Flora of Tropical Asia—Of the Indian Archipelago, India, and Arabia.

Tropical Asia is divided by nature into three distinct botanical regions: the Malayan peninsula, with the Indian Archipelago; India, south of the Himalaya, with the island of Ceylon; and the Arabian peninsula. The two first have strong points of resemblance, though their floras are peculiar.

FLORA OF THE INDO-CHINESE PENINSULA AND THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO.

Many of the vegetable productions of the peninsula beyond the Ganges are the same with those of India, mixed with the plants of the Indian Archipelago, so that this country is a region of transition, though it has a splendid vegetation of innumerable native productions, dyes of the most vivid hues, spices, medicinal plants, and many with the sweetest perfume. The soil in many places yields three crops in the year; the fruits of India, and most of those of China, come to perfection in the low lands. The arang forms an exception to the extreme beauty of the multitude of palms which adorn the Malayan peninsula; though it is eminently characteristic of that country, it is an ugly plant, covered with black fibres like horsehair, sufficiently strong to make cordage. It is cultivated for the sugar and wine made from its juice. Teak is plentiful; almost all that is used in Bengal comes from the Birman empire, though it is less durable than that of the Malabar coast. The Hopea odorata is so large that a canoe is made of a single trunk; the Gordonia integrifolia is held in such veneration that every Birman house has a beam of it.

There are seven species of native oak in the forests; the Mimosa catechu, which furnishes the terra japonica used in medicine; the trees which produce varnish and stick-lac; the Glyphyria nitida, a myrtle, the leaves of which are used as tea in Bencoolen, called by the natives the tree of long life. The coasts are wooded by the Heritiera robusta, a large tree which thrives within reach of the tide; bamboos with stems a foot and a half in diameter grow in dense thickets in the low lands. The Palmyra palm and the Borassus flabelliformis grow in extensive groves in the valley of the Irawaddy: it is a magnificent tree, often 100 feet high, remarkable for its gigantic leaves, one of which would shelter 12 men.

The anomalous trees the Zamias and CycadeÆ, somewhat like a palm with large pinnated leaves, but of a different family, are found here and in tropical India; those in America are of a different species. OrchideÆ and tree-ferns are innumerable in the woody districts of the peninsula.

The vegetation of the Indian Archipelago is gorgeous beyond description; although in many instances it bears a strong analogy to that of the Malayan peninsula, tropical India, and Ceylon, still it is in an eminent degree peculiar. The height of the mountains causes variety in the temperature sufficient to admit of the growth of dammar pines, oaks, rhododendrons, magnolias, valerians, honeysuckles, bilberries, gentians, oleasters, and other European orders of woody and herbaceous plants; yet there is not one species in common.

Palm-trees are more abundant in these islands than in any other part of the world, especially in the Sunda group, the origin of many, a few of which are now widely spread over the eastern countries. Three species of Areca, attaining a height of from 40 to 50 and more feet, are cultivated in all the hot parts of India; and Caryota Urens, the fruit of which is acrid, yet it yields wine and sugar, are all native. The attempt is vain to specify the multitudes of these graceful trees which form so characteristic a feature in the vegetation of these tropical islands, where a rich moist soil with intense heat brings them to such perfection. It has been observed that monocotyledonous plants are generally more plentiful in islands than on continents, and also that they extend farther into the southern than into the northern hemisphere, which may be accounted for by the moist and mild climate of the former.

Jungle and dense pestilential woods entirely cover the smaller islands and the plains of the larger; the coasts are lined with thickets of mangroves, a matted vegetation of forest-trees, bamboos, and coarse grass, entwined with climbing and creeping plants, and overgrown by orchideous parasites in myriads; and the gutta-percha is also a native of these alluvial tracts. The forest-trees of the Indian Archipelago are almost unknown; teak and many of the continental trees grow there, but the greater number are peculiarly their own. The naturalist Rumphius had a cabinet inlaid with 400 kinds of wood, the produce of Amboyna and the Molucca islands.

Sumatra, Java, and the adjacent islands, are the region of the Dryobalanops camphora, in the stems of which solid lumps of a remarkable and costly kind of camphor are found. All the trees of that order, and of several others, are peculiar to these islands, and 78 species of trees and shrubs of the Melastomaceous tribe grow there and in continental India. There are thickets of the sword-leaved vaquois-tree and of the Pandanus or screw-pine, a plant resembling the anana, with a blossom like that of a bulrush, very odoriferous, and in some species edible.

This is the region of spices, which are very limited in their distribution: the Myristica moschata (the nutmeg and mace-plant) is confined to the Banda Islands, but it is said to have been discovered lately in New Guinea. The Amboyna and the Molucca groups are the focus of the Caryophyllus aromaticus, a myrtle, the buds of which are known as cloves. Various species of cinnamon and cassia, both of the laurel tribe, together with varieties of pepper, different from those in India and Ceylon, grow in this archipelago. All the pepper-plants require great heat: they are rare in Africa, but plentiful in America and the Indian Archipelago; the common black pepper is peculiar to the hottest parts of Asia, extending only a few degrees on each side of the equator. In 1842 more than 30,000,000 pounds weight of pepper were produced in Sumatra alone. Some of the most excellent fruits are indigenous here only, as the dourio, the ayer ayer, Loquat, the choapa of Molucca, peculiar kinds of orange, lemon, and citron, with others known only by name elsewhere. Those common to the continent of India are the jambrose, rose-apple, jack, various species of bread-fruit, mango, mangosteen, and the banana, which is luxuriant.

Here the nettle tribe assume the most pernicious character, and the upas-tree of Java, one of the most deadly vegetable poisons; and even the plants resembling our common nettle are so acrid that the sting of one in Java occasions not only pain but illness, which lasts for days. A nettle in the island of Timor, called by the natives the “Devil’s leaf,” is so poisonous that it produces long illness and even death. The chelik, a shrub growing in the dense forests, produces a poison even more deadly than the upas. Some of the fig genus, which belongs also to the natural order of nettles, have acrid juices. Trees of the cashew tribe have a milky sap: the fine japan lacquer is made from the juice of the Stagmaria verniciflua. Barringtonia and palms are very splendid here, the latter generally of peculiar species and limited in their distribution, as the Nipa. No country is richer in club-mosses and orchideous plants, which overrun the trees in thousands in the deep dark mountain-forests, choked by huge creeping plants, an undergrowth of gigantic grasses, through which not a ray of light penetrates.

Sir Stamford Raffles describes the vegetation of Java as “fearful.” In these forests the air is heavy, charged with dank and deadly vapours, never agitated by a breath of wind; the soil, of the deepest black vegetable mould, always moist and clammy, stimulated by the fervid heat of a tropical sun, produces trees whose stems are of a spongy texture from their rapid growth, loaded with parasites, particularly the orchideous tribe, of which no less than 300 species are peculiar to that island. Tree-ferns are in the proportion of one to twenty of the other plants, and form a large portion of the vegetation of Java and all these islands; and there are above 200 tropical species of club-mosses growing to the length of 3 feet, whereas in cold countries they creep on the ground.

The Rafflesias, of which there are four species, are the most singular productions of this archipelago. The most extraordinary one is common to Java and Sumatra, where it was discovered by Dr. Arnold, and therefore is called Rafflesia Arnoldi. It is a parasitical plant, with buds the size of an ordinary cabbage, and the flower, which smells of carrion, is of a brick-red colour, 3¹/₂ feet in diameter: that found by Mr. Arnold weighed 15 pounds, and the cup in its centre could contain 12 pints of liquid.

According to Sir Stamford Raffles there are six distinct climates in Java, from the top of the mountains to the sea, each having an extensive indigenous vegetation. No other country can show an equal abundance and variety of native fruit and esculent vegetables. There are 100 varieties of rice, and of fragrant flowers, shrubs, and ornamental trees the number is infinite. Abundant as the OrchideÆ are in Java, Ceylon, and the Birmese empire, these countries possess very few that are common to them all, so local is their distribution. Ferns are more plentiful in this archipelago than elsewhere: tree-ferns are found chiefly between or near the tropics, in airless damp places.

INDIAN FLORA.

The plains of Hindostan are so completely sheltered from the Siberian blasts by the high table-lands of Tartary and the Himalaya mountains, that the vegetation at the foot of that range already assumes a tropical character. In the jungles and lower ridges of the fertile valley of Nepal, and on the dark and airless recesses of the Silhet forests, arborescent ferns and orchideous plants are found in profusion, scarcely surpassed even in the islands of the Indian Archipelago—indeed the marshy Tariyane is full of them. The lowest ranges of the Himalaya, the pestilential swamp of the Tariyane, the alluvial ridges of the hills that bound it on the south, and many parts of the plains of the Ganges, are covered with primeval forests, which produce whole orders of large timber-trees, frequently overrun with parasitical loranths.

The native fruits of India are many; the orange tribe is almost all of Indian origin, though some of the species are now widely spread over the warmer parts of the other continents and the more distant countries of Asia. Two or three species are peculiar to Madagascar; one is found in the forests of the Essequibo, and another in Brazil, which are the only exceptions known. The Limonia laureola grows on the tops of the high Asiatic mountains, which are covered with snow several months in the year; and the wampee, a fruit much esteemed in China and the Indian Archipelago, is produced by a species of this order. The vine grows wild in the forests; plantain, banana, jambrose, guava, mango, mangosteen, date, areca, palmyra, cocoa-nut, and gameto-palms are all Indian, also the gourd family. The ScitamineÆ, or ginger tribe, are so numerous, that they form a distinguishing and beautiful feature of Indian botany: they produce ginger, cardamoms, and turmeric. The flowers peculiar to India are brilliant in colours, but generally without odour, except the rose and some jessamines.

The greater part of the trees and plants mentioned belong also to tropical India, where vegetation is still more luxuriant; a large portion of that magnificent country, containing 1,000,000 square miles, has been cultivated time immemorial, although vast tracts still remain in a state of nature. Those extensive mountain-chains which traverse and surround the Deccan are rich in primeval forests of stupendous growth with dense underwood. The most remarkable of these trees are the Indian cotton-tree and the Dombeya, which is of the same order; that which produces the Trincomalee wood, used for building boats at Madras; the red-wood tree, peculiar to the Coromandel coast, the satin-wood, the superb Butea frondosa, the agallochum tribe, which yields the odorous wood of aloes mentioned in Scripture, the Melaleuca leucadendron and the Melaleuca cajepute, from which the oil is prepared. The dragon’s-blood tree is a native of India, though not exclusively, as some of the best specimens grow in Madagascar, where it is planted for hedges. Sanders-wood and dragon’s-blood are obtained from the Pterocarpus sandalinus and Draco; the sappan-tree gives a purple dye: these are all of the leguminous or bean tribe, of which there are 452 Indian species: ebony grows in these tropical regions, in Mauritius, and the south coast of Africa.

Some of the fig tribe are among the most remarkable vegetable productions of India for gigantic size and peculiarity of form, which renders them valuable in a hot climate from the shade which their broad-spreading tops afford. Some throw off shoots from their branches, which take root on reaching the ground, and, after increasing in girth with wonderful rapidity, produce branches which also descend to form new roots, and this process is continued till a forest is formed round the parent tree. Mr. Reinwardt saw in the island of Simao a large wood of the Ficus Benjamina which sprang from one stem. The Ficus Indica, or banyan-tree, is another instance of this wide-spreading growth; it is found in the islands, but is in greatest perfection around the villages in the Circar mountains: there is a tree of it on the banks of the Nerbudda, in the province of Guzerat, with 350 main stems, occupying an area of 2000 feet in circumference, independent of its branches, which extend much farther. The camphor genus is mostly Indian, as well as many more of the laurel tribe of great size. The banana is the most generally useful tree in this country; its fruit is food, its leaves are applied to many domestic purposes, and flax fit for making muslin is obtained from its stem. Cotton is a hairy covering of the seeds of several species of the mallow tribe which grow spontaneously in tropical Asia, Africa, and America; it is, however, cultivated in many countries beyond these limits. That grown in China and the United States of America is an herbaceous annual from 18 inches to 2 feet high: there are also cotton-trees, native and cultivated, in India, China, Africa, and America. Herodotus mentions cotton garments 445 years before the Christian era, and the Mexicans manufactured cotton cloth before the discovery of America.

Palms, the most stately and graceful of the vegetable productions of tropical regions, are abundant in India, in forests, in groups, and in single trees. Some species grow at the limit of perpetual snow, some 900 feet above the sea, others in valleys and on the shores of the continent and islands. They decrease in number and variety as the latitude increases, and terminate at Nice, in 44° N. lat., their limit in the great continent. The leaves of some are of gigantic size, and all are beautiful, varying in height from the slender Calamus rotang, 130 feet high, to the ChamÆrops humilis, not more than 15 or 20. Different species yield wine, oil, wax, flour, sugar, thread, and rope; weapons and utensils are made of their stems and leaves; they serve for the construction of houses; the cocoa-nut palm gives food and drink; sago is made from all except the Areca catechu, the fruit of which, the betel-nut, is used by the natives for its intoxicating quality.

Though palms in general are very limited in their distribution, a few species are very widely spread; for example, the cocoa-nut palm, which grows spontaneously on the southern coasts of the Indo-Chinese peninsula and the Sunda Islands, from whence it has been carried to all the intertropical regions of the globe, where it has been extensively cultivated from its usefulness. So luxuriant is its growth in Ceylon, that in one year nearly 3,000,000 of nuts were exported; in parts of that island, on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, and in some districts in Bengal, the Borassus flabelliformis supplies its place.

The island of Ceylon, which may be regarded as the southernmost extremity of the Indian peninsula, is very mountainous, and rivals the islands of the Indian Archipelago in luxuriance of vegetable productions, and, in some respects, bears a strong resemblance to them. The laurel, the bark of which is cinnamon, is indigenous, and one of the principal sources of the revenue of Ceylon. The taleput leaves of a species of palm are of such enormous size, that they are applied to many uses by the Cingalese; in ancient times strips of the leaf were written upon with a sharp style, and served as books. The sandalwood of Ceylon is of a different species from that of the South Sea islands, and its perfume more esteemed. Indigo is indigenous, and so is the choya, whose roots give a scarlet dye. The mountains produce a great variety of beautiful woods used in cabinet-work. It is a remarkable circumstance in the distribution of plants, that the orchideÆ are very numerous in this island.

ARABIAN VEGETATION.

The third division of the tropical flora of Asia is the Arabian, which differs widely from the other two, and is chiefly marked by trees yielding balsams. Oceans of barren sand extend to the south, from Syria through the greater part of Arabia, varied only by occasional oases in those spots where a spring of water has reached the surface; there the prevalent vegetation consists of the grasses, Holcus and Panicum dicotomum growing under the shade of the date-palm; mimosas and stunted prickly bushes appear here and there in the sand. There is verdure on the mountains, and along some of the coasts, especially in the province of Yemen, which has a flora of its own. The Keura odorifera, a superb tree, with agreeable perfume, eight species of figs, the three species of Amyris—gileadensis, or balm of Gilead, opobalsamum also yielding balsam, and the kataf, from which myrrh is supposed to come—are peculiar to Arabia. Frankincense is said to be the produce of the Boswellia serrata; and there are many species of Acacia, among others the Acacia arabica, which produces gum arabic. The arak and tamarind trees connect the botany of Arabia with that of the West Indies, while it is connected with that of the Cape of Good Hope by Stapelias, mesembryanthemums, and liliaceous flowers. The character of Arabian vegetation, like that of other dry hot climates, consists in its odoriferous plants and flowers.

Arabia produces coffee, which, however, is not indigenous, but is supposed to have come from the table-land of Ethiopia, and to have its name from the province of Kaffa, where it forms dense forests. It was introduced into Arabia in the end of the fifteenth century, and grows luxuriantly in Arabia Felix, where the coffee is of the highest flavour. Most of that now used is the progeny of plants raised from seed and brought from Mocha to the Botanic Garden at Amsterdam in 1690, by Van Hoorn, Governor of Batavia. A plant was sent to Louis XIV., in 1714, by the magistrates of Amsterdam—it was from this plant that the first coffee-plants were introduced in 1717 into the West India islands. A year afterwards the Dutch introduced coffee-trees into Surinam, from whence they spread rapidly over the warm parts of America and the West India islands. Many thousands of people are now employed in its cultivation there, in Demerara, Java, Manilla, the isle of Bourbon, and other places. More than 3,000,000 pounds of coffee-beans are produced, and 100,000 tons of shipping are annually employed in its transport across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Coffee was not known till many centuries after the introduction of sugar. The first coffee-house was opened in London in 1652, and the first in France, at Marseilles, in 1671.