440 



circumstance I mention, because the genera nas- 

 tus and bambusa had before been very badly dis- 

 tinguished, and nothing is more rare in the New 

 World, than to see these gigantic gramina in 

 flower. Mr. Mutis herbalised during twenty, 

 years in a country, where the bambusa guadua 

 forms marshy forests several leagues broad, 

 without having ever been able to procure the 

 flowers. We sent that learned naturalist the 

 first ears of bambusa from the temperate vallies 

 of Popayan. From what cause do the parts of 

 fructification develope themselves so rarely in a 

 plant that is indigenous, and that vegetates with 

 such extraordinary vigor, from the level of the 

 ocean to that of nine hundred toises, that is to 

 a subalpine region, the climate of which, be- 

 tween the tropics, resembles that of the south 

 of Spain ? The bambusa latifolia seems to be 

 peculiar to the basins of the Upper Oroonoko, 

 the Cassiquiare, and the Amazon ; it is a social 

 plant, like all the gramina of the family of the 

 nastoides* ; but in that part of Spanish Guy- 

 ana which we traversed it does not form those 



* See for the natural history of this family my work de 

 Distribut. geogr. Plant., p. 206 — 214. With the bambusa 

 latifolia, which Mr, Bonpland has described and drawn in 

 our Equinoxial Plants, vol. i, p. (58, the pariana campestris, 

 dufourea glabra, and some fine species of the arborescent 

 hypericum, grow on the banks of the Cassiquiajre. 



