484 
BLUEFIELDS PEAKS. 
high woods that bordered the shore. Bulbs of Epid. 
fragrans and of Brassia caudata that had been brought 
from the mountain in the dry weather, and planted 
out in the open air, blossomed, the former at the 
beginning, the latter towards the end, of May, About 
the middle of the same month, in the tall, dark, and 
humid woods of Shrewsbury, about halfway up the 
mountains of St. Elizabeth’s, I saw several racemes 
of a beautiful lonopsis* in rich bloom. The irregular 
tuber-like bulbs of that terrestrial Orchid, with a 
Bletia-like habit, which grows abundantly in the 
dense bush on the summits of the Bluefields Peaks, 
had thrown out their tall but not very inviting pani- 
cles of flower through the month of June. The rains 
were at that time descending copiously, and continued 
to fall until the middle of August ; about which 
time I met with Epid. . fuscatum in blossom in the 
tall woods of Basin Spring, a little lower elevation 
than Blueflelds Mountain. About this time also the 
singularly fringed blossom appeared on Epid. ciliare^ 
which had hitherto displayed only its long spindle- 
shaped bulbs, each crowned with its pair of leathery 
leaves. Soon afterwards the autumnal drought com- 
menced, but I have no further record of the flowering 
of Orcliidece. 
If this irregularity of flowering, or rather apparent 
independence of seasonal rain, had been confined to 
the recesses of the mountain woods, it would not have 
been surprising, since there actual dryness seems un- 
known. On the summits of Bluefields Peaks, and 
* Swartz, if I mistake not, describes lonopsis as affecting the driest 
open pastures. 
