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Updated: June 24, 2025
From many of them beautiful bright yellow flowers hung down, the stems several feet in length, while ferns and numerous air-plants thickly covered the trunks of the palms or drooped over from their summits. Now and then we passed through a thicket of bamboos, their slender foliage and gracefully-curving stems having arranged themselves in the most elegant feathery bowers.
The trunks of the mighty trees grew close to the water, their roots striking down into it, while thousands of sipos and air-plants hung in tangled masses overhead, and huge ferns with vast leaves formed a dense fringe along the banks.
Vegetation became more dense as, towards evening, we approached the long-looked-for river, so that we had some difficulty in making our way through the thickly-growing cabbage-palms, live-oak, and water-oak, hung with crimson and white air-plants, trumpet-flowers, wild-vines, and innumerable other parasites.
Mimosa-trees, air-plants, and every sort of creeper gave an almost tropical appearance to the low woods through which the river ran. Purvis proved himself an agreeable companion in a timid, mild way. He pointed out his own estancia house by the river-bank, and invited Peter and Sir Nigel to come and stay with him some day.
As a rule the lower part of the trunks is branchless; stems rise up like tall pillars in long colonnades. But this does not mean that they are bare. Climbing ferns, lichens, pendant grasses, air-plants, and orchids drape the columns. Tough lianas swing in air: coiling roots overspread the ground.
A bush of yellow-flowered hibiscus clothes the banks that are less level; and, higher still, grows a tall and beautiful mimosa with feathery web and pendent pods of brightest green and yellow. Then came the brabs and palms, fan-, cocoa-, oil-, and bamboo-, with their trunks turned to nurseries of epiphytes and air-plants. The parasites are clematis and a host with hard botanical names.
Near us the trunk of an aged tree, bending over the water, covered with parasitic plants, had been seized by the sipos from the opposite side, and hung, as it were, caught in their embrace, forming a complete bridge across the igarape. I have already described these wonderful air-plants. They here appeared in greater numbers and more varied form than any we had yet seen.
Of over 3000 known species of orchids, it is true a great majority are air-plants, or epiphytes growing upon trees and other plants, obtaining their sustenance from the air, and not truly parasitic; but of the fifty-odd native species of the northeastern United States, not one is of this character, all growing in the ground, like other plants.
After another descent and ascent, we found ourselves in an extensive forest of great gnarled oaks, thickly covered with tufts of air-plants and with orchids. Many of the latter were in full bloom, forming masses of brilliant color.
The roots of air-plants, such as certain orchids, draw their nourishment from the air. The experiment of marking roots and stem has been already tried, but it should be repeated. Repetition of experiments is always desirable, as it fixes his conclusions in the pupil's mind. The stem grows by a succession of similar parts, phytomera, each part, or phyton, consisting of node, internode, and leaf.
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