32 



DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS. 



extremely abundant; especially, certain shrubs, growing in the shade 

 and around the margin of the forest, as Chiococca, P»ijc]iotria, Pali- 

 courea, Cepliaelis, Faramea, Exostemma, and others. Many of the spe- 

 cies were ornamental; some from their flowers, others from their ex- 

 panding colored calyces, others from their sanguineous branching 

 peduncles, others from their foliage, and others again from the bril- 

 liant hue of their ripe fruit. One species presented a mode of growth 

 with which I afterwards became familiar in moist Tropical woods; a 

 shrub, at least in its slender stem, which is simple and perfectly 

 upright for twenty feet or more, and terminates in a palm-like crown 

 of large leaves, each of them nearly a yard in length ; or in instances 

 where one or two branches are given out, these keep close together 

 perfectly upright, and each terminates in a separate crown of leaves. 

 Only one example of a Rubiaceous tree was met with, a Qenipa, forty 

 feet high, with a spreading summit; in the foliage and large fruit 

 resembling and at first mistaken for a tree of the Clusia Tribe. Hum- 

 ble herbaceous Rubiaceas were frequent in long-established clearings ; 

 and twining species were also met with, some herbaceous and others 

 woody. Throughout tlie Family there was much variety in the color 

 of the flowers, but most of the genera met with were observed to be 

 white-flowered. 



4. Myrtacece. In very great variety ; some of them shrubs more or 

 less arborescent, and others lofty trees entering largely into the com- 

 position of the forest. One of these forest-trees was observed to bear 

 flowers not at the ends of the branches, but on tlie bark of the trunk. 

 A roundish-leaved Calyptrantlies ?, growing along the sea-coast, proved 

 remarkable for the brittleness of its leaves and other herbaceous parts, 

 the flowers, too, falling at the slightest touch. A delicate shrubby 

 Mjjrtus ? was observed to have its small leaves all directed obliquely 

 in the same plane, a very striking character in a living plant. But 

 throughout the Brazilian MyrtaceaB the flowers were observed to be 

 normal, and in almost every instance white; none of them presenting 

 the slightest approach to the apetalous and micropetalous long-sta- 

 mened set of species found in Australia and the surrounding countries. 



5. GlumacecB, including grasses or Gramineous plants and the Cy- 

 peracese. The reedy Bcuiihusece have been already noticed : and some 

 of the normal grasses were observed to imitate them in habit, 

 ascending among bushes by giving out successive spreading whorls 

 of stem-like branches ; one of the results of the vegetative process 



