Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/201

 Queer Trees and Near-Trees— All Are Useful

���Although the spongy wood of the silk-cotton tree, found principally in Jamaica, West Indies, is too light to be of commercial value, the natives make canoes out of it and fill pillows and cushions with its long silky threads. Its root - formations make the tree earthquake-proof

���Bamboo belongs to the grass family, although its tall stalks resemble saplings. As material for rafts, fishing poles and even for houses it has been in use since the world was young. Orientals consider the young shoots, which resemble asparagus, a nutritious food

��The banyan tree, on account of its habit of putting forth numberless trunks to support its branches, thus crowding out all other trees, is regarded as a robber and murderer. But it yields rubber equal to Para — and once, centuries ago, it shdtered a Buddha

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