20 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
the foliage of a grove of gregarious palms, such 
as the Piassaba and the great Carana, is usually 
depressed below the top of the surrounding forest/ 
Buttresses 
A brief sketch of the most marked types of 
vegetation observed at Tauaii, Caripi, and Para 
may perhaps be found interesting, and will serve 
as a standard of comparison in treating of the 
aspects of nature in other regions. To begin 
with the forest trees. Almost the first thing that 
strikes the observer is the enormous dilatation at 
the base of many of the trunks, in the shape of 
broad, flat, subtending buttresses, more or less 
triangular in outline, and rarely exceeding 6 
inches in thickness, set around each trunk to the 
number of from four to ten. These buttresses 
are really exserted roots, or, as the Indians cor- 
rectly call them, sapopemas {sdpo, a root ; pdma, 
flat) ; and among European trees the lime perhaps 
shows them most distinctly, but on a vastly smaller 
scale than in many Amazon trees, where they often 
^ In faithfully recording my own experience, I have no thought of impugn- 
ing the testimony of other, and no doubt equally conscientious, observers. 
Humboldt and Bonpland assure us that they saw Wax palms ( Ceroxylon andicola) 
1 80 feet high in the cool forests of the Andes of New Grenada, and therefore, 
no doubt, surpassing every other tree in their neighbourhood. Dampier, in his 
graphic account of Campeachy, says : "As the [Silk] Cotton is the biggest tree 
in the woods, so the Cabbage tree [or palm] is the tallest ; the body is not very 
big, but very high and strait. I have measured one in the Bay of Campeachy 
120 feet long as it lay on the ground, and there are some much higher, . . . 
Those trees appear very pleasant, and they beautify the whole wood, spreading 
their green branches above all other trees " ( Travels, i. p. 165). Here he plainly 
speaks of the appearance of the forest from the sea, and his testimony does not 
contradict my own ; for I concede that the low forest, such as usually grows 
at the swampy head of bays, and along inundated river -margins, is overtopped 
by Cocos, Mauritias, and other maritime and riparial palms. 
