Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 
21 
Fahrenheit, and in a cottage unadapted to winter, one would be 
chilled enough. Our few days must be all used, and so each day I 
went out over the paramo moor and once up through the forest 
and shrub fringe to the edge of true mountain paramo itself. 
Every excursion was amply successful, although after each trip 
half the night was needed to separate from a soaking cold mass of 
vegetation the minute paramo species. 
Just as there are fewer kinds of plants, trees, herbs, or air-plants, 
in the temperate zone than in the zones below, so here on the paramo 
one finds a yet more impoverished flora. The plants are herbs or 
low bushes. There are many grasses, sedges and rushes, and 
along the streams the aspect is that of far northern moors; but 
certain peculiar plants give the uplands a character very dis¬ 
tinctive character. 
The most characteristic plant of the Colombian paramos through¬ 
out the various highlands of the Andes is the “frailejon,” Espeletia , 
a cycad-like plant whose woody stem, clothed with the dead 
leaves of former seasons, bears at the summit the leaves of the 
present year, with the flower clusters of small sunflower-like heads. 
The plant,—stem, leaves, flower stalks and heads of flower—is 
densely clothed with soft hairs. Each isolated region of paramo 
appears to have developed its peculiar “ frailejones,” and the 
species of Paletara was not the species seen later in the northern 
portion of the Central Andes. Probably, could we know all the 
species of “frailejones,” where they occur, and how they are inter¬ 
related, the information rightly interpreted would go far toward 
reconstructing the course of recent geologic history in the northern 
Andes. 
“Frailejones” are large and stout and are well coated with pro¬ 
tective wool. More numerous in kinds are the paramo plants 
which are dwarfed to a simple rosette tuft of leaves, or have the 
stem short and prostrate against the soil. We found gentians of 
tiniest size, yet each a star of finest blue; there were small Lupines; 
and minute dandelion-like plants, with a circle of leaves, just peep¬ 
ing from beneath the rim of the single head of flowers. But to the 
paramo and its life, reaching even higher altitudes and touching 
snow, we were to return when in the Quindio. 
On the 12th of July, we left Popayan for the journey to Cali, from 
which city my wife returned via Buenaventura and Panama to the 
