The most striking trees in the forest region are, in the basin of the Cavalla, the giant Funtumia elastica, which grows to an altitude of 200 ft.; various kinds of Parinarium, Oldfieldia and Khaya; the bombax or cotton tree, giant dracaenas, many kinds of fig; Borassus palms, oil palms, the climbing Calamus palms, and on the coast the coconut.
They worshipped Re at sunrise with resin, at mid-day with myrrh and at sunset with an elaborate confection called kuphi, compounded of no fewer than sixteen ingredients, among which were honey, wine, raisins, resin, myrrh and sweet calamus.
The leaves, which show great variety in size and form, are generally broad and net-veined, but in sweet-flag (Acorus Calamus) are long and narrow with parallel veins.
The sweet-flag Acorus Calamus, which occurs apparently wild in England in ditches, ponds, &c., is supposed to have been introduced.
It was the Calamus aromaticus of the medieval druggists and perhaps of the ancients, though the latter has been referred by some to the Citron grass, Andropogon Nardus.