1848.] 
CLIMBING PLANTS. 
35 
yellow convolvulus were now plentiful ; the purple and 
yellow trumpet-flowers were still among the most showy; 
and some noble thick-leaved climbers mounted to the 
tops of trees, and sent aloft bright spikes of scarlet 
flowers. Among the plants not in flower, the twin -leaved 
BauJiinias of various forms were most frequently noticed. 
The species are very numerous : some are shrubs, others 
delicate climbers, and one is the most extraordinary 
among the extraordinary climbers of the forest, its broad 
flattened woody stems being twisted in and out in a 
most singular manner, mounting to the summits of the 
very loftiest forest-trees, and hanging from their branches 
in gigantic festoons, many hundred feet in length. A 
handsome pink and white Clusia was now abundant, 
with large shining leaves, and flowers having a powerful 
and very fragrant odour. It grows not only as a good- 
sized tree out of the ground, but is also parasitical on 
almost every other forest-tree. Its large round whitish 
fruits are called cebola braba’’ (wild onion), by the 
natives, and are much eaten by birds, which thus proba- 
bly convey the seeds into the forks of lofty trees, where 
it seems most readily to take root in any little decaying 
vegetable matter, dung of birds, etc., that may be there; 
and when it arrives at such a size as to require more 
nourishment than it can there obtain, it sends down long 
shoots to the ground, which take root, and grow into a 
new stem. At Nazare there is a tree by the road-side, 
out of the fork of which grows a large Mucuja palm, 
and on the palm are three or four young Clusia trees, 
which no doubt have, or will have, Orcliidece and ferns 
again growing upon them. A few forest-trees were also 
D 2 
