In San Fernando we were most struck by the pihiguado or pirijao palm, which gives the countryside its peculiar quality. Covered with thorns, its trunk reaches more than 60 feet high. The fruit of this tree is extraordinary; each bunch has some fifty to eighty; they are yellow, like apples, but turn purple on ripening, when they are 2 or 3 inches thick. Generally they fall off before the kernel develops. Of the eighty to ninety palm trees peculiar to the New World that I have described in my Nova Genera plantarum aequinoctialem (1815-25) none has such a fleshy fruit. The pirijao fruit yields a substance rather like flour, as yellow as egg yolk, slightly sweet and very nutritious. It is eaten like banana or sweet potato, cooked or baked in ashes, and is as healthy as it tastes good. Indians and missionaries vie in praising this magnificent palm, which could be called the peach palm. In these wild regions I was reminded of Linnaeus's assertion that the country of palm trees was man's first abode, and that man is essentially palmivorous. (110) When we examined what food the Indians stored in their huts we noticed that their diet depends as much on the fruit of the pirijao as on cassava and banana.