24 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
Aerial Roots 
In Moraceae, especially in the parasitic(or, properly 
speaking, epiphytal) fig trees, we have another type 
of sapopemas, whose origin is plain enough. The 
excrement of a bird, containing seeds of figs on 
which it has fed, falls on the fork of a tree, or even 
on the bare trunk or branches, to which it adheres ; 
there a seed germinates, and as its stem grows 
upwards, its root, in the form of a broad plate — 
soon enlarging into a sheath, if the mother tree 
be slender — pushes downwards, diverging a little 
from the vertical on all sides, and dividing into a 
number of forks, seeks the ground. If the height 
be great, the forking is repeated several times, 
giving the appearance of so many pairs of maraud- 
ing legs descending from the upper part of a 
habitation, to which they had gained access one 
does not at first see how, and feeling for the ground 
with their toes. Having reached the ground, they 
plunge therein, increase rapidly in breadth, by the 
addition of matter to their outer edge, but scarcely 
at all in thickness, so as to form plank-like but- 
tresses, and the parasite having thus gained an 
independent footing, straddles over the too often 
lifeless trunk of the friend whom he has crushed to 
death in his embrace, when his support is no longer 
needed. In both the eastern and western roots 
of the Andes, the trees which have the largest 
sapopemas are mostly figs. In the plain of Guaya- 
quil, figs are the giants of the forest ; and it is 
notable that when they grow upon any exogenous 
tree, they soon squeeze it to death ; but if on a 
