Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1894 — Nature’s Laboratory. [ARTICLE]

Nature’s Laboratory.

The cream of tartar tree belongs to the category of plants yielding ready made products. They are members of the genus “Adansonia.” The height of the tree is from forty to seventy feet, while the top is over one hundred and eighty feet across. A Venetian who has left us the most ancient description of the tree, tells us that in 1454 he found one at the mouth of the Senegal with a circumference of one hundred and twelve feet. The tree is very disproportionate, as may be gathered from the fact that Gregory—after whom the Australian species is named—saw one eighty-five feet in circumference at a height of two feet from the ground. The acid is found in the farinacious pulp surrounding the seed, and has at all times been highly esteemed by travelers, who mix it with a little water in order to make a refreshing beverage. The bark of the tree contains a remarkably strong fiber which in s ime parts is made into ropes, in others woven into cloth. A bitterprinciple, to which the name of“Adansonin” has been given, is extracted from the bark. It appears in fine white needles of a smell similar to that of aloes or gentian, and is extremely bitter in taste. It is interesting from the fact that it is the only product known up to the present that has an antagonistic action -to the Strophanthus arrow-poison, a a deadly poisonous seed used by the natives on the West and east coasts of Africa, to insdre their arrows inflicting a fatal wound.