certain Tropical Trees. 89 
This spreading habit is markedly characteristic of Brownea 
grandiceps, Brownea coccinea and other species, of Saraca 
indica , Cynometra ramiflora , and of Humboldtia laurifolia. 
The low spreading habit is due to, or at all events is 
associated with, the fact that these trees, with possibly one 
exception, are shade-loving. According to Kurz both Ant- 
her stia nobilis and Saraca indica are shade-loving trees h 
I have been assured that the species of Brownea common to 
Venezuela grow deep in the jungles, in which case these too 
(see later) must be shade-loving plants. Trimen 2 gives the 
following characters which point toward similar conclusions 
in other cases : thus Calophyllum bracteatum , ‘ moist, low 
country in wet forests : 5 Humboldtia laurifolia , f damp places 
in forests, moist, low country.’ 
The doubtful case is Cynometra ramiflora , which, according 
to Kurz, is a light-loving tree, though Trimen gives its habitat 
as forests of low country in dry regions. The latter authority 
informs me that it is more than probable that two species are 
confounded in Cynometra ramiflora , so that the tree with 
hanging foliage may after all be only an apparent exception 
to the general rule that these trees are shade-lovers. 
All the trees above enumerated, with one possible exception 
already noted, are small much-spreading and branching forest- 
trees, which show a marked preference for the shade. 
Now, of all trees growing in forests, those which seek such 
sheltered positions — which grow under the shadow of loftier 
trees, whose branches, together with the many climbers there- 
on, make, in a tropical jungle, such a tangled mass of vegeta- 
tion — are the very last to require special protection against 
the force of falling rain. Fall the tropic rain never so heavily, 
its force is spent, broken by the roofing masses of foliage, 
before it arrives at this arboreal undergrowth. Hence Stahl’s 
view that the hanging branches are an adaptation against the 
damaging, rupturing effects of heavy rain, cannot, if acceptance 
be given to the above arguments and observations, be main- 
1 Loc. cit., Vol. i, pp. 41 1, 415. 
2 Loc. cit. 
