THE PLANT WORLD 7 



Without attempting to discuss tlie mooted question as to what the 

 true Oreodoxa rcgin is, whether these belong to that species or not, or 

 whether the 0. regia and oleracea are the same, I will say that these 

 were very lofty trees, with straight, moderately smooth, gray stems, 

 ha^^ng much the appearance of palms I had seen in the Bay Islands 

 and Spanish Honduras. The royal palms I have since seen in Jamaica 

 and Haiti seem more delicate, and to have whiter, smoother stems. 

 None of the West Indian trees I had seen excelled 80 feet in height ; 

 many of these were certainl}^ a hundred or more. Mr. Frank Budge, 

 of Miami, Florida, has recently \'isited this hammock and measured 

 one of these trees, which, I believe, reached a height of 125 feet, and 

 the botanist, A. H. Curtiss, who was there before I was, made a some- 

 what similar measurement. 



We had but little time for exploration, for it was past midday 

 when we reached the hammock ; we had no means of camping on the 

 sj^ot, and we would have been hopelessly lost had we attempted to 

 return after dark. Mr. Reasoner obtained several fine orchids, which 

 he had not seen elsewhere, among them Epidendrum nocturnum, E. rig- 

 idum, and the wonderful Dendrophylax lindeni. The last grew on the 

 trunks of the royal palms, sending out from a common centre a num- 

 ber of long, fleshy, wavy roots, which clung closely, and it seemed to me 

 lovingly, to the gray bark of the tree. It had no leaves, but from the 

 centre there sprung several slender branched stalks, each branch having 

 a large, lovely, satiny flower. I had seen this same orchid on the same 

 tree in Honduras, and so far as I know, it grows nowhere else than as 

 an epiphyte on the trunks of royal palms. How did it come to be on 

 the stems of these palms in Florida? There can be no reasonable 

 doubt, I think, that most of the indigenous tropical vegetation of South 

 Florida and the Keys has been transported from the West Indies and 

 the Spanish Main by the ocean, their seeds, and, possibly, in some in- 

 stances, living plants being borne northward on the Gulf Stream and 

 landed by "vvinds and storms on the Florida coast. The seeds of the 

 royal jjalm are about the size of grapes, and might probably be carried 

 in this way. But those of the Dendrophylax are small, and would 

 probably perish in a long sea passage. If it was possible that a living 

 royal palm, with the orchids growing on it, might be transplanted to 

 the shores of Florida by means of currents and streams, it is probable 

 that the latter would perish from long immersion in salt water. If the 

 orchid seeds were by any means carried separately, how could they 

 reach the trunks of living palms after their arrival ? At any rate, there 

 they were, and there seemed to us to be something almost like human 

 love and affection in their having made this long sea voyage to be with 

 and cling to the trunk of this noble palm. 



