MEXICO’S TREE WITH HANDS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3128, 31 July 1922, Page 7

MEXICO’S TREE WITH HANDS.

Nature m the hot climates sometimes does extraordinary things. Few instances of the singular fact that nature, possibly for protection, repeats in (lowers and plants the shape or appearance of other objects, are more astonishing than the tree with hands. The Aztecs in Mexico were so much impressed by it that they offered it most devout worship. To them the Maepalxoehiqnakiti, as they called' it —“the Hand Flower Tree” —with its Woo'd reel hands, was the earthly expression of a deity, dreadful and almighty. Its botanical title : if almost as long, is rather better sounding—the Cheirostemon pla.tanoides. The appearance of the (lowers of this high and splendid tree is certainly like no other. From the centre of each bloom there springs a columnar stem which accurately represents a human arm and wrist, and this breaks into five stamens, which are of a gory hue and arranged after the manner of the human hand, with its lingers and thumb. The very points of those vegetable fingers are curved like finger tips with overgrown nails. These parts of the M acpalxocliicjiiakitl’ts flowers arc* of a fa.i rly large size and stand out in a menacing manner at some distance above the petals. It is easy to understand, then, that this lofty and noble looking tree, of which there are hut very few throughout Mexico and Northern Central America, laden with flowers, waving aloft like a thousand blood red hands, was' an object of worship among the superstitious and ignorant natives. The Cheirostemon plataiioides Inks its parallel, though, in one of the rarest ol plants in Japan the Five-Fingered Orange. Tins dwarf tree, that is seldom more than live feet high and one of the most crooked, grows its fruit in the exact shape of the human hand, fingers, thumb and all. It is a partly opened hand and the hard pointed nails of the lean, yellow fruit-hand arc the closest imitation to the nails of an aristocratic Chinaman.