Select Specimens of Natural History Collected in Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile. Volume 5.Bruce, James
History
Select Specimens of Natural History Collected in Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile. Volume 5.
Bruce, James
Natural history -- Egypt; Natural history -- Ethiopia; Nile River; Plants -- Egypt; Plants -- Ethiopia; Scientific expeditions -- Egypt
The bark of the tree is thin and of a bluish colour, not unlike that
of a cherry-tree when young, or rather whiter. The wood is white and
hard, only the young branches which carry the flower are red. The
leaves are joined to the sides of the small branches by a small pedicle
of considerable strength, the leaves are two and two, or opposite to
each other, and have no single leaf at the point; they are strongly
varnished both on one side and the other, the back rather lighter than
the foreside of the leaf. The branches that carry the leaves have about
an inch of the stalk bare, where it is fixed to the larger branch.
There are generally fourteen leaves, each of about three quarters of
an inch long. At the top of the branch are knots out of which come
three small stalks, bare for about an inch and a half, then having a
number of small tubes, which, when they open at the top, put forth a
long pistil from the bottom of the tube. The top of the tube, divided
into five segments, or petals, arrives about one third up the pistil,
and makes the figure of a calix or perianthium to it. From this tube
proceeds a great number of very small capillaments of a pink colour,
at the end of each of which hangs a purple stigma. At the top of this
pistil is a large bunch of still finer fibres, or capillaments, with
stigmata likewise, and at the end the pistil is rounded as if forming a
fruit; without a very distinct drawing, it would be difficult to make a
description that should be intelligible.
Nothing can be more beautiful, or more compounded, than the formation
of this flower, though it has no odour; the head is composed of
about thirty of these small branches now described, which make a
very beautiful mass, and is of a pink colour of different shades. At
sun-set, the leaves on each side of the branch shut face to face like
the sensitive tribe. I never saw any seed or fruit that it bore, nor
any thing like the rudiments of seed, unless it be that very small
rotundity that appears at the end of the pistil, which seem to bear no
proportion to so large a tree.
ERGETT Y’DIMMO.
The two beautiful shrubs which I have here given to the reader are
called by the name of Ergett, which we may suppose, in Abyssinian
botany, to be the generic name of the mimosa, as both of these have
the same name, and both of the same family, of which there are many
varieties in Abyssinia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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