966 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
the sides of the higher hills and the scenery they provide with the beautiful 
clear streams flowing through them and tumbling over rocks. 
After passing over the high hills near Totokwelli and beyond that town, 
the terrain becomes much less precipitous and more rolling, but still well for- 
ested. At Boporo, we stop to purchase many oranges, limes, and bananas 
for ourselves, while the boys buy yams and peanuts. At this town a few cocoa- 
nut trees grow, the first to be seen near the coast on the Du River. In several 
places there are a number of cola trees, from around which the underbrush has 
been removed. On one of these, the orchid Listrostachys Monteirae is an epi- 
phyte that produces its pendant spikes of fairly large flowers, which are white 
with a tinge of salmon-pink. Just before reaching Medina, in gravelly soil, under 
tall trees, grows a terrestrial orchid related to Habenaria, though scattered and 
but few. In the open swamp Memecylon spathandra, the leaves of which have a 
bluish sheen, are low, branched trees about twenty feet high. A yellow-flowered 
aquatic species of Utricularia floats in a brook in the sunlight. 
At Medina, besides mangos, oranges, limes, and bananas, and the staple 
crop, cassava, a number of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) and coffee trees are grown. 
From Medina to Bomboma, in fact to Moala (Moyla of map), the tall 
virgin forests continue and in these a species of Mapania, the younger leaves 
of which are purplish, grows locally in relative abundance. Members of the 
Acanthaceae appear to be numerous in this region. Between Bapore and 
Bomboma apocynaceous trees and bushes appear to be especially numerous 
in the gravelly deeply-shaded forest, or even in more open sandy places. In 
the latter habitat FPuntwmia sp. is especially abundant and reaches a height 
of about fifty feet, yet Johnston ! states that this F’. elastica is one of the tallest 
of the African forest and that Mr. Sims reports trees of the same species that 
are two hundred feet high. In this region around Medina, if any trees attain 
such a height, they escaped observation, but since a large number of flowers 
are always present on the ground when the trees are in bloom, it seems hardly 
likely that such is the case. Other genera of the family as Alafia, Voacanga 
and Conopharyngia are also represented as low trees or tall bushes. Rauwwolfia sp. 
is freely represented as a low bush in the undergrowth of the tall forests. 
Aside from the apocynaceous species, the following also occur: Desmostachys 
Vogelii, its white flowers in spirals on long drooping panicles, Atroxima Afzeli- 
ana a vine, Dalbergia oblongifolia, a high bush, and Acioa Whytet a bush with 
drooping branches. Between Bomboma and Moala there is a town called 
Bamboo Town, so named because of the presence of a great number of bam- 
boo trees. The occurrence of this tree at an elevation of only several hundred 
feet is of interest because of the fact that in Central Africa a representative 
of this genus occurs between seven and nine thousand feet. In British Guiana 
another representative, however, occurs at about six hundred feet elevation. 
A much rarer plant is Nymphaea maculata that grows in pools fed by springs 
and in the rainy season, a lagoon of an unknown river. The flowers of this 
resemble those of NV. lotus, but the outer petals are dull bluish lavender. 
1 Johnston, H.: Loc. cit., p. 540. 
