United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


I here poisoned myself dreadfully, rubbing with my legs some poison plant as I shinned up the trees for epiphytal orchids, new to me and an irresistible attraction. To naturalists, this part of Florida must have been a most interesting field before the bird-slaughterers had invaded it to the extermination of its myriad population of feathered winterers from the Northern regions.

Another fig envelops some of its branches, two umbrella-trees cling stubbornly to its sides, a pandanus palm grows comfortably at the base of a limb, tons of staghorn, bird's-nest, polypodium, and other epiphytal ferns, have licence to flourish, orchids hang decoratively, and several shrubs spring aspiringly among its roots. But the big tree still asserts its individuality.

A little to the northward of our camp were very high and almost perpendicular rocks, composed mostly of micaceous schist, covered with various epiphytal orchides and ferns. We then took possession of our tents, one square tent being allotted to Mr.

The white, finely grained wood is said to resemble English sycamore. Though harsh and flaky, the surface of the bark seems to retain moisture, making it attractive to several species of fungi and epiphytal ferns, the most conspicuous of the latter being the stag's-horn. Few of the trees near the beach are free from such encumbrances.

It was not the trees and lianas only that were beautiful in these sunny openings, but the ferns, mosses, orchids, and selaginellas, with the crimson-tipped dracaena, and the crimson-veined caladium, and the great red nepenthe with purple blotches on its nearly diaphanous pitchers, and another pitcher-plant of an epiphytal habit, with pea-green pitchers scrambling to a great height over the branches of the smaller trees.

For Epiphyllums and Rhipsalis, both of which are epiphytal naturally, but which are found to thrive best in pots in our houses, a mixture of equal parts of peat and loam with sand and brick rubble in the same proportion as before recommended, will be found most suitable. Leaf mould is sometimes used for these plants; but unless really good it is best left out of the soil.

The beach was overhung with the drooping branches of lame trees, loaded with Orchideae, ferns, and other epiphytal plants.

The epiphytal orchid, to speak generally, and to take the simple form, is one body with several limbs, crowned by one head. Its circulation pulsates through the whole, less and less vigorously, of course, in the parts that have flowered, as the growing head leaves them behind.

"A catalogue published by a great nurseryman in Bristol ... contained a number of tropical orchids, of whose wonderful variety and beauty I had obtained some idea from the woodcuts in Loudon's 'Encyclopedia. The first epiphytal orchid I ever saw was at a flower show in Swansea ... which caused in me a thrill of enjoyment which no other plant in the show produced.

The columnar trunks of the majestic kanaris wreathe their huge girth with lace-like fern and broad-leaved epiphytal plants, and the symmetrical beauty of the conical nutmeg-trees in these forest aisles suggests a vast sanctuary of Nature, enshrining the mystic presence of Divinity.