174 TlMEHRI. 
If this tall vegetation be anywhere parted by the hand 
of the curious traveller, underneath it is seen a carpet of 
other, low growing, plants — Pazpalanthus Sckomburgkii, 
Kl. [No. 33] and P. Jlavescens, K. [No. 60] Drosera 
communis A St. Hil. [No. 313], a pretty little orchid, 
Spiranthes bifida, Ridley N. sp. [No. 342], ferns, lyco- 
podiums and sphagnum-like mosses. 
One, perhaps the most remarkable, plant of the 
swamp has not yet been noticed. It is the South 
American pitcher-plant Heliamphora nutans, Benth 
[No. 258], which grows in wide-spreading, very dense 
tufts in the wettest places but where the grass happens 
not to be long. Its red veined pitcher-leaves, its delicate 
white flowers raised high on red tinted stems, its sturdy 
habit of growth, make it a pretty little picture wherever 
it grows. But it attains its full size and best development, 
not down here in this swamp, but up on the ledges on the 
cliff of Roraima and even on the top. 
The vegetation of the drier, rocky patches is very 
different. A few shrubs of from four to eight feet in 
height and a very few stunted and gnarled trees are there ; 
a few single specimens of the one Roraima palm (Geo- 
noma Appunniana) which, as will presently be told, is 
much more abundant higher up ; but more abundant are 
certain very dwarf shrubs of curiously alpine aspe6t, such 
as Gaultheria cordifoha, H.B.K. [No. 103] and various 
trailing plants, such as a blackberry (Rubus guyanensis, 
Focke, [No. 106] ), of which I shall have more to say 
hereafter, and a passion flower [No. no] and a few 
orchids and ferns. 
Of these orchids the most noteworthy is Oncidium 
nigratum, Lindley [No. 114],. its delicately thin but wiry 
