288 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 



CHAP. 



3000 feet, and extends thence to the very snow-line, going through 

 more phases in external appearance than I know in any other 

 genus. 



Composite, 3. So long as I herborised only in the plains, I 

 could never understand how Humboldt had assigned so large a 

 proportion of equinoctial vegetation to Composite, for, from the 

 mouth of the Amazon to the cataracts of the Orinoco and the foot 

 of the Andes, with the exception of a few scandent Vernoniae and 

 Mikaniae, and of a few herbs on inundated beaches of the rivers, 

 the species of Composite that exist are weeds, common to many 

 parts of tropical America, nor did I meet with more than one 

 arborescent Composita ( Vernonia polycephala, DC.) in the whole 

 of that immense area. But in ascending the Andes, from 1200 

 feet upwards, Composita? increase in number and variety at every 

 step, and include many arborescent species. About midway of 

 the wooded region, and especially in places where the trees form 

 scattered groves rather than continuous woods, Compositae are 

 more abundant than any other family, both as trees and woody 

 twiners, and in the latter form extend nearly to the limit of 

 arborescent vegetation, especially as species of the fine genus 

 Mutisia ; while on the frigid paramos no frutescent plants ascend 

 higher than the Chuquiraguas and Loricarias, and as alpine herbs, 

 the Achyrophori, Werneriae, etc., reach the very snow-line. In 

 the Red Bark woods Composite are plentiful, and I should esti- 

 mate the number of species at near 50. The trees of this order 

 are chiefly Vernoniae, and they abound most in deserted clearings. 

 During my stay, a plot was again brought under cultivation which 

 had remained desert for twelve years, during which period it had 

 become so densely and equably clad with a Vernonia, whose 

 slender white stems had reached a height of 40 feet, that at a 

 distance it looked like a plantation. Many of the woody twiners 

 are Compositae, chiefly Senecionidae, and as herbaceous or suffruti- 

 cose twiners there are several Mikaniae. The young shoots of a 

 species of Mikania bear very large cordate leaves, usually white 

 over the veins and purple or violet on the whole under-surface. 

 . . . Among shrubby Compositas I noted some Eupatoria and 

 two Baccharides, but no Barnadesia ; nor among herbs any 

 Gnaphalium, although on the eastern side of the Cordillera the 

 two latter genera descend nearly to 3000 feet. Tessaria legitima, 

 DC., is abundant by the Rio San Antonio. I have come on 

 this tree in the roots of the Cordillera on both sides, by all the 

 streams which have open gravelly or sandy beaches laid under 

 water by occasional or periodical floods. 



Apocynetz, 2. One Peschiera and one Echites. This order 

 rarely ascends up out of the hot region in the Andes, and in the 

 temperate region I have seen only a single species. 



