250 ZONES AND REGIONS [Pt. Ill, Sect. I 



menon of the production of foliage to what a high degree the separate 

 branches of many tropical woody plants are individualized. The same 

 truth often holds good in the production of flowers. Frequently a 

 single bough is in blossom, while the other boughs remain in a condition 

 of mere vegetative activity but bear flowers at other times. The pheno- 

 menon is very striking in the mango-tree and in the silk-cotton-tree, 

 Eriodendron anfractuosum, in which an area of the crown of about the 

 extent that would be occupied by a large branch alone bears flower at one 

 time, and then subsequently other similar areas bear flower. Fritz Mtiller 

 mentions a gigantic fig-tree growing at Blumenau, the different boughs 

 of which bear fruit at different seasons l . In other cases this phenomenon 

 is less obvious, as it is not all the branches of a thick bough at one time, 

 but smaller systems of branches of a higher order, or even individual twigs, 

 that exhibit alternate rest and activity in the reproductive processes. One 

 and the same shoot never blossoms and bears fruit uninterruptedly. 



Most of the plants whose flowering period is independent of the season 

 produce their flowers, as may readily be understood, at different times, and 

 therefore a tree decked in full floral array may frequently be seen close 

 to another tree of the same species bearing ripe fruit only. 



Yet in a few species with a short blossoming period it strangely 

 happens, that within a more or less extensive district, frequently comprising 

 many square miles, all the individual plants of one species come into blossom 

 on the same day. 



The first to recognize a fact of this nature, as in the case of so many 

 other features of tropical plant-life, was Fritz Mtiller, who noticed it in 

 three species of the iridaceous genus Marica flowering at different times. 

 Subsequently Mr. Ridley at Singapore informed me that a local epiphytic 

 orchid (Dendrobium crumenatum, Sw.) behaved in a similar way. Finally, 

 during my visit to Buitenzorg Dr. Treub drew my attention to the habit of 

 this orchid, which is common everywhere in West and Central Java. On 

 December 13, 1889, all the individual plants that I saw in Buitenzorg (which 

 is in West Java) and its vicinity were opening the whole of their flower-buds. 

 On January 19, 1890, I met with the same phenomenon at Samarang 

 in Central Java ; and as I learnt, the Dendrobium had also blossomed at 

 about the same time at Buitenzorg. On February 19 I saw the same 

 thing at Garut, on the high plateau of Preanger, and again on March 4 

 at Buitenzorg. Some other less common orchids appear also to act in 

 a similar way. 



Comparable perhaps with the above strange phenomena is the behaviour 

 of certain bamboos that blossom only after cycles of a number of years, 

 and then all simultaneously within an extensive province. Thus the 

 bamboos in the South Brazilian provinces of St. Catherina and Rio Grande 



1 Fritz Mtiller, op. cit, p. 392. 



