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It shone on majestic fern-trees, on the fragile Polypodium tamariscinum, which clung tremblingly to the branches of the ohia, on the beautiful lygodium, which adorned the uncouth trunk of the breadfruit; on shining banana leaves and glossy trailing yams; on gigantic lianas, which, climbing to the tops of the largest trees, descended in vast festoons, passing from tree to tree, and interlacing the forest with a living network; and on lycopodiums of every kind, from those which wrapped the rocks in feathery green to others hardly distinguishable from ferns.
This is that which includes the fossil representatives of the Lycopodiums, or Club-mosses, and which goes to make up in some coals as much as two-thirds of the whole mass. Everyone is more or less familiar with some of the living Lycopodiums, those delicate little fern-like mosses which are to be found in many a home.
There was also a climbing variety of bamboo, which scrambled up to the tops of the largest trees. The undergrowth in places was most luxuriant and consisted of different species of palms, rattans, tree-ferns, pandanus, giant ginger, pipers, pothos, begonias, bananas, caladiums, ferns, selaginellas and lycopodiums, and many variegated plants. Growing on many of the trees were some fine orchids.
Besides the conifers, many species of ferns flourish in New Zealand, some of them arborescent, together with many lycopodiums; so that a forest in that country may make a nearer approach to the carboniferous vegetation than any other now existing on the globe.
The magnificent giant lycopodiums cast into the shade all our living members of that class, the largest of which perhaps are those that flourish in New Zealand. In New Zealand, too, are found many species of ferns, both those which are arborescent and those which are of more humble stature.
The cascades are most truly beautiful, gleaming white among the dark depths of foliage far away, and falling into deep limpid basins, festooned and overhung with the richest and greenest vegetation of this prolific climate, from the huge-leaved banana and shining breadfruit to the most feathery of ferns and lycopodiums.
They were lowly shrubs of earth, here attaining gigantic size; lycopodiums, a hundred feet high; the huge sigillaria, found in our coal mines; tree ferns, as tall as our fir-trees in northern latitudes; lepidodendra, with cylindrical forked stems, terminated by long leaves, and bristling with rough hairs like those of the cactus. "Wonderful, magnificent, splendid!" cried my uncle.
How clean and unworn and immortal the woods seemed to be! the lofty cedars in full bloom laden with golden pollen and their washed plumes shining; the pines rocking gently and settling back into rest, and the evening sunbeams spangling on the broad leaves of the madroños, their tracery of yellow boughs relieved against dusky thickets of Chestnut Oak; liverworts, lycopodiums, ferns were exulting in glorious revival, and every moss that had ever lived seemed to be coming crowding back from the dead to clothe each trunk and stone in living green.
Cryptogamous acrogens: Acrogens: Mosses, equisetums, ferns, lycopodiums Lepidodendra. Dicotyledonous gymnosperms: Gymnogens: Conifers and Cycads. Dicotyledonous Angiosperms: Exogens: Compositae, leguminosae, umbelliferae, cruciferae, heaths, etc. All native European trees except conifers. Monocotyledons: Endogens.
The road was bordered every inch of the way by a thick bed of elegant Lycopodiums. An artificial arrangement of trees and bushes could scarcely have been made to wear so finished an appearance as this naturally decorated avenue. The path at length terminated at a plantation of mandioca, the largest I had yet seen since I left the neighbourhood of Para.
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