THE CINCHONA BOTANICAL STATION 



39 



over trunks and branches clear to the tops of the trees. Other species 

 hang from the trees and lianos in festoons a yard or two in length. 



The seed plants also of this rain forest show the same diversity of 

 habit. There are dozens of climbers and twiners, such as Bidens, Marc- 

 gravia, Sciadopliyllum and Rhynchosia, which cling to the trunks of the 

 larger trees and so make their way up to the light. The Marcgravia is 

 especially interesting from its possession of honey cups, which tempt 

 the humming-birds that accomj^lish the pollination of its simple, incon- 

 spicuous flowers. Scores of bromeliads and orchids, as well as the ferns 

 mentioned above, have become air plants, entirely without any connec- 

 tion with the ground. These epiphytes collect water and the solid food 

 needed either from material falling into their cup-like leaf clusters, or 

 absorb them as they drip down over the bark of the supporting tree. In- 

 deed, frees of some size may find the necessary soil and water in the 

 turfs of smaller air plants and the debris accumulated by them, even 

 forty or fifty feet from the ground on the limbs of a big Podocarpus. 

 The very leaves of trees, shrubs and of the more persistent herbaceous 

 plants may become covered with epiphytic lichens and liverworts. In 

 all these cases the air plants are not parasites, but simply use the trunk, 

 branch or leaf as a standing place in which adequate light is available. 

 In the lowlands we saw certain of these air plants actually flourishing 

 on telephone wires. 



If we go northward from Morce's Gap and down 2,000 feet into the 



Marattia ox a Hill Side. 



