80 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



glabrous and more or less glossy, and they never become wet on the 

 surface, strongly as the rain may pour. I think, however, I have noticed 

 sometimes species which do not show this peculiarity. 



Although the foliage, as a rule, is perennial, there are species of 

 Lecythis, Sapium, Vitex, and some others, absolutely deprived of leaves 

 at certain periods. 



An interesting peculiarity of the rain forest is the frequence of cauli- 

 florous trees, that is, of trees which produce their flowers on the old 

 wood of the trunk and larger limbs. Cacao tree is a classical case. In 

 the Panama forests there are several species of the same genus, Theo- 

 broma, with the same character, but also at least two species, one of 

 which has been recently separated as a new genus (and is seen only 

 in a state of semi-cultivation), which produce flowers both on old wood 

 and slender branchlets, or only on the latter. Other cauliflorous species 

 are the beautiful Brownea macrophylla, with heavy hanging clusters 

 of purple flowers surrounded with broad scarlet bracts, Grias fendleri, 

 discovered first by Fendler in the forest at the mouth of the Chagres 

 River and found again by myself in Darien. In Gustavia nana a 

 reduced raceme of large pink flowers appears on the trunk just above 

 the ground; in G. superba, which belongs to another formation, nu- 

 merous flowers, nearly two inches in diameter, cover the terminal part 

 of the old wood, just under the large fasciculate leaves. In Quassia 

 amara and Simaba cedron, as well as in several species of Talisia, 

 slender racemes issue also from the old wood just beneath the bunched 

 leaves. It also seems to me that the large floriferous branchlets of the 

 several species of cannon-ball trees (Couroupita) should also be con- 

 sidered as belonging to cauliflorous species, this contrary to the opinion 

 of several ecologists of authority ; these branchlets issue from the trunk, 

 they are leafless, and their status is evidently the same as that of any 

 smaller inflorescence. 



Another feature which is not special, but frequent in trees of the 

 rain-forest, is the presence at the base of their trunks of plank-but- 

 tresses, which form the origin of the lateral roots and radiate around 

 the trunk in variable numbers. These planks are 2 to 3 m. high and 

 broad in certain giant fig-trees, and then the interval between them need 

 only be roofed to form a very comfortable and well sheltered cell. In 

 Sterculia they are equally high, but narrower ; in Sloanea they are low 

 and broad ; in Dimorphandra they form an intricate wood-work ; in 

 Mimusops they are rounded and stout. Many species of trees can be 

 distinguished by the appearance of their buttresses, and it seems that 



