102 TROPICAL PLANTS 



mimosas, the large-leafed bananas, and so many other beautiful 

 forms of vegetation alien to our cold and variable clime. While 

 our trees are but sparingly clad with scanty lichens and mosses, 

 they are there covered with stately bromelias and wondrous 

 orchids. Sweet-smelling vanillas and passifloras wind round 

 the giants of the forest, and large flowers break forth from their 

 rough bark, or even from their very roots. 



"The tropical trees," says Humboldt, "are endowed with 

 richer juices, ornamented with a fresher green, and decked with 

 larger and more lustrous leaves than those of the more northerly 

 regions. Social plants, which render European vegetation so 

 monotonous, are but rarely found within the tropics. Trees, 

 nearly twice as high as our oaks, there glow with blossoms large 

 and magnificent as those of our lilies. On the shady banks of 

 the Magdalena river, in South America, grows a climbing 

 Aristolochia, whose flower, of a circumference of four feet, the 

 children, while playing, sometimes wear as a helmet ; and in 

 the Indian Archipelago the blossom of the Kafflesia measures 

 three feet in diameter, and weighs more than fourteen pounds. 



The number of known plants is estimated at about 200,000, 

 and the greater part of this vast multitude of species belongs to 

 the torrid zone. But if we consider how very imperfectly these 

 sunny regions have as yet been explored, — that in South America 

 enormous forest lands and river basins have never yet been 

 visited by a naturalist, — that the vegetation of the greater part of 

 Central Africa is still completely hidden in mystery, — that no 

 botanist has ever yet penetrated into the interior of Madagascar, 

 Borneo, New Gruinea, South-Western China, and Ultra-Gran- 

 getic India, — and that, moreover, many of the countries visited 

 by travellers have been but very superficially and hastily ex- 

 amined, — we may well doubt whether even one fourth part of the 

 tropical plants is actually known to science. What a vast field 

 for future naturalists! What prospects for the trade and in- 

 dustry of future generations ! 



After these general remarks on the variety and exuberance 

 of tropical vegetation, I shall now briefly review those plants 

 which, by their enormous size, their singularity of form, or 

 their frequency in the landscape, chiefly characterise the various 

 regions of the torrid zone in different parts of the globe. 



The African Baobab, or monkey-bread tree (Adansonm 



