Abstract
AT p. 313 of NATURE (February 16) is a paragraph on the use of the Algaroba in the province of Catamarca, Argentine Republic, in which it appears to me the writer has confounded two or more plants. Algaroba is a name applied to Ceratonia siliqua, to several species of Prosopis in South America, and to Hymenæa Courbaril in Panama. In Brazil the last-named plant in called Jatai, from which, I presume, the writer of the paragragh in question has obtained his “Hymenæa Courbariljetaiba.” The sweet fleshy pods of Prosopis dulcis, a tree widely spread over Southern and Central America, are used for feeding cattle, and several other species are employed for a like purpose in different parts of the tropics; it is therefore more than probable that P. dulcis is meant instead of Hymenæa Courbaril. Moreover, the pods of this latter are very thick and woody, and would not be easily “pounded in a wooden mortar;” and the tree cannot be well described as growing “to a height of forty feet, with wide-spread branches, and a rather slender stem,” when we know that it frequently attains a hundred feet in height, and sixty feet in circumference.
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JACKSON, J. Algaroba. Nature 3, 347 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/003347f0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003347f0
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