6 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
up a continual rattling as one pushed through the 
interwoven branches. There also grew sensitive 
plants in great variety and abundance ; plants 
allied to our mallows; others to our sweet-peas 
and kidney-beans, and amongst them various 
species of Centrosema, with large white or purple 
flowers more or less orbicular in outline. On the 
ground and over the bushes trailed and twined the 
milky stems of various Convolvulaceae (chiefly 
species of Batatas) and Apocyneae (Echites), the 
former with large funnel-like white, purple, or 
violet flowers, the latter with yellow flowers in the 
form of a bell or trumpet. There also clambered 
by its tendrils Passiflora foetida, Cavan., one of the 
commonest of tropical weeds, and unique in a tribe 
whose flowers exhale such exquisite odours for its 
heavy narcotic smell, quite recalling that of the 
roosting-places of the Urubil or turkey- buzzard, 
whence its Indian name Urubii-muracaja. Herbs 
of humbler growth and less roving habits were 
chiefly Labiates and other kindred plants. 
Sometimes in similar sites Peppers of various 
kinds monopolised the largest share of the soil, 
many of them (species of Artanthe) rising to shrubs 
or even trees, and notable for the numerous rib- 
like veins springing at an acute angle from each 
side of the midrib of their aromatic (or sometimes 
fetid) leaves, and for their minute flowers being 
arranged on tessellated spadices similar to those of 
many Aroids. Other Peppers (species of Pepero- 
mia) looked like minute ferns, as they crept with 
thread-like stems over the trunks of trees, and put 
forth their roundish fleshy leaves mottled with 
green and brown. 
