TREES COVERED WITH ORCHIDS. 487 
pastures, growing on the trunk and larger branches 
in great luxuriance, at the height of fifteen to twenty- 
feet; one bunch that I procured comprising forty- 
two bulbs, cohering together. 1^. fragrans and E» 
cochleatum also grow on fruit-trees in the mountain 
pens, eight or ten feet from the ground. lonopsis 
I found only in the situation above-mentioned, on 
the trunks of forest trees, a few feet above the 
ground. 
In the tall woods on Bluefields Mountains, almost 
every tree, from the thickness of one’s arm upwards, 
is found to bear its bunch of Orchidece, frequently 
four or five species growing on the same tree. The 
trunk is the most common situation on the tree, but 
in very large trees the forks and great horizontal 
limbs are likewise studded with these and other 
parasites, Tillandsice, sessile and caulescent Ferns, 
Jungermannice, &c. I was surprised and delighted 
at the number of minute species, some with tiny 
bulbs, others with small oval, alternate, almost pin- 
nate leaves, and others long and grass-like, which, in 
company with the larger and more common kinds, 
crowded the trunk of an enormous Fig-tree that had 
been recently felled on the top of the Bluefields ridge. 
The massive, pillar-like stem, sixty or seventy feet 
long without a branch, was studded from end to end, 
and on all sides of its surface, with these delicate 
little parasites, which also spread themselves upon the 
great arms. On the lower mountains the huge Cotton- 
tree {Eriodendron') forms a perfect nursery of Or chi- 
decs as well as Bromeliacece, Of terrestrial species, 
both the kinds of Bletia were growing on the bare 
