484 ELUEFIELDS PEAKS. 



high woods that bordered the shore. Bulbs of Epid. 

 fragrans and oiBrassia caudata that had been brought 

 from the mountain in the dry weather, and planted 

 out in the open air, blossomed, the former at the 

 beginning, the latter towards the end, of May. About 

 the middle of the same month, in the tall, dark, and 

 humid woods of Shrewsbury, about halfway up the 

 mountains of St. Elizabeth's, I saw several racemes 

 of a beautiful lonopsis* in rich bloom. The irregular 

 tubei'-like bulbs of that terrestrial Orchid, with a 

 Bletia-like habit, which grows abundantly in the 

 dense bush on the summits of the Bluefields Peaks, 

 had thrown out their tall but not very inviting pani- 

 cles of flower through the month of June. The rains 

 were at that time descending copiously, and continued 

 to fall until the middle of August ; about which 

 time I met with EjJid. fuscatum in blossom in the 

 tall woods of Basin Spring, a little lower elevation 

 than Bluefields Mountain. About this time also the 

 singularly fringed blossom appeared on Epid. ciliare, 

 which had hitherto displayed only its long spindle- 

 shaped bulbs, each crowned with its pair of leathery 

 leaves. Soon afterwards the autumnal drought com- 

 menced, but I have no further record of the flowering 

 of Orchidece. 



If this irregularity of flowering, or rather apparent 

 independence of seasonal rain, had been confined to 

 the recesses of the mountain woods, it would not have 

 been surprising, since there actual dryness seems un- 

 known. On the summits of Bluefields Peaks, and 



* Swartz, if I mistake not, describes lonopsis as affecting the driest 

 open pastures. 



