PLANTS EPIPHYTIC UPON PALMS AT HYERES 135 



1784. The provision that the plants presented in each year 

 should be specifically different from those of every former year 

 was by no means strictly carried out ; the interest of the specimens 

 is very limited, as they consist for the most part of plants com- 

 monly cultivated at the period, their only relation to Miller being 

 that they were grown during his Curatorship. 



PLANTS EPIPHYTIC UPON PALMS AT HYERES. 

 By H. Stuart Thompson, F.L.S. 



It may be interesting to publish a list of the Phanerogams 

 growing upon the Palms at Hyeres on the French Riviera, as 

 observed during December and the first week of January. 



The Palms of the streets and public places are the Date Palm 

 (Phamix dactylifera) and the shorter P. canariensisr The town 

 is noted for its beautiful avenues of Palms, and in the Avenue 

 Gambetta they are intermingled with that graceful Pine-like 

 angiosperm Casuarina tenuissima. In that street there are a 

 number of seedling Casuarina upon the Palms, the two largest 

 being respectively three feet and five feet high. 



As is to be expected, most of the epiphytic plants grow on the 

 lower half of the trees, and sometimes Parietaria ramiflora and 

 Stellaria media on the portions of the roots above ground. The 

 older trunks often have the appearance and colour of rough cork ; 

 and between the remains of the leaf-bases a fibrous material, like 

 decaying cocoanut matting, is often visible. This is apparently 

 derived from scale-like structures between the leaf-stalks. It is 

 this which forms a humus upon which seeds germinate, and it 

 is often aided by accumulations of Pine and Casuarina needles. 

 Doubtless, wind and birds are the chief agencies of dissemination. 

 It may be mentioned incidentally that in November each year 

 the Palms and other trees in the streets of Hyeres have their 

 dead leaves and branches carefully cut off, in order to make 

 them look tidy for the approaching season. 



The Palm most covered with vegetation is one just off the 

 Avenue des lies d'Or. On this tree is a specimen of Pimts 

 halepensis, two feet high (the commonest Pine in the district), 

 three small fig trees, a couple of wheat plants in fruit, and 

 a mass of Sonchus oleraceus, Cotyledon Umbilicus with dead 

 flowering spikes a foot long, Geranium rotimdifolium, Sedum 

 dasyphyllum, and Piptatherum multiflorum, a handsome grass 

 very common in the neighbourhood. On a Date Palm at the 

 entrance to the Hotel des lies d'Or is an Opuntia Ficus-indica, 

 a yard across, springing from a woody stock six inches thick. 

 On another tree in a garden are several specimens of an Agave 

 and a small kind of Cactus. 



* A short avenue of Pritchardia Jilamentosa— Wasldngtonia robusta, near 

 the Jardin d'Acclimatation, has little or no vegetation upon the trees, some of 

 which are 7| feet in circumference. 



