82 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



we poured the catch into some convenient flat receptacle 

 and sorted out the insects from the grass seeds and other 

 vegetable debris. Of course all sorts of small insects beside 

 microscopic flies were gathered, in such sweepings, and look- 

 ing them over gives a faint idea of the astounding variety 

 of shapes and colors existing among insects less than an 

 eighth of an inch in length. In this sort of collecting we ob- 

 tained a really wonderful number of genera and species. 



The common plants, wild flowers and weeds around Car- 

 tage were a constant joy to us, they were so numerous and 

 so beautiful. Some showed no periodicity at all that we 

 could observe, being in bloom every month in the year. 

 Among these were the lantanas {Lantana camara), the pretty 

 double wild roses, the "Hoja del Aire" {Bryophyllum caly- 

 cinum), the "Guijarro" {Stemmadenia bignonicB flora), the 

 common red and yellow milkweed or "Viborrano" {As- 

 clepias curassavica) the yellow Bidens {B. pilosa) and the 

 showy yellow "Clavel del Monte" {Jusswa sp.). Others 

 were rarely without a few flowers but produced the great 

 mass of their blooms at one time. Such were the poro and 

 the magnificent "Reine de la Noche" {Datura arhorea). 



The poro {Erythrina corallodendron and costaricensis) is 

 a tree much used as a "living fence," the trunks a foot or 

 less apart and connected by three or four strands of barbed 

 wire. It endures an indefinite amount of pruning and 

 branches out again with great rapidity. Whether pruned 

 in the fence-row or allowed to grow more naturally in the 

 cafetales, where it is sometimes planted for shade, the poro 

 is a straggling tree that seems never to have made up its 

 mind whether it will really flower or not. The ternate leaves 

 are large and glossy, the leaflets much like the leaves of a 

 balsam poplar. The papilionaceous flowers are a brilliant 

 beautiful red, the keel enormously elongated (two to three 

 inches long) while the other petals are extremely reduced. 



