A Fire-proof Tree.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XX, Issue 6439, 25 December 1895, Page 3

A Fire-proof Tree.

In a report sent to the Foreign Office from Bogota, Colombia, on the agricultural productions of the Department of Totim.*, Mr Robert Thomson alludes to the wholesale burning of the natural grasses, intermixed with scrub or brushwood, which goes on every year in order tot produce a tender herbage during the rainy season, and says :—" This persistent burning of the savannahs and hills for crops of renewed pasturage plays desperate havoc with the other vegetation, trees and brushwood. Isolated palm trees, with their intensely hard trunks and indogenous structure, together with groups of brushwood in sheltered or humid spots, sometimes withstand the fury of the flames. There is, however, one phenomenal exception to this subversive power of the tires. A humble tree with contorted and rugged trunks and branches and seabrous leaves, a tree presenting the most suWued and weird aspect conceivable ; this pigmy tree not only resists the fury of the flames, but fire is actually congenial and subservient to its existence, for the tree, instated by the conSagrations, forms itself into great plantations. The name of this tree is chaparo JRbopala obovala), indigenous to Colombia and other South American countries. It attains a height of 15ft to 20ft, and its distorted trunks measure from 7in to 12m in diameter. It is widely distributed in Columbia, for I have found it at the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, and dispersed inland 1000 miles from the sea. In contact with the great forest it maintains » precarious existence. But it usurps dominion in places where no other tree can grow. In Tolima it abounds on the slopes and ridges of the bills at elevations from 10,000 to 3500 ft. In this department alone hundreds of square miles of the lower hills which have been reduced to sterility by inces sant burnings are occupied by this diminutive tree, and it assumes the aspect of vast systematically formed and well-kept plantations. This is more than a triumph of the survival of the fittest. It is very remarkable that these fire-begotten plantations are nowhere crowded to excess; on the contrary, the trees are so regularly placed that their aspect vies with that of the most carefully formed plantations. There is a popular belief in Tolima, where alluvia! gold abounds, that this tree flourishes only on those seductive lands, serving as a guide to searchers after the precious metal. The bark of the tree is peculiarly constituted. It consists of a congeries of integuments or semi-detached layers. The outer portion, about half an inch thick, performs no organic function, and this pcrtion of the bark, in conjunction with its peculiar composition, protects _ the inner vital integuments from injury by fire. The hundreds of square miles of worn-out land covered by this beneficent tree in Tolima alone are undergoing a slow process of amelioration, which, moreover, could be easily accelerated by the interposition of a few simple devices."