(X.) Sugar Manufacture Sugar-cane is a member of the grass family, known botanically as Saccharum officinarum, the succulent stems of which are the source of cane sugar.
20, has an inaccurate notice from Nearchus of the Indian honey-bearing reed, and various classical writers of the first century of our era notice the sweet sap of the Indian reed or even the granulated saltlike product which was imported from India, or from Arabia and Opone (these being entrepots of Indian trade), 1 under the name of saccharum or aaKxape (from Skr.
The view, often repeated, that the saccharum of the ancients is the hydrate of silica, sometimes found in bamboos and known in Arabian medicine as tabashir, is refuted by Yule, Anglo-Indian Glossary, p. 654; see also Not.
Kalo (Colocasia antiquorum, var., esculenta), which furnishes the principal food of the natives, and sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum), the cultivation of which has become the chief industry of the islands, were introduced before the discovery of the group by Captain Cook in 1778.
Angustifolia, leaves of the date palm (Phoenix sylvestris), of the dwarf palm (Chamaerops Ritchiana), of the Palmyra palm (Borassus flabelliformis), of the coco-nut palm (Cocos nucifera)andof the screw pine (Pandanus odoratissimus), the munja or munj grass (Saccharum Munja) and allied grasses, and the mat grasses Cyperus textilis and C. Pangorei, from the last of which the well-known Palghat mats of the Madras Presidency are made.
This is soon impregnated with the seeds of the Saccharum spontaneum and other grasses that have been partly brought by the winds and partly deposited by the water.
In the sugar-cane (Saccharum) and several allied genera the separating joints of the axis bear long hairs below the spikelets; in others, as in Arundo (a reed-grass), the flowering glumes are enveloped in long hairs.
Saccharum officinarum (sugar-cane) (q.v.).
Miscanthus and Erianthus, nearly allied to Saccharum, are tall reed-like grasses, with large silky flower-panicles, which are grown for ornament.
In the swampy lands of the upper Nile it forms, along with a species of Saccharum, huge floating grass barriers.