Wild Flowers of Georgetown. 343 



speciosa), known as massowah grass — said to be a corrup- 

 tion of Missouri grass — and as chinee-grass in the 

 Canje creek, where of late years its floating masses 

 block the wide water-way, completely hiding the 

 water, for considerable distances in certain parts; 

 as some of us know to our cost, having had per- 

 force to lie-to in it, the helpless and sleepless prey 

 of mosquitoes and insects innumerable, both small 

 and great beasts, through the long hours of a tropical 

 night. Another common native kind, the lesser ponte- 

 deria (Eichornia asurea), with shorter, less showy heads, 

 and no yellow in the flowers, may be found in various 

 trenches round the town and on the second lake at the 

 Gardens ; and near it is established the purple ponte- 

 deria, (Eichornia tricolor), with loose spreading racemes 

 of smaller violet flowers, with two patches of yellow on 

 the upper flower-leaf. 



Most of the other ornamental flowers in these lakes 

 are introduced from various countries ; but we may 

 notice an indigenous plant, self-introduced, in the rather 

 large and handsome primrose-yellow three-petalled 

 flowers of the yellow water plantain or water primrose 

 (Hydrocleis Humboldtianum) \ it is abundant among the 

 sacred lotuses on the first lake, and in the pool in the 

 "zoo," and not uncommon in our trenches, as for in- 

 stance in front of Ruimveldt, but can only be seen 

 blooming in the morning hours. A litttle trench-plant 

 named after the same great traveller (Limnantlicmum 

 Humboldtianum)^ with flowers easily distinguished by 

 their five distinctly fringed white petals, may often be 

 found among it. 



As light and air are not so lavishly supplied under 



