158 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
autumnal rains. It was then in its prime, as that 
of the river-margins was in July, August, and 
September. A few of the small trees, such as the 
Anacardium and the Plumiera, flowered more or 
less all the year round ; but the taller trees that 
grew scattered about the campo flowered chiefly 
from July to August. The finest of these were 
two Leguminifers ; the one, Boivdichia pubescens, 
Benth., had bright blue or violet flowers ; the other, 
Lonchocarptts Spruceanus, Benth., had long com- 
pound spikes of red-purple flowers ; both were very 
ornamental, and yet, from growing dispersedly, 
they nowhere produced the effect that a great mass 
of gay colour does, as seen in our fields of flax, 
clover, etc. Vochysia ferruginea, Mart., a very 
handsome tree, bearing spikes of yellow flowers 
which exhaled a most delicious odour, was common 
in the low grounds ; and I saw it again in similar 
sites on the Casiquiari and Orinoco, and in the 
roots of the Peruvian Andes. 
The volcanic hills proved to have a very meagre 
vegetation, although I explored them most sedu- 
lously, and devoted several fatiguing excursions 
to them. Some of the slopes were clad with a 
dense growth of stout reedy grasses, which, together 
with the rough stony ground, made the ascent 
sufficiently painful. Two of these grasses, how- 
ever, were very handsome ; Paspalum pellitum 
from its sharply -folded Iris- like leaves, and P. 
pulchmm, Mart., from its spikelets — closely set on 
six digitate spikes — being each surrounded by a 
row of golden-yellow bristles. Of trees there were 
very few, and those mostly solitary — rarely gathered 
into groves. One of them was a Euphorbiad, Mabea 
