SKETCHES OF WILD ORCHIDS IN GUIANA. 
51 
feathered crowns of which rise in a wild tangle to a height of 
about 20 feet above the water level. On these stems, among 
the flattened grey thorns which thickly clothe them, fully 
exposed to direct sunlight at midday from overhead, cling loose 
masses of Bifrenaria longicornis, Lindl. Through the Palm 
stems, something white, a little way in the swamp, attracts the 
eye ; and a second look discloses that this is the white flower of 
Aganisia pulchella , which in some places, hardly ever seen by 
human eye, creeps up many of the Palm stems. 
Occasionally, very occasionally, in that vast stretch of forest 
and creek there are open places—“ wet savannahs ” they are 
called—where the creeks wander for a time no longer under the 
trees, but through great water meadows of long grass, over 
which in the wet season the water spreads and makes a lake. 
In such places, breaking the grass stretches, are many clumps 
of low bushes and far-reaching groups of arborescent Aroids 
(Montrichardia). On these bushes, almost weighing them 
down, are vast masses of an Epidendrum (E. oncidioides), with 
thickly clustering, very upright pseudo-bulbs, and narrow, very 
erect, and stiff leaves. The innumerable straw-coloured flowers 
of this Epidendrum, tossed up into the air on very long flower- 
stalks, sometimes in such profusion as almost to dim the light, 
fill the air with a scent as of newly flowering Hawthorn. 
Thickets of this Orchid thus seen in all the supreme beauty and 
lightness which come to them in the flowering season make a 
picture which does indeed brighten all after-thought. Nor is 
this the only, perhaps not even the most striking, of the 
Orchids of such places. From innumerable of the smaller 
branches of the bushes, and from many of the woody aroid stems, 
hang loose clusters of Ionopsis paniculata with its light clouds 
of pale violet-coloured flowerets, apparently hardly held together 
by anything substantial enough to be called a stalk. 
Again in other places is there very occasionally open country, 
but this open country is dry. There reefs of almost pure sand, 
so whitened by the tropical sun as to dazzle the eye, are broken 
by coppices and clumps of low-growing gnarled trees and a few 
bushes, all of special kinds. Such places also have their special 
Orchids. Up the tree trunks grows, often in great abundance, 
a very small brown-leaved and stemmed Vanilla, with beautiful 
little flowers of almost pure white. On the ground, where the 
