AFRO-INDIAN REGIONS. 



257 



Throughout the Interior, the forest appeared to have been very 

 generally stripped of large trees ; or perhaps, these were never abun- 

 dant. There was certainly very little variety : the largest of those 

 clearly indigenous being the apapi,'' of the size of an oak. and 

 having pinnate leaves : but a Coffeaceous tree, with beautiful, dark- 

 green, shining foliage, was sometimes fifty feet high, and the trunk 

 two and a half feet in diameter; a spreading Clusia-Uke tree, exceeded 

 forty feet in height; a i?/rf<s, growing in tracts or scattered groves, 

 occasionally approached these dimensions; and an undetermined genus 

 (perhaps a Ficus) seemed to deserve a place among trees, although 

 having instead of a solid trunk only intertwined and tangled roots, 

 exposed to the height of ten feet when standing isolated, or when 

 resting against the face of precipices, to that of thirty feet. 



Tree-ferm constitute a principal ornament of the Interior forest; their 

 crowns in looking downwards from the mountain-ridges, being every- 

 where intermingled. Of three species : the most frequent, was some- 

 times more than thirty feet high ; another, the Angiopteris evecta, was 

 less prominent in the distant landscape from being low, although its 

 wide-spreading fronds radiated in some instances eighteen feet from 

 the central trunk. 



The trunks and branches of the older forest-trees, seldom free from 

 epidendric plants, were sometimes almost clothed with them : princi- 

 pally epidendric ferns; as tufts of the grass-like fronds of Vittaria, 

 hanging down five or six feet ; Op1iio(jlossimi pendidum^ of almost equal 

 length; a pendulous Psdotum ; and three or four epide^uJric Lijcopo- 

 diams. But intermingled, a Peperomla was frequent ; the Sciojjhda, 

 in some instances clearly epidendric; and less frequent than along the 

 coast, a few epndendric Orchidacece. Also, minor Cryptogamous plants 

 growing on the bark of trees, as Hijmenoj^lnjllum and Trichomanes ; 

 several fine Lichens ; and a variety of Mosses and Hepaticce, the latter 

 sometimes overrunning living leaves. — Of real parasitic j>lants, coming 

 out of the branches of trees : an Arceufhobimn, or jointed aphyllous 

 Viscum, was often met with in the Interior; the Lomnthns, with its 

 scarlet flowers, seeming rare. 



Woody Vines proved rare in the mountain forest; but among the 

 herbaceous kinds, were two ornamental twiniiKj ferns. Shrubs, on 

 the other hand, were abundant and in great variety ; many of them 

 large and arborescent; a few species ornamental, the remainder having 

 inconspicuous flowers. The most frequent shrubs were Urticew; and 



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