194 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OP PLANTS. 



some immense Spleenworts, the very largest variety of 

 Asplenium Nidus, with leaves two or three feet long, and 

 broad in proportion.* 



Besides these (all growing together on the same tree) are 

 little species of Brake (Pteri*), exquisite Jungermannice, and 

 Mosses with well developed leaves ; whilst numbers of little 

 Pepper-plants are climbing about the branches. On all sides 

 we see large plants of the Nettle tribe (Urticacea) , whose 

 great leaves covered with white hairs make a beautiful con- 

 trast with the masses of scarlet flowers on some of the sur- 

 rounding trees : such, for instance, as Metrosideros poly- 

 morpha, one of the Myrtle family, with flowers not unlike a 



* The tropical Ferns and Orchises, and many other plants which fix them- 

 selves, like them, on the surface of other bodies, though commonly spoken of 

 as parasites, are not really so ; but are distinguished from them by a very im- 

 portant difference. The true parasite, such for instance as our Misseltoe, 

 sends its roots into the substance of the bark, and that so deeply, that it is 

 closely connected with the woody substance of the supporting plant, and sucks 

 its food from it. The so-called parasites, on the contrary, do not send their 

 roots into the substance of the supporting plant, and therefore can draw no 

 nourishment from it ; plants which grow in this manner are called Epiphytes, 

 in contradistinction to parasites. The so-called parasitical Orchises, and the 

 Pothos plants (a genus of a family called Aroidece, Arum-like plants with 

 immense leaves), are the most common instances of this kind of growth, and 

 are provided with peculiar organs to enable them to imbibe the moisture of 

 the atmosphere, which is, in fact, the food on which they live. 



