This is not about the terrible cannibal tree, often featured in numerous legends of antiquity and even in more modern newspaper sensations. The botanists, who carefully examined the inaccessible and most remote corners of the planet Earth, did not encounter anything terrible, in the sense as described in the works.
This article will discuss whether there is actually a tree of hangars, where it grows and what are its features.
The birthplace of the plant is the East Indies and the Malay Archipelago.
Bit of history
This tree has long been not very well-known fame. For a long time it was believed that the Anchar was a "tree of death."
The very first report about the anchor was published in 1783 in a London magazine, according to an Englishman who worked as a surgeon on the island of Java. He was told that, according to local rumors, this tree is so poisonous that around it, within a radius of 15 miles, all living things die. And besides, the extraction of the poison of this tree is equated to the death penalty (it was mainly condemned to extract it). It turned out that the information was completely false, but the image of the "death tree" has since been preserved by readers and has rapidly spread. So the anchor became legendary.
And G. Rumpf (Dutch scientist-botanist) added unkind fame to the tree. He was sent in the middle of the XVII century to a colony (in Makassaru) to find out which plant the natives give the poison that they use for poison arrows. Rumpf for 15 years simply fished out the necessary information for him from local residents. As a result, the result was a report on this supposedly poisonous tree.
Anchar is a tree to which many poets have dedicated their poems (for example, A.S. Pushkin).
Much later, an amazing plant was studied in more detail. Even the first researchers, who knew about the terrible tales of the "death tree", were greatly struck by the fact that birds sit carefree and calmly on the branches of this plant.
Over time, it turned out that both branches and other parts of the tree are harmless to both humans and animals. Dangerous is only its juice flowing from the places of damage. In ancient times, the natives used poisonous resin to lubricate arrowheads intended for enemies.
Today, the terrible definition of "death tree" is no longer applied to this plant. And what does anchar tree look like? More about this later in the article.
Anchar (tree): description
Anchar is a genus of plants (family of mulberries) belonging to evergreen trees or shrubs. It turns out that he is a close relative of mulberry and ficus. There are some poisonous species of anchor.
It should be noted that both the appearance and the growth environment of this tree are not similar to those presented in the famous poem.
There is in nature a tree-like juniper juniper, often in the form of a tree with knotty, coarse-grained and rather hard wood. It is found in the mountains on stony soils and rocks, where grass usually does not grow. This plant is not poisonous, but it looks unusual for Europeans. There is an assumption that the poet could have mixed up these two plants or simply connected them and presented them in the form of a terrible tree that brings death.
The height of the slender trunk of the Anchar tree is 40 meters. The crown is small, rounded, with simple leaves 10-20 centimeters long.
His flowers are small, crowded and densely clustered in inflorescences with a goblet ceiling around.
Collapse consists of many small fruitlets, sitting very tightly and each having its own juicy perianth.
The properties
Anchar is a tree containing juice in its leaves, if it gets on the body, only an abscess on the skin can appear. The strongest poison antiarin can be obtained only with a special distillation of anchor juice (the scientific name of the tree is “antiaris”). It was the natives who owned this method of making poison lasting more than one week.
Among other things, despite the tree’s not very good reputation, the local population makes extensive use of its thick, beautiful and rather elastic bark for making clothes and rugs. Craftsmen get a dense white fabric suitable for sewing pants and shirts.
About the title
Its generic name (Antiaris toxicaria) was invented by the Frenchman J. Lesheno (traveler, naturalist and botanist). He described this plant.
Translated from the Javanese Anchar language is poison.
In fact, this terrible tree is said to be tall and beautiful, growing on the islands of the Malay Archipelago, but it is more common in Java.
For a long time, this plant was attributed to the nettle family.
Habitat
It is known that in the tropics there is no, as described in the poem, "lonely growing" on the sands of trees. What is a rainforest? This is a lot of the most diverse vegetation, trees entwined with various vines. Anchar in the desert does not grow, especially since the soil for it is not scarce. It grows in close proximity to other vegetation, which does not suffer from this at all. True, there are certain “death valleys” in Java, composed of accumulations of products of the volcanic activity of these places (sulfur fumes and carbon dioxide). Maybe Anchar Pushkin grew up in the middle of one of these valleys?
Botanists subdivided several species of anchovy growing in India, on Sri Lanka, and throughout Malaysia (the milky anchara juice of these places is very poisonous), up to the Philippine Islands. Poisonous Anchar ("sack tree") grows in India. The bark of the latter is used to make durable bags for everyday life.
Application
As noted above, the hangar itself is not dangerous. This juice is poisonous to him. Moreover, almost all of its subspecies belong to those, especially the venom of the poison. It was his juice that the natives in Java poisoned the arrowheads. Even at the end of the last century, arrows for the “sarbakan” (air gun) were poisoned with the juice of Anchara, and those who were engaged in the extraction of this juice could easily suffer.
Poison upas (or boa-upas and boon-upas) is a milky juice, which, when distilled with alcohol, produces a well-known antiarin. This is a very strong poison that crystallizes in colorless, shiny leaves of a plant.
There is another subspecies - Anchar Bennetta, growing on the island of Vitu and containing in its fruits a beautiful carmine paint. In its bark there are excellent bast fibers from which crafts are made. They also make bags in Ceylon and the East Indies.
About the properties of the poison
Back in the middle of the 18th century, poison made from milky anchovy juice, called “Makassar, ” was part of the British Museum’s collection (London), and then its chemical composition was investigated in the 19th century.
The studied anti-arin is a glycoside close to digitalis glycoside and other cardiac plant glycosides, which very quickly affect the heart muscle. There is an anchara and other, but less studied poisons in the juice.
