Part 2 (2/2)
IMPORTANT GENERA. The most important plant is the Cocoa Tree (_Theobroma Cacao_). It is a low tree with short-stalked, firm, brittle, simple leaves of large size, oval shape, and dark green colour. The young leaves are of a bright red colour, and, as in many tropical trees, hang limply downwards. The flowers are borne on the main stem or the older branches, and arise from dormant axillary buds (Cauliflory). Each petal is bulged up at the base, narrows considerably above this, and ends in an expanded tip. The form of the reddish flowers is thus somewhat urn-shaped with five radiating points. The pentalocular ovary has numerous ovules in each loculus. As the fruit develops, the soft tissue of the septa extends between the single seeds; the ripe fruit is thus unilocular and many-seeded. The seed-coat is filled by the embryo, which has two large, folded, brittle cotyledons.”
The last sentence conveys an erroneous impression. The two cotyledons, which form the seed, are not brittle when found in nature in the pod.
They are juicy and fleshy. And it is only after the seed has received special treatment (fermentation and drying) to obtain the bean of commerce, that it becomes brittle.
_Varieties of Theobroma Cacao._
As mentioned above, the pods and seeds of Theobroma Cacao trees show a marked variation, and in every country the botanist has studied these variations and cla.s.sified the trees according to the shape and colour of the pods and seeds. The existence of so many cla.s.sifications has led to a good deal of confusion, and we are indebted to Van Hall for the simplest way of clearing up these difficulties. He accepts the cla.s.sification first given by Morris, dividing the trees into two varieties--Criollo and Forastero:
[Ill.u.s.tration: DRAWINGS OF TYPICAL PODS, ill.u.s.trating varieties.
CRIOLLO FORASTERO FORASTERO (CALABACILLO VARIETY)]
_Extremes of Characteristics._
_Criollo._ _Forastero._
(Old Red, Caracas, etc.) Grading from Cundeamor (bottle-necked) to Calabacillo (smooth).
_Pod walls._ Thin and warty. Thick and woody.
_Beans._ Large and plump. Small and flat.
White. Heliotrope to purple.
Sweet. Astringent.
The cacao of the criollo variety has pods the walls of which are thin and warty, with ten distinct furrows. The seeds or beans are white as ivory throughout, round and plump, and sweet to taste. The forastero variety includes many sub-varieties, the kind most distinct from the criollo having pods, the walls of which are thick and woody, the surface smooth, the furrows indistinct, and the shape globular. The seeds in these pods are purple in colour, flat in appearance, and bitter to taste. This is a very convenient cla.s.sification. Personally I believe it would be possible to find pods varying by almost imperceptible gradations from the finest, purest, criollo to the lowest form of forastero (namely, calabacillo). The criollo yields the finest and rarest kind of cacao, but as sometimes happens with refined types in nature, it is a rather delicate tree, especially liable to canker and bark diseases, and this accounts for the predominance of the forastero in the cacao plantations of the world.
_The Cacao Plantation._
One can spend happy days on a cacao estate. ”Are you going into the cocoa?” they ask, just as in England we might enquire, ”Are you going into the corn?”
[Ill.u.s.tration: TROPICAL FOREST, TRINIDAD.
This has to be cleared before planting begins.]
Coconut plantations and sugar estates make a strong appeal to the imagination, but for peaceful beauty they cannot compare with the cacao plantation. True, coconut plantations are very lovely--the palms are so graceful, the leaves against the sky so like a fine etching--but ”the slender coco's drooping crown of plumes” is altogether foreign to English eyes. Sugar estates are generally marred by the prosaic factory in the background. They are dead level plains, and the giant gra.s.s affords no shade from the relentless sun. Whereas the leaves of the cacao tree are large and numerous, so that even in the heat of the day, it is comparatively cool and pleasant under the cacao.
Cacao plantations present in different countries every variety of appearance--from that of a wild forest in which the greater portion of the trees are cacao, to the tidy and orderly plantation. In some of the Trinidad plantations the trees are planted in parallel lines twelve feet apart, with a tree every twelve feet along the line; and as you push your way through the plantation the apparently irregularly scattered trees are seen to flash momentarily into long lines. In other parts of the world, for example, in Grenada and Surinam, the ground may be kept so tidy and free from weeds that they have the appearance of gardens.
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