178 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



mark for us. Noted on our June and August visits, the nest 

 at the end of September was still the home of an active 

 colony of wasps. 



On September 29 we gathered, along the track, some 

 flower-clusters of a leguminous vine, the "Ojo de buey'* 

 {Mucuna mutisiana) which was then in full bloom. The 

 vine clambers high over trees and rocks, dangling its in- 

 florescences like plummets at the end of thread-like peduncles 

 two to three feet long. We had noted these inflorescences 

 on earlier visits when they were younger and the peduncles 

 consequently shorter. The papilionaceous flowers are waxy, 

 greenish-white in color and about two inches long, with a 

 keel very long in proportion to the standard. The pedicels 

 are about the length of the flowers, which are arranged radi- 

 ally owing to the crowding of all the flowers into the last 

 inch or two of the peduncle. Such an inflorescence may be 

 eight or nine inches in diameter, and presents a most curious 

 appearance as it sways in the breeze or hangs motionless 

 in some breathless little nook. The flowers are followed 

 by large flat pods eight to ten inches long and almost two 

 inches wide. These when ripe open along both sutures 

 disclosing a few large round flat beans nearly an inch and a 

 half in diameter, which adhere alternately to one or the other 

 valve. To their shape and rich black color the plant owes 

 its popular name of "Ojo de buey" — Eye of the ox. 



Numerous flowers grew along the track. In October 

 we saw blooming Castilleja communis^ much less showy 

 than the C. irazuensis we found in the crater of Irazu, a pas- 

 sion flower with curiously truncated leaves {Passiflora 

 lunata) and the red-flowered Russelia sarmentosa. In early 

 December the most abundant wild flowers here were the red- 

 flowered Isoloma zvagneri, whose blossoms suggest those of 

 our monkey-flowers (Mimulus), Browallia deniissa, a small 

 Solanaceous plant with blue flowers, and a yellow-flowered 



