(144) 
In compartment 4 is the collection of the pineapple 
family. These are mostly plants which live on the trunks 
and branches of trees in tropical forests, and are there- 
fore called epiphytes, signifying plants growing upon 
other plants; many of them are exceedingly beautiful 
in foliage and in flower; the so-called Florida moss, or 
Spanish moss, clothes the trees of the live-oaks in the 
southern Atlantic States, and is not a moss at all, but a 
plant bearing small flowers which show its relationship 
to others of this family. The pineapple itself, doubtless 
the most familiar member of this group, has been culti- 
vated in tropical regions for an indefinite period for fruit, 
and is not certainly known in the wild state; the pineapple 
fruit is the ripened bunch of flowers which forms at the 
top of the stem; the plant is propagated by cutting off the 
tuft of leaves, which is found on the top of the fruit, and 
by suckers which sprout from the side of the plant near the 
ground; it is an exception to the tree-loving habit of most of 
the family, in growing on the ground, and is cultivated in 
the Bahamas and on the Florida Keys, often in very rocky 
soil. One of the very spiny-leaved species, Bromelia 
Pinguin, is widely utilized as a hedge plant in the West 
Indies. Other genera to be found here are: Tillandsia 
and Vriesia, in many species; Guzmania; Aechmea; Puit- 
cairnia; Hohenbergia; Cryptanthus; and Buillbergia. 
n compartment B are those which require very humid 
and hot conditions for their successful cultivation; such 
a house is called an East Indian or stove house. Here the 
larger and more interesting of the genera represented are: 
Catasetum, of American distribution; Dendrobium, a large 
group of the Old World; Coelogyne, of large representation, 
also in the Old World; Paphiopedilum, the Venus-slipper, 
an Old World representative of the group containing our 
lady-slippers, Cypripedium; Peristeria elata, of Panama, 
the Holy Ghost or dove orchid; Vanda, widely distributed 
in the East Indies and Malay Archipelago, many of them 
with large and showy, often sweet-scented, flowers; An- 
