TYPES OF FOLIAGE. 



33 



new trunk, more or less furrowed and buttressed, but 

 exhibiting no other marks of its exceptional origin. 

 Aerial-rooted forest-trees — like that figured in my 

 Malay Archipelago (vol. i. p. 131) — and tlie equally 

 remarkable fig-trees of various species, whose trunks are 

 formed by a miniature forest of aerial roots, sometimes 

 separate, sometimes matted together, are characteristic of 

 the Eastern tropics, but appear to be rare or altogether 

 unknown in America, and can therefore hardly be in- 

 cluded among the general characteristics of the equatorial 

 zone. 



Besides the varieties of form, however, the tree-trunks 

 of these forests present many peculiarities of colour and 

 texture. The majority are rather smooth-barked, and 

 many are of peculiar whitish, green, yellowish, or brown 

 colours, or occasionally nearly black. Some are perfectly 

 smooth, others deeply cracked and furrowed, while in a 

 considerable number the bark splits ofi" in flakes or hangs 

 down in long fibrous ribands. Spined or prickly trunks 

 (except of palms) are rare in the damp equatorial forests. 

 Turning our gaze upwards from the stems to the foliage, 

 we find two types of leaf not common in the temperate 

 zone, although the great mass of the trees ofler nothing 

 very remarkable in this respect. First, we have many 

 trees with large, thick, and glossy leaves, like those of 

 the cherry-laurel or the magnolia, but even larger, 

 smoother, and more symmetrical. The leaves of the 

 Asiatic caoutchouc-tree (Ficus elastica), so often culti- 

 vated in houses, is a type of this class, which has a very 

 fine efiect among the more ordinary-looking foliage. 

 Contrasted with this is the fine pinnate foliage of some 

 of the largest forest-trees which, seen far aloft against 



