334 YIEWS, &C. PHYSIOGNOMY OP PLANTS. 



arborescent umbelliferaB allied to the Araliaceae, to which other 

 species, as yet undiscovered, will undoubtedly at some future 

 time be added. Ferula, Heracleum, and Thapsia likewise 

 attain a considerable height, but they are still herbaceous 

 shrubs. Melanoselinum stands almost entirely alone as an 

 arborescent umbelliferous plant ; Bupleurum ( Tenoria) fruti- 

 cosum, Linn., of the shores of the Mediterranean, Bubon 

 galbanum of the Cape, and Crithmum maritimum of our sea- 

 coasts, are only shrubs. Tropical countries, where, as Adanson 

 long since very correctly remarked, Umbelliferse and Cruci- 

 ferse are almost wholly wanting in the plains, exhibit, as 

 we ourselves observed, the most dwarfish of all the umbelli- 

 ferous family on the lofty mountain ridges of the South Ame- 

 rican and Mexican Andes. Among the thirty-eight species 

 which we collected on elevations whose mean temperature 

 was below 54°. 5 Fahr., we found Myrrhis andicola, Fragosa 

 arctio'ides, and Pectophytum pedunculare, interspersed with 

 an equally dwarfish Alpine Draba, growing moss-like close 

 to the rock and the frequently frozen earth, at a height of 

 13,428 feet above the level of the sea. The only tropical 

 umbelliferous plants which we found on the plain in the 

 New Continent were two species of Hydrocotyle {H. zmi- 

 bellata and H. leptostachya) between the Havannah and 

 Batabano, and therefore at the extreme limit of the torrid 

 zone. 



(27) p. 228—" The form of Grasses:' 



The group of the arborescent grasses which Kunth has col- 

 lected under the head of Barnbusaceae, in his great work on 

 the plants collected by Bonpland and myself, constitutes one of 

 the most beautiful adornments of tropical vegetation. Bambu, 

 called also Mambu, occurs in the Malay language, although 

 according to Buschmann merely as an isolated expression, the 

 ordinary term in use being buluh, whilst the only name for 

 this species of cane in Java and Madagascar is wuluh, voulou. 

 The numbers of the genera and species included in this 

 group have been extraordinarily increased by the industry of 

 botanical travellers. It has been found that the genus 

 Bambusa is entirely wanting in the New Continent, to which 

 region, however, the gigantic Guaduas, discovered by us, and 

 which attain a height of from 50 to 64 feet, together with 

 the Chusquea, exclusively belong ; that Arundinaria (Rich.) 



