SKETCHES OF WILD ORCHIDS IN GUIANA. 



51 



feathered crowns of which rise in a wild tangle to a height of 

 about 20 feet above the water level. On these stems, among 

 the flattened grey thorns which thickly clothe them, fully 

 exposed to direct sunlight at midday from overhead, cling loose 

 masses of Bifrenaria longicomis, Lindl. Through the Palm 

 stems, something white, a little way in the swamp, attracts the 

 eye ; and a second look discloses that this is the white flower of 

 Aganisia pulchella, which in some places, hardly ever seen by 

 human eye, creeps up many of the Palm stems. 



Occasionally, very occasionally, in that vast stretch of forest 

 and creek there are open places — 11 wet savannahs " they are 

 called — where the creeks wander for a time no longer under the 

 trees, but through great water meadows of long grass, over 

 which in the wet season the water spreads and makes a lake. 

 In such places, breaking the grass stretches, are many clumps 

 of low bushes and far-reaching groups of arborescent Aroids 

 (Montrichardia). On these bushes, almost weighing them 

 down, are vast masses of an Epidendrum (E. oncidioides), with 

 thickly clustering, very upright pseudo -bulbs, and narrow, very 

 erect, and stiff leaves. The innumerable straw-coloured flowers 

 of this Epidendntm, tossed up into the air on very long flower- 

 stalks, sometimes in such profusion as almost to dim the light, 

 fill the air with a scent as of newly flowering Hawthorn. 

 Thickets of this Orchid thus seen in all the supreme beauty and 

 lightness which come to them in the flowering season make a 

 picture which does indeed brighten all after -thought. Nor is 

 this the only, perhaps not even the most striking, of the 

 Orchids of such places. From innumerable of the smaller 

 branches of the bushes, and from many of the woody aroid stems, 

 hang loose clusters of Ionopsis paniculata with its light clouds 

 of pale violet-coloured flowerets, apparently hardly held together 

 by anything substantial enough to be called a stalk. 



Again in other places is there very occasionally open country, 

 but this open country is dry. There reefs of almost pure sand, 

 so whitened by the tropical sun as to dazzle the eye, are broken 

 by coppices and clumps of low-growing gnarled trees and a few 

 bushes, all of special kinds. Such places also have their special 

 Orchids. Up the tree trunks grows, often in great abundance, 

 a very small brown-leaved and stemmed Vanilla, with beautiful 

 little flowers of almost pure white. On the ground, where the 



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