THE WILD FLOWERS OF HAWAII 



By Vaughan MacCaughey. 



r INHERE seems to exist among people who are but slightly 

 -*■ familiar with the tropics, and whose knowledge of equatorial 

 regions is based largely upon casual reading and hearsay, a 

 deep-rooted and widely spread misimpression concerning the 

 floral marvels of the tropic jungles. Certain writers of a 

 florid disposition, like the gardeners in northern conservatories, 

 have packed within the narrow confines of a single description 

 the gorgeous and spectacular floral wonders of a score of 

 widely-separated regions. The riot of unfamiliar colors, the 

 strange eccentricities of form and habitat, the weird gloom of 

 the jungle, starred with fantastic bouquets — these have been 

 compressed by facile imagination into restricted areas, whereas 

 in fact they are far-scattered, and isolated by great stretches of 

 relatively barren and insignificant vegetation. 



One's first actual excursion through a tropic forest is 

 customarily an experience of severe disillusion and readjust- 

 ment of perspective. The somber hue of the heavy foliage is 

 oppressive. The forest canopy, high above one, is remote and 

 gloomy. The trunks and branches are strangled by tortuous 

 lianas and smothered under a dripping envelope of epiphytes 

 The soggy floor is densely covered with rapidly decaying 

 vegetation ; there is no familiar crisp leafy carpet, and there is 

 a notable absence of bright flowers. Those plants that survive 

 in the dense perennial shade are rich in varied greenery, but 

 scant of blossom. In many places the ferns form a high, dense 

 undergrowth, that is penetrated with difficulty. During much 



