves is not over four or five feet tall and has bright green foliage and small white flowers.

Quite different in its effects has been the drug which has been extracted from this plant, known as _Erythroxylon Coca_. Far from being a beneficial and harmless stimulant, cocaine is now one of the drug evils of our time. Its use, outside that prescribed by physicians, is forbidden practically everywhere, but its consumption in this country, aside from its great and legitimate use as a relief from pain, is still very large.

The number of drug plants is legion, so large in fact, that volumes have been filled with descriptions and notes about them. A few of the most important, omitting those already mentioned, are listed below:

DRUG DERIVED FROM THE NATIVE

Betel nut. Seed of Areca Catechu. India.
Calamus. Rootstock of Acorus Calamus. Eastern U. S. and
in Asia.
Sarsaparilla. Roots of various species of Tropical America.
Smilax.
Saffron. Stigmas of Crocus sativus. Europe.
Arrowroot. Rootstock of Maranta arundinacea. Tropical America.
Cubeb. Unripe fruit of Piper Cubeba. Old World tropics.
Creosote. Wood of Fagus americana North America and
and F. sylvatica. Europe.
Hydrastis. Rootstock of Hydrastis canadensis. Eastern N. America.
Star Anise. Fruit of Illicium anisatum. Southern China.
Camphor. All parts of Cinnamomum China and Japan.
Camphora.
Witch-hazel. Leaves and bark of Hamamelis Eastern N. America.
virginiana.
Licorice. Underground parts of Glycyrrhiza Europe.
glabra.
Cascara Bark of Rhamnus Purshianus. Western United
Sagrada. States.
Ginseng. Rootstock of Panax quinquefolium. Eastern N. America
and Asia.
Wintergreen. Leaves of Gaultheria procumbens. Eastern N. America.
Nux vomica. Seeds of Strychnos Nux India.
vomica.
Digitalis. Leaves of Digitalis purpurea. Europe.
Ipecac. Root of Uragoga Ipecacuanha. Brazil.
Castor oil. Seeds of Ricinus communis. Africa or India.

6. THE STORY OF TOBACCO

Not until 1492 was the use of tobacco known to the Europeans, when Columbus found the natives of Cuba and Santo Domingo both chewing and smoking it. Subsequent Spanish explorers of the mainland found its use almost universal both in North and South America. It had apparently been used there for countless ages, as smoking it formed part of the most solemn ceremonial rites both of the natives’ religion and their political gatherings. Brought to England in 1586 by Ralph Lane and Sir Francis Drake, the smoking of tobacco spread with the great speed that such a comfortable habit might be expected to exhibit. Notwithstanding violent opposition by certain priests and physicians and other more intolerant opponents of the weed, its use increased throughout the world. To-day, in spite of our modern anti-tobacco fanatics, over two billion pounds are produced annually, and in the United States there is a per capita consumption of over five pounds per year, greater than any country in the world, save Belgium.

All of the many different forms in which tobacco is used are derived from the leaves of _Nicotiana tabacum_, or perhaps one or two other species of the genus _Nicotiana_, which belongs to the _Solanaceæ_ or potato family. There are many other species, all natives of the New World, but the actual home of the tobacco plant is in some doubt. As in so many cultivated plants, which have been grown for countless ages, wild specimens are practically unknown. The plant seeds freely and consequently frequently escapes from cultivation, so that in many parts of America apparently wild plants are to be found that

trace their origin to cultivated plants. The antiquity of its culture may be gauged by the fact that in the most ancient Aztec tombs elaborately carved tobacco pipes have been found.

The plant is grown as a field crop in rows from one and one-half to three feet apart and set about fifteen inches apart in the row. From the time the seed is sown until the harvesting of the leaves is usually three or four months, during which the plants demand the best of culture. In the United States thousands of acres of tobacco are now grown under cheesecloth shades, an expensive process which is more than compensated for by the improved flavor.

Once the tobacco is cut there begin chemical changes in the leaves that are of great importance to its subsequent flavor and use. These are aided or induced first by a process of curing, which is accomplished by suspending the wilted leaves in the sun, a process that has been practically abandoned for curing by artificial heat. The leaves are hung in a building where slow fires bring the temperature up to 150 degrees F., which is maintained for a few days. The cured tobacco is then gathered into small bundles which are stacked or packed so closely that fermentation begins, often generating a temperature of 150 degrees F. The bundles are then reshifted and the process allowed to start again, which may be done several times, depending upon the quality of the leaf, flavor desired, and commercial requirements. Enzymes and bacteria play a large part in the fermentation process and inoculation of poor grades of tobacco with the organisms of finer grades has been tried. After fermentation has been stopped practically all tobaccos are aged for at least two years, some for longer periods.

In Cuba, where its use was first noticed, the finest tobacco in the world is still produced, notably in the province of Pinar del Rio. It is still something of a mystery as to what peculiar combination of soil, climate, or handling the unquestionable superiority of the Cuban leaf is due. For one thing it is grown in the open, without shade, and is never cured by artificial heat. Nor is the very excellent cigarette tobacco of Turkey ever artificially cured. But attempts to imitate the conditions under which these finest grades of tobacco are produced outside Cuba and Turkey have never been really successful, so that those countries have practical monopolies on the production of the finest cigars and cigarettes. The weed is cultivated nearly throughout the world, even Canada producing considerable quantities, but the best kinds and greatest production is in warmer regions. It is second only to the sugar crop in Cuba, and the United States produces over one-third the world’s total supply. Immense quantities are grown, however, in India and Sumatra, and in the Philippines.

Perhaps the most unusual and localized conditions of climate and subsequent handling are found in the production of perique tobacco. All the world’s supply is grown on a ridge at Grand Point, in the parish of St. James, Louisiana. The leaves are subjected to great pressure and the expressed juice, after oxidation, is reabsorbed by the leaves after the pressure is removed. The peculiar flavor is apparently due to this and to the damp climate. Perique is now used throughout the world as an ingredient of the better kinds of pipe tobacco.

The diseases and breeding of different strains of tobacco are commercial factors of tremendous importance to the industry. With a yearly value of well over two billions of dollars, the crop is one of the most important plant products, outside of foods. The capital invested in America alone is over five hundred million dollars.

7. SPICES

As we have seen many of our most valuable food plants are natives of and are now cultivated in temperate regions, but “sugar and spice and all things nice” mostly come from the tropics. What we usually know as spices such as nutmeg, vanilla, ginger, mace, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon are practically all confined to the tropical regions in or near the East Indies, only vanilla being of American origin. The trade in these spices has been for hundreds of years a practical monopoly in the hands of Dutch and British traders, and for hundreds of years before that the caravans from the Far East came laden with precious freight from the then mysterious country beyond the Mediterranean.

VANILLA

The long pods of two climbing orchids native in Central America and the West Indies furnished for many years our only supplies of this flavoring extract. But in 1891 a process of making vanilline chemically from sugar was perfected so that the vanilla trade is not what it was years ago. Vanilla planters, however, have been able to keep up the price of the plant product because of its unquestionable superiority over the manufactured article. But the latter has enormously increased the general use of vanilla, while the total plant output scarcely exceeds four hundred tons a year. Nearly all this is grown in the Old World tropics, as tropical America, where the plant is common enough as a forest orchid, has not greatly developed its culture.

In both species, known as _Vanilla pompona_ and _Vanilla planifolia_, the orchid has flat leaves and a fleshy climbing stem that hugs tree trunks or other supports, always in the dense shade of the tropical forests. It needs a hot moist climate, but if there be too much rain as the pods are ripening they drop off, so that only certain localities are suited to its cultivation. Various islands are apparently better suited to the plant than the mainland, Tahiti producing alone nearly half the world’s supply. The species most cultivated is _Vanilla planifolia_, which came originally from southern Mexico, where considerable plantations are still maintained. The pods are about as thick as a thumb or finger and from five to seven inches long, and yellow when ripe. The ripening process takes several months and when completed the pod is still without the delicious fragrance for which it is famous. Curing by dipping in boiling water or by fermentation, a very delicate process requiring long experience, brings out the flavor. In some regions the pods are plunged into ashes and left there until they begin to shrivel when they are cleaned off, rubbed with olive oil, and tied at their lower end to prevent splitting. Still another process demanding that the pods be plunged in rum is followed, but only in limited degree, owing to the expense. In all of them the result is the same--that of inducing chemical changes in the pod which are responsible for its subsequent flavor.

NUTMEG

A native of southeastern tropical Asia. The fruit, somewhat enlarged here, consists of an inner part, the nutmeg. Around this is a “splendid crimson network” which is removed by hand and forms the mace of commerce.]

A small tree of the tropical regions of eastern Asia, known as _Myristica fragrans_, or perhaps better as _Myristica moschata_, is the source of both nutmeg and mace which come from different parts of the same plant. The genus contains over one hundred species, belongs to the _Myristicaceæ_, and is scattered all over the Malayan region. Almost none of its relatives, however, have the fragrance of the nutmeg and none is used as a spice. Both nutmeg and mace have been known in Europe only from about 1195 A.D., when in a poem about the entry of the Emperor Henry VI into Rome, the streets were described as being perfumed by the burning of nutmegs and other fragrant plants. It was not until the rise of the Dutch, who burned large stores of it at Amsterdam in 1790 in order to keep up a falling price, that nutmegs came into general use. The trees are now chiefly cultivated in the Dutch East Indies, a small fraction of the supply coming from the West Indies, which is alleged to be an inferior product.

The trees produce male and female flowers, usually on different plants, but sometimes on the same one, yellow in color and aromatic. From the females are developed the fruit which is a drupe about two inches long with a thick fleshy husk which splits upon ripening. The seed inside is the nutmeg, but from its base is an outgrowth which covers the nut with a “splendid crimson network.” This covering or network is removed by hand and forms the mace of commerce.

CLOVES

In the family _Myrtaceæ_, which contains hundreds of plants from all over the world, mostly all shrubs and trees of tropical regions, however, there is a large genus, _Eugenia_. From the unopened flower buds of _Eugenia caryophyllata_, a small tree native only on a few islands in the Moluccas, the widely used spice known as cloves is derived. It appears to have been known to the Chinese at least two hundred years before Christ, and was regularly imported into Europe from the eighth century by caravans. Not until the Dutch began to import it by ship did it become cheap enough to have general use, but in 1609 a Dutch vessel reached England with over a hundred thousand pounds on board.

While the tree is of very local distribution, it has been introduced on a considerable scale into Penang, Zanzibar, and even to the West Indies. Trees are set out thirty feet apart each way, and in from four to eight years, depending on the locality, they begin to flower. After the full bearing stage is reached, a tree will produce from five to seven pounds of dried cloves, an average crop being about 375 pounds to an acre. The flowers are produced in small clusters not over an inch and a half long, so that hand picking is the only method of collection. As the buds become blood red they are usually in a fit state for picking, after which they are either sun dried or, more rarely, by artificial heat. Nothing further is done to them before shipment. Zanzibar and Pemba now produce more cloves than nearly all the rest of the world put together. Oil of cloves, largely used in perfumery, is pressed out of the dried cloves.

A native of only a few islands in the Moluccas. Cloves consist of the unopened flower buds of _Eugenia caryophyllata_.]

CINNAMON

One of the commonest trees in the lowland parts of Ceylon is _Cinnamomum zeylanicum_, a tree of the family _Lauraceæ_, which also contains our native sassafras. From the bark of this tree is derived cinnamon, and from a related Japanese tree, _Cinnamomum Camphora_, camphor is taken. Practically all the _Lauraceæ_ are aromatic shrubs or trees, most of them tropical. Ceylon was occupied by the Portuguese in 1536 for the cinnamon then growing on it, which they forced the native king to supply them. Later the Dutch completely controlled the cinnamon, often burning it in Holland to keep up the price. The British, who took Ceylon in 1796, made a government monopoly of cinnamon, but subsequently turned the plantations over to private interests. The tree is now grown on an extensive scale, not only in Ceylon, but in Java and India. Ceylon still controls the cinnamon market, however.

A common tree of Ceylon (_Cinnamomum zeylanicum_). From the related _Cinnamomum Camphora_ camphor is derived.]

While the wild cinnamon trees reach considerable heights, the cultivated plants are cut so regularly that they almost always throw up a lot of young shoots from the roots, and it is the bark of these that furnishes the spice. When the bark is fit for peeling, the natives cut off the shoots, and strip the bark from them by hand, but with a specially constructed knife. After removal the bark is kept moist and in a day or two the outer skin is scraped off and the bark stretched over a stick, to form the familiar pipes or quills of cinnamon. These are graded, cut to uniform length, and after drying are ready for shipment. All of this is as yet hand work.

Other spice plants and condiments are of wide use, but can scarcely be mentioned in detail here. A few of the more important are the following:

NAME DERIVED FROM THE NATIVE

Allspice or pimento Unripe fruits of West Indies.
_Pimenta officinalis_

Cassia bark Bark of _Cinnamomum Cassia_ Eastern Asia.

Black pepper Fruit of _Piper nigrum_ Tropical Asia.

Cardamoms Fruit of _Elettaria Cardamomum_ Malabar.

Capsicum or Cayenne Fruits of species of _Capsicum_ Tropical Asia.
pepper

Coriander Fruits of _Coriandrum sativum_ Europe.

Cumin Fruits of _Cuminum Cyminum_ Mediterranean
region.

Dill Fruits of _Peucedanum graveolens_ Europe and
northern Africa.

Ginger Rootstock of (?)
_Zingiber officinalis_

Turmeric Rootstock of _Curcuma longa_ Tropical Asia.

Mustard Seed of _Brassica nigra_ and _alba_ Old World.

Thyme Foliage of _Thymus vulgaris_ Southern Europe.

Caraway Fruit of _Carum Carui_ Europe.

Caper Seeds of _Capparis spinosa_ Southern Europe
and Asia.

This brief review of what the plant world provides us with in the shape of foods, beverages, fibers, drugs, rubber, spices, and tobacco, does not begin to tell us what man’s debt to plants really is. Thousands of plants, used by natives all over the world, may well provide future generations with unsuspected sources of plant products. No mention has been made of timbers nor all the forest products, except paper, which in the aggregate total an enormous sum. Perhaps no better idea of the tremendous value of plants, of the absorbing interest their utilization has always had for man, can be gained than to refer the reader to incomparably the best book on the subject, so far as tropical plants are concerned. Sir George Watt, in his “Dictionary of the Economic Products of India,” a book of several volumes, most of which deals with plants, has left an imperishable record of man’s struggles to tame the wild plants of the forest to his needs.

A few more economic plants not yet noted are listed below, and with this our account of plants as they are used by man must close:

PLANT PRODUCT DERIVED FROM THE NATIVE OF

Absinthe Foliage of _Artemisia absinthium_ Europe.

Brazil nut Seeds of _Bertholletia excelsa_ Tropical S. America.

Camomile Flowers of _Anthemis nobilis_ Europe.

Cassava Roots of species of _Manihot_ Tropical America.

Water chestnuts Fruits of _Trapa natans_ Southern Europe.

Cohune nut Fruits of _Attalea Cohune_ Central America.

Cork Bark of _Quercus Suber_ Southern Europe and
northern Africa.

Gamboge resin Stems of species of _Garcinia_ Southeastern Asia.

Gum arabic Exudation of species of Tropical Asia and
_Acacia_ Africa.

Hops Female flowers of Eastern Europe.
_Humulus Lupulus_

Indigo Whole plant of India.
_Indigofera tinctoria_

Mushroom Whole plant of Temperate regions.
_Agaricus campestris_

Teak Wood of _Tectona grandis_ Southeastern Asia.

Japanese varnish
or lacquer Sap of _Rhus vernicifera_ China.