Martius and the Island of Miriti Palms: Home of the Blue Macaws

The Flora Brasiliensis is a landmark in global botany. Although started in 1840, Volume 1 was finally published, in 1906, with 59 illustrations of Brazilian landscapes. In this story, we will embark on a 'botanical journey' through one of them, highlighting its plants.

Departing from Belém and passing through the Marajó archipelago, Spix and Martius traveled up the Amazon River to Fortaleza da Barra (Manaus) on a three-month journey. At the very start of this journey, in August 1819, they were forced to stop on an island because of a severe tropical storm.

“With the boat anchored near the island of Pautinga, we had the opportunity to contemplate the unique nature of the place. [...] The sandy, flat, and low island is covered by a dense forest, with trees of extraordinary height, most noticeably the miriti palm (Mauritia flexuosa).”

“The whitish and glossy stems, with a diameter of 45 to 60 cm, and which raise their broad head of fan leaves high, are so close together that they mimic the palisade of a vast fortification.”

“The crowns shaken by the wind and the noise of the river combine their voices in such a singular way that we seemed to be standing in front of the ancient chorus of dryads crying out their verses.”

“To the murmurs of the river was added the squawking of the numerous blue macaws (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus), which nest in those palms.”

“The solitude of the desolate island and the birds that are its only inhabitants, the peculiarity of the region, and the expanse of that liquid plain that may well be called a freshwater ocean, seem to have been so arranged as to manifest this uncontrollable force of nature.”

“All this commotion of our spirit increases when we see the multitude of trunks torn away by the force of the river. [...] Even these trees, so vigorous and which seem to have weathered centuries of existence, can be snatched away like ephemeral little animals in the brevity of an instant.”

“And those trunks lie, already stripped of their palms, close to each other and often overlapping, or else scattered without any order across the sands of the beach and the mud of the river.”

“Some, the rapid rot destroys. Others the tide sweeps away again [...] and throws them from the waters to the land, when it does not carry them into the immensity of the ocean. And the very trees that are still in the splendor of their strength seem to whisper in our ears: remember that you shall die.”

“It is as the most profound of the Roman poets said: Everything passes, nature changes all things and forces everything to return, for if something is corrupted and over time loses its strength, soon thereafter something new emerges born of what was lost (Lucretius, v. 830).”