A WATER YIELDING PLANT

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1756, 1 November 1905, Page 71

A WATER YIELDING PLANT

In a paper read before the Bombay Natural History Society. Mr G. M. Ryau spoke of the 'water-yielding 1 plants m the Thanna forests. He says of one of them the "Calcopteriis floribunda (Nat. Ord. Comfer-etaceae), called TJlcslii in Tliana, is one of the most interesting shrubs of the district.’-’ In some parts of India it grows as a diffuse, dense shrub; in other places it is scandent; in Thana both forms of it are found. It is verv ornamental, and bears pale golden flowers. The scandent habit appears to be most natural to it, but is checked by yearly attention. When a climber, the TTkshi "ascends the bole of the tree in a characteristic manner, climbing from left to right. Having established itself in the forest in some spot not far from a tree, it extends its leading shoot till it reaches the branch of an adjoining one. It proceeds to embrace the bole at first in several loose coils, and then to stretch its leader out as if in search of a further exterior support, failing to find which it returns to the original hole and forms three or four constricting coils round it, continning to adopt the left-to-right habit. Releasing its grasp again, it succeeds by a series of wide curves or swoops in reaching the illuminated heights of the crown of the tree. Here it commences to form a network of branches spreading across the crown, and perhaps overhanging it, until at length some of the branches are suspended in graceful festoons. A tree thus invaded naturally is unable to expand, and eventually dies, but the climber itself does not stop its courselts lower branches root, and it also repiuduces itself by root suckers. Occasionally a branch will coil tightly round one of the older scandent shoots. The TJkshi stems sometimes attain to a girth of 2i feet, and resemble ropes loosely stretched between the ground and tree tops, and between trees and form swings and ladders for the monkeys. The smaller twigs are utilised for native tooth brushes. "The most interesting characteristic of the plant is its faculty of storing in its climbing stems a liquid resembling water which is commonly drunk by the wild tribes-'’*