General 



growth and patiently await the fall of some venerable 

 forest giant which will give them the light and air which 

 they earnestly desire. 



On the ground there may be a fairly close carpet of 

 bulbs or ferns, or herbaceous plants. So that even of 

 the flowering kinds there are four more or less distinct 

 " storeys " or surfaces of green leaves. 



But in such a jungle as this there are not only flowers, 

 but also ferns, mosses, liverworts, fungi, bacteria, and 

 algae. It is often the case that every branch or fallen 

 trunk is entirely concealed by a lovely living cushion of 

 branching feathery mosses mixed with delicate-stemmed 

 liverworts. In amongst the moss one sees sometimes 

 the flowers of an orchid, or more often the graceful 

 rosettes of ferns. 



The latter are common ; sometimes as tree-ferns they 

 form part of the arboreal vegetation, but more usually 

 they are perched in the fork of some great branch or 

 grow in rows along a horizontal one. There are of 

 course many other kinds of "epiphytes" (epi \\ponphyte 

 plant ; this means growing upon another plant instead 

 of on the ground). 



Curious barred Bromeliads, many Orchids, Pipers, 

 Peperomias and others are particularly partial to this 

 sort of existence. 



Nor are algre at all rare, for many parasitic kinds 

 grow upon the leaves of trees or on the soil under 

 the foliage, or perhaps amongst the mosses on the 

 branches which are rapidly decaying and crumbling 

 away through the attack of many sorts of fungi and 

 bacteria. 



Such a jungle with four distinct and separate foliage 

 layers or green leaf-surfaces, with its lianas, epiphytes, 

 mosses and the like, is perhaps the culminating and 

 highest effort of modern vegetation. The amount of 



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