Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 19, 2025
At the north of the range, between Santa Fe de Bogota and Quito, at an elevation often of 12,000 feet, is found the sword-bill humming-bird. Its name is derived from the length of its beak, which is nearly as long as its body, and enables it to seek its food from the long pendent corollas of the Brugmansae.
These are generally hushed as the night advances; and then swarms of fire-flies and glow-worms light their tiny torches and illuminate the dark with a magical display; while the drowsy air hangs heavy with the sweet and subtle odours exhaled from the corollas of the plants which open only in night's cool and tranquil hours.
Between the thousands of flowering plants of a white variety the hybrids will instantly catch the eye by their red or blue corollas. Quite the contrary effect results from the admixture of hybrids with the seeds of the species itself. Here no difference will show itself, even in the fullest bloom. The effect of the spontaneous crosses will pass unobserved.
Marsh violets, dotted the grass here and there with blue; columbine swung its purple spurred corollas over the grey mossy rocks; and wild roses appeared everywhere in dense thickets, with their delicate pink petals strewn over the ground beneath them like a coloured shadow.
And yet, when viewed at home, in their bell-shaped corollas, their hospitable expression and greeting are seen to be quite as expressive and rational as those of the sage.
I had not gone more than a mile from Lake Point ere I found the way profusely decked with flowers, mostly compositae and purple leguminosae, a hundred corollas or more to the square yard, with a corresponding abundance of winged blossoms above them, moths and butterflies, the leguminosae of the insect kingdom.
Even the leaflets were like large entire leaves, and out of each bunch of leaves we could see that there grew a large white flower hanging upon a long pendulous flower-stalk with its top downward. These flowers gave the grove a very beautiful appearance their splendid white corollas contrasting elegantly with the deep-green of the leaves.
Send out from each of your cups, from each of your corollas, some devouring insect, some wasp with pointed sting, some furious horse-fly, and let them all together throw themselves upon him, harass him and persecute him with their threatening buzzing, and pierce his face with their poisoned stings.
The flowers were not attractive to the eye or of pleasant odor; but the long corollas held a pungent, honeyed sweetness that attracted the birds and many insects. Its technical name was Agave Americana.
Close by the spring, but a little farther in the direction of the plain, was a vley, or pool in fact, it might have been termed a small lake and upon the quiet bosom of its water the sky-blue corollas lay sleeping in all their gorgeous beauty. Truey, leading her little pet in a string, had gone down on the bank to look at them. She thought she could never cease gazing at such pretty things.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking