184 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OP PLANTS. 



our gardens, though some of them are rather larger. A 

 family of plants, called Melastomacete, may be mentioned 

 with them, which show a pretty contrast of colour between 

 the clusters of little purple corollas and the yellow anthers, 

 which in this flower are very large and protrude beyond 

 the petals. Climbing over the Tree-ferns grow the twining 

 Pepper-plants (Piperacete) , and in most parts of this zone 

 the Orchis tribe is to be met with in all its variety. 



Perhaps an introduction to some of the many distinguished 

 foreigners whom we shall now so often meet may be as well, 

 before we attempt to take a step in the strange lands we 

 are about to explore. The Palms are first in dignity, which 

 we shall now find everywhere, increasing in beauty the 

 nearer we approach the Equator. Their prevailing form is 

 a straight and unbranched stem, with an immense tuft of 

 gigantic leaves at the top, in some spreading horizontally, 

 in others shooting up perpendicularly, or in others again 

 drooping. " Some of them attain the most extraordinary 

 height, and shoot up far above the loftiest tropical forests : 

 Palms seventy, eighty, and a hundred feet high are not un- 

 frequent." The species called the Wax-palm, which grows 

 on the Andes of Quindiu, " reaches the height of a hundred 

 and sixty and a hundred and eighty feet." But, as we 



