MAUVE, GREEN AND GREY 213 



mauve in its modesty. It is not common enough to 

 possess a familiar name, but botanists have called it Baea 

 hygroscopica, for it is always found near water, invariably 

 pure, cool, fern-filtered mountain water. From the damp 

 rock the roots of the plant, matted and interwoven, may 

 be peeled off in a thin layer, for the plant is epiphytical, 

 depending as much upon heat, moisture and light as on 

 any constituents of the soil for sustenance. When the 

 season is exceptionally dry, the thick, soft wrinkled leaves 

 become parched and shrivelled ; but a shower restores 

 their vigour and lovely, tender green, and fresh flowers 

 slightly resembling the violet, but borne on scapes 6 or 

 8 inches long, bloom within a few hours of the revivifica- 

 tion of the plant. In moist seasons the plant, true to its 

 hygrometic character, continuously blooms, and while it 

 braves the hottest sun on the bare places of the burning 

 rock as long as its roots find moist spots, it will also be 

 found in the shade below, where the flowers are richer in 

 colour, more of purple than mauve, and, rarely, pure white. 

 Generally the plant depends upon others or cracks or crevices 

 in rock for foothold. It shares the grasp the spongy moss 

 may take on the slippery surface, or when the root, thin 

 as whipcord, of a certain fig-tree has crept across the face of 

 the grey rock forming a ridge or barricade against which 

 decayed vegetation accumulates, there the Baea flourishes, 

 displaying an indeterminate line of mauve flowers above 

 oval, crimpled leaves. Mauve, green and grey — the mauve 

 of the Victorian age, the green of the cowslip, the grey of 

 glistering, weathering granite. 



The whole of the rock face is a study. Grasping with 

 greedy white talons a piece of decaying wood is one of the 

 prettiest of the more common orchids, Dendrobium smiliae 

 which produces short spikes of waxy flowers, pink tipped 

 with green ; the creeping, sweet-scented, Bulbophyllum 

 Baileyi, with greenish-yellow flowers spotted with purple, and 

 the commonest of the dendrobiums [undulatum) revel here. 



The edge of the precipice looks over a tangle of jungle 

 down upon the top of a giant milkwood tree {Alstonia 



