CERO'XYLON, a gents of plants belonging to the natural order of Palma. a .Aedicola, the Wax-Palm of South America, is one of the must remarkable plants in the large natural order to which it belongs. It is a species with pinnate(' leaves and paniclod polygamous flowers. Its calyx consists of three small scales ; the petals are also three, but much larger and sharp-pointed. The stamens are numerous, with very short filaments. The fruit is a little round drupe, with a single seed of the same figure.
This plant has received from the American Spaniards the name of Palma de Cora, or Wax-Palm, on account of the abundance of that substance yielded by the stem. It grows, according to llonphurd, in that part of the Andes which separates the valley of the :slagdalena from that of the river Cauca, in 4* 35' N. lat. Below the snow capped mountains called Tolima, San Juan, and Quindiu, especially the last, the Cero.ry/oa grows in all its grandeur, elevating its majestic trunk, coated with a thick incrustation of wax, to the height of ISO feet among the moat rugged precipices of the wild region which it inhabits. Unlike the greater part of the palin-t ribo, this species avoids the host of tropical plains, and seems incepable of existing except in regions where the temperature is lowered by elevation in the air and the contiguity of perpetual snow. It is said to make its first appear
ance on the shies of the QuInsiiii, at a height equal to that of the Puy (le Dome or the passage of Mont Cenis ; this is higher than the region of Cinchonas, and so cool that liumboldt does not estimate the mean temperature of the year higher at the utmost than 65° or eV Fehr., which is at least 17 degrees lower than the mean temperature of palm countries. It doe* net extend over more than 15 or 20 leagues of country altogether. Its roots are fibrous and very numerous, the main root being thicker than the stem itself. The trunk is distinctly marked by rings caused by the fall of the loaves, which are from 18 to 20 feet long. The spaces between the rings are pale yellow, and smooth like the atones of a reed, mid covered with a thick coating of wax and resin. This substance, melted with n third of fat, makes excellent candles. Vauqiielin meet-tallied that this vegetable matter consists of two-thirds ruin and one-third wax, which is only a little more brittle than bees-wax.- The only parallel among palms to this property of exuding wax occurs in a Brazilian palm with palmated leaves, called Carnauba.