Another peculiarity was noteworthy: their innumerable roots, long, fleshy, about the thickness of a large string, piercing the sand in every direction, and running down to high-tide mark, apparently enjoying the salt water, and often piercing through bivalve shells, which remained strung upon the roots.

Have they a fondness for carbonate of lime, as well as for salt?
The most remarkable, and to me unexpected, peculiarity of a Cocal is one which I am not aware whether any writer has mentioned; namely, the prevalence of that amber hue which we remarked in the very first specimens seen at St.Thomas's.

But this is, certainly, the mark which distinguishes the Coco palm, not merely from the cold dark green of the Palmiste, or the silvery gray of the Jagua, but from any other tree which I have ever seen.
When inside the Cocal, the air is full of this amber light.

Gradually the eye analyses the cause of it, and finds it to be the resultant of many other hues, from bright vermilion to bright green.

Above, the latticed light which breaks between and over the innumerable leaflets of the fruit fronds comes down in warmest green.