THE UPAS AND OTHER UNUSUAL TREES OF DEATH AND EVIL
At the annual British Institution exhibition of 1820, a singular tableau by an unheralded artist was on display. Entitled “The Upas, or Poison Tree of the Island of Java”, it was a sensation. For a debut, Irish painter Francis Danby’s was a spectacular one, if gloomy and foreboding. It contained the right dose of Romanticism and exoticism (and a soupçon of horror, with the skeletal remains and the man staggering away from the tree) and is indeed one of those paintings it is difficult to pry one’s gaze from. Of it, the London Magazine stated: “The dinginess of colour in this picture, came over us like the darkness of a thundercloud.” (Danby’s art would not lighten in tone as his career evolved.)
The Upas, or Poison-Tree, in the Island of Java – painting by Francis Danby, oil on canvas, ca. 1820. 160.8 cm x 235.4 cm
But what exactly was the Upas Tree?
Danby possibly found inspiration in Erasmus Darwin’s book ‘The Loves of the Plants’, written in 1789, consisting of shortverses about plants and flowers arranged in four cantos, and interspersed with extensive descriptive notes; the book is an odd mixture of poetry and botany. Here is the excerpt, followed by the attendant note:
Where seas of glass with gay reflections smile
220 Round the green coasts of Java’s palmy isle;
A spacious plain extends its upland scene,
Rocks rise on rocks, and fountains gush between;
Soft zephyrs blow, eternal summers reign,
And showers prolific bless the soil,–in vain!
225 –No spicy nutmeg scents the vernal gales,
Nor towering plaintain shades the mid-day vales;
No grassy mantle hides the sable hills,
No flowery chaplet crowns the trickling rills;
Nor tufted moss, nor leathery lichen creeps
230 In russet tapestry o’er the crumbling steeps.
–No step retreating, on the sand impress’d,
Invites the visit of a second guest;
No refluent fin the unpeopled stream divides,
No revolant pinion cleaves the airy tides;
235 Nor handed moles, nor beaked worms return,
That mining pass the irremeable bourn.–
Fierce in dread silence on the blasted heath
Fell UPAS sits, the HYDRA-TREE of death.
Lo! from one root, the envenom’d soil below,
240 A thousand vegetative serpents grow;
In shining rays the scaly monster spreads
O’er ten square leagues his far-diverging heads;
Or in one trunk entwists his tangled form,
Looks o’er the clouds, and hisses in the storm.
[_Upas_. l. 238. There is a poison-tree in the island of Java, which is said by its effluvia to have depopulated the country for 12 or 14 miles round the place of its growth. It is called, in the Malayan language, Bohon-Upas; with the juice of it the most poisonous arrows are prepared; and, to gain this, the condemned criminals are sent to the tree with proper direction both to get the juice and to secure themselves from the malignant exhalations of the tree; and are pardoned if they bring back a certain quantity of the poison. But by the registers there kept, not one in four are said to return. Not only animals of all kinds, both quadrupeds, fish, and birds, but all kinds of vegetables also are destroyed by the effluvia of the noxious tree; so that, in a district of 12 or 14 miles round it, the face of the earth is quite barren and rocky, intermixed only with the skeletons of men and animals; affording a scene of melancholy beyond what poets have described or painters delineated.[1]Two younger trees of its own species are said to grow near it. See London Magazine for 1784, or 1783. Translated from a description of the poison-tree of the island of Java, written in Dutch by N.P. Foersch. For a further account of it, see a note at the end of the work.][2]
Foersch had travelled extensively in Java around 1775, and published an account of the poisoned valley. So deadly were the exhalations from the Upas tree that no living thing could exist nearer than fifteen miles of it. That the whole country nearby was a lifeless, barren waste, strewn with the bones of animals, birds and human beings. Criminals condemned to death were offered freedom and a full pardon in exchange for procuring some of the Upas poison. It was the duty of an old priest, living on the confines of this “valley of death,” to prepare the Upas hunters, and administer last rites before they undertook their perilous task.
Donning a leathern mask or cowl, and carrying a box to contain the poison, they would set out when a favourable wind blew towards the tree. If a man possessed a robust constitution and strong will he might return safely, otherwise his bones would join those already under the tree. According to the priest, in the three decades of his tenure, only one man in ten had returned alive.
The Road to the Deadly Upas Tree by Albert Goodwin (1845-1932)
In the words of Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828), the famous Swedish botanist, “the Upas tree… is easily recognized at a great distance. The ground around it is sterile, and looks as if it had been burned. The sap is of a dark brown colour, and becomes liquid by heat, like other resins. Those who gather it, have to employ the greatest care; covering the head, the hands, the whole body, to protect themselves from the poisonous emanations of the tree, and especially from the drops which fall from it. They avoid even approaching too near, and they provide themselves with bamboos tipped with steel heads, having a groove in the middle. A score of these long spears are stuck into the tree, the sap runs down the grooves into the hollow bamboo, until it is stopped by the first joint of the wood. The spears are left sticking in the trunk for three or four hours, so that the sap may fill up the space prepared for it, and have time to harden, alter which they are drawn out. The part of the bamboo which contains the poison is then broken off, and covered up with great care”.
He adds: “Persons passing beneath the branches bare-headed lose their hair. A single drop falling on the skin produces inflammation. Birds can with difficulty fly over the tree, and if they by any chance alight on its branches, they fall dead. The soil around is perfectly sterile to the distance of a stone’s throw.”
A Medicinal Upas: The Vaccine Upas Tree from the Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Lantern slide, early 1900s.
What the 19th century knew of the Upas is summed up by Richard Redgrave, in A Century of Painters of the English School published in 1866: “This fabulous tree was said to grow on the island of Java, in the midst of a desert formed by its own poisonous exhalations. Its poison was considered precious, and was to be obtained by piercing the bark, when it flowed forth from the wound. So hopeless …. and so perilous was the endeavour to obtain it, that only criminals sentenced to death could be induced to make the attempt, and as numbers of them perished, the place became a valley of the shadow of death, a charnel-field of bones.”
An Allegorical Upas: The Deadly Upas Tree of Wall Street by Joseph Ferdinand Keppler, Illustration from Puck, v. 11, no. 286, August 30, 1882
Trees in mythology have almost universally positive roles. World-Trees (and their geological cousins, World-Mountains) hold up the Sky and provide stability and structure in the universe. As symbolic columns, they are mirrored in architecture; gazing up at the interlocking arches of any cathedral nave, it is easy to imagine why, symbol aptly echoing structural requirements. The Norse Yggdrasil is the framework upon which the Nine Worlds of the Eddas are hung, from the crown where perches the eagle Perun, to the deep roots endlessly gnawed in Niflheim by the death-eater Nidhoggr. The Babylonians placed a similar tree near Eridu, near the Euphrates’ mouth. Its roots descend into a watery abyss, dwelling-place of Ea, god of Wisdom. On the crown reposed the primeval mother Zikum. Earth, like the Middle Earth of the Eddas, was situated midway between the two. Belief in the world-tree Irminsul persisted amongst the Saxons until the time of Charlemagne.
Yggdrasil, the World-Tree by Franz Stassen
Trees of Life are a ubiquitous theme, found the world over, as are sacred groves. The structure of the tree is universally anthropomorphized, its sap echoes the human circulation system, its upright stature our own. In temperate zones, the seasonal changes of trees serve as a mirror of human activity. The sturdiness and seeming eternal nature of long-lived trees makes them perfect symbols not only of permanence, but renewal.
While forests are often depicted as foreboding and gloomy places, the daily fare of folk and fairy tale, the bewilderment they embody relies on the accumulation of trees, and the resulting and directionless darkness under their eaves. Trees may also be portals: a tree either located at the end of a valley or on a cliff near the sea is a gateway to the Underworld, according to Hawaiian tradition. All in all, though, trees are eminently positive symbols.
Nonetheless, the Upas Tree does have companions, spread the world over.
Not content with deadly exhalations, some trees could be actively menacing. Mrs. J. H. Philpot, in The Sacred Tree[3], tells of one specimen in Bengal folklore that was so infested by evil spirits it would reach out and throttle all who approached it by night.
The Jubokko trees of Japan have branches strangely reminiscent of grasping hands and fingers. Human remains pile up around its roots, all that remains of its victims once it has drained the blood from their bodies.
The carnivorous Madagascar tree, though, was a journalistic invention. It appeared in an article in the daily New York World on 26 April 1874, and in the weekly edition two days later, this time accompanied by a letter from a purported German explorer named Karl Leche or Liche, supposed eye-witness of a sacrifice made by the “Mkodo tribe” to the tree. “The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey.”
Some trees inspire superstitious fear: the hawthorn possesses powerful apotropaic properties against vampirism, although these also make it a dwelling place for evil spirits. The Carob and the Sycamore Fig are abodes of devils in Middle Eastern folklore. In Croatia, the ghosts of witches buried beneath the roots of trees would rise up and inhabit the trees themselves. Tribal tradition in Western India warns against sitting in the shade of the Saptaparna tree in India, as it is a preferred abode of devils.
Speaking of the Devil, he has his very own tree, which sinks its roots into the fires of Hell. The Tree of Zaqqum receives several mentions in the Quran; its fruits have the shapes of devil’s heads. Eaten by the unfortunate inhabitants of Hell, the bitter fruit causes their bellies to burst and their faces and bodies to disintegrate. Reduced to a heap of melted flesh and bone, they of course eventually become whole once more, and are able to partake again and again.
The Tree of Zaqqum, modern depiction (Wikipedia)
Alexander the Great meets with a talking tree in the pages of the Shanameh, the Persian national epic. Known at the Vaq Vaq tree (“vaq” is the Farsi equivalent of “bow-wow”) the barking tree bears a crop of monstrous heads: human, animal and fantastical. Endowed with the powers of prophecy, the tree foretells Alexander’s death. According to some versions, it looks like an ordinary tree during the day, the heads only appearing at night.
Eskandar (Alexander the Great) contemplates the Talking Tree from the epic poem ‘The Shahnameh’ by Ferdowsi.Shiraz, Iran, c.1430 CE. Illuminator : Nasr al-Soltani. Opaque watercolours, ink and gold on paper
‘Outside a city at the edge of the known world is a tree with miraculous powers , for the fruits it produces are the talking heads of men, women and monstrous animals that are blessed with the powers of prophecy. When Alexander the Great visited the tree he heard the prophecy of his own death ‘
The Wak-Wak tree appears in Arab legends. On an island of the same name grows “a species of large tree… which bear a fruit similar to a gourd, but larger and having the appearance of a human figure. When the wind shook it there came from it a human voice…” The 12th-century Kitab al-Jughrafiya (Book of Geography) tells of a tree in the isles of Waq-waq whose fruits are in the form of young maidens “more beautiful than words can describe. …At the moment of falling to the ground they utter two cries: ‘Waq-waq!’ When they have fallen to the ground, flesh without bones is found.” Even the Thousand and One Nights mentions them. “After which there will be a vast mountain and a running river, which extend to the Islands of Wak Wak. On the banks of the river is a tree called Wak Wak, whose branches resemble the heads of the sons of Adam. When the sun riseth those heads all cry out: Wak Wak!” To hear these rough voices heralding dawn is an ill omen.
Even more frightening is the Yataveo tree described in Sea and Land, a travelogue by J. W. Buell. Growing in Africa and Central America, its branches resemble “many huge serpents in an angry discussion, occasionally darting from side to side as if striking at an imaginary foe.” Anyone foolhardy enough to stray within reach is immediately seized and devoured.
Depiction of a man being consumed by a Yateveo (“I see you”) carnivorous tree found in both Africa and Central America, from Sea and Land by J. W. Buel, 1887
The Hantu Tinggi or Hantu Galah of Malaysia is a ghostly spirit in the shape of a bamboo or a tree trunk. This spindly “Tall Ghost” is apt to strangle passers-by who gaze at it too intently; even passing by in its proximity can cause illness.
Less sinister, the first Dragon’s Blood trees of the island of Socotra (Yemen) were created from the blood of a dragon that was wounded when it fought an elephant.[4]
The Dragon’s Blood Tree of the Island of Tenerife, from The Picture Magazine, 1894
For centuries, Barnacle Geese were though to grow on trees. The Welsh monk Giraldus Cambrensis was the first to record the legend in his Topographia Hibernae in 1188: “There are here many birds that are called “Barnacles” [barnacoe] which in a wonderful way Nature unnaturally produces; they are like wild geese but smaller. For they are born at first like pieces of gum [pitch] on logs of timber washed by the waves. Then enclosed in shells of a free form they hang by their beaks as if from the moss clinging to the wood and so at length in process of time obtaining a sure covering of feathers, they either dive off into the waters or fly away into free air … They derived their food and growth from the sap of the wood or from the sea, by a secret and most wonderful process of alimentation. I have myself seen many times with my own eyes more than a thousand minute corpuscles of this kind of bird hanging to one log on the shore of the sea, enclosed in shells and already formed. … They do not breed and lay eggs like other birds, nor do they ever hatch any eggs, nor do they seem to build nests in any corner of the earth. Bishops and religious men in some parts of Ireland do not scruple to dine off these birds at the time of fasting, because they are neither flesh, nor born of flesh.”
The Barnacle tree, or the tree bearing geese.
John of Mandeville repeated the legend: “I tolde hem of als gret a marveylle to hem that is amonges us; and that was of the Bernakes. For I tolde hem that in our Contree weren Trees, that beren a Fruyt that becomen Briddes fleeynge; and tho that fallen in the Water lyven, and thei that fallen on the Erthe dyen anon; and thei ben right gode to mannes mete. And here of had thei als gret marvaylle, that sume of hem trowed, it were an impossible thing to be.”
Despite denunciations by more rigorous naturalists, the legend would continue well into the 18th century. (There was of course, an eminently practical consideration: deemed to be fish rather than fowl, the Barnacle Goose could thus be consumed during Lent.)
Another wondrous, if equally fanciful tree is described in Mandeville’s Travels, a curious tree in the land of Cathay that bears lambs in lieu of fruit:“…a lytylle Best in Flessche in Bone and Blode as though it were a lytylle Lomb, withouten Wolle.” Mandelilles marvellous tree is a confabulation based on cotton plants or possibly silkworms, both unknown in Western Europe at the time.
John of Mandeville’s lamb-bearing tree
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Prosaically, some of these extraordinary trees really do exist. Poisonous trees abound, even the familiar yew deserves caution. A number of trees, including the Upas tree, whose real name is Antiaris toxicaria, provide a powerful toxin, but they are certainly not in the centre of a circle of barrenness and death.
While it is true in myth that nearly everything has its opposite, trees remain intrinsically positive symbols; there are no evil mythical trees. While a certain dualism is reflected in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, clearly implying that human judgement is the key, just as the Sefirot “tree” has its darker pendant, the Qliphoth, in Kabbalistic tradition, unequivocally devilish trees are few in number. Truly evil, carnivorous and deathly trees are confined to the wild hedgerows of legend and folklore. Their twisted and greedy roots are anchored not in the new and fertile Earth of the creation myth, but in the troubled loam of superstition, exoticism and the irresistible frissons of the uncanny.
The monstrous exercises a fascination that provides not only a foil for the valorization of the wholesome and offers ample material for moralizing, but responds to our desire to occasionally believe that the fantastical (and in this case deadly) can intrude in an otherwise well-ordered universe. If nothing else, these wild seeds indicate the borders of the well-tilled fields of our minds – they grow in the trackless and untended spaces beyond.
Footnotes:
[1] Young Danby must have felt this last remark constituted a perfect challenge.
[2] The note itself is exceedingly long, sensationalist and not a little tedious. I have not included it here.
[3] Philpot, Mrs. J. H., The Sacred Tree, or The Tree in Religion and Myth, London; MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1897
[4] A similar tree, the drago or dragon tree, is found in the Canary Islands
