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Updated: May 25, 2025
In the southern provinces of France, magnificent forests, intwined by arborescent grasses and with the trees loaded with parasitical plants, would hide the face of the land. The puma and the jaguar would haunt the Pyrenees. In the latitude of Mont Blanc, but on an island as far westward as Central North America, tree-ferns and parasitical Orchideae would thrive amidst the thick woods.
Notwithstanding its elevated temperature, it is difficult to believe that the air can dissolve the quantity of water exhaled from the surface of the soil, the foliage of the trees, and their trunks: the latter are covered with a drapery of orchideae, peperomia, and other succulent plants.
Some fine Orchideae were in flower in the, gardens, but few of them fruit; and those Dendrobiums which bear axillary viviparous buds never do.
Abundance of a tasteless raspberry, with blue and yellow composite, have somewhat of a temperate aspect; and minute ferns and Orchideae, with dwarf Begonias on the rocks, make some approach to a sub-alpine vegetation. The forest, however, is most luxuriant.
Plants of the family of Pothos with succulent stems, Oxalises, and Orchideae of a singular construction, rise in the driest clefts of the rocks; while creeping plants waving in the winds are interwoven in festoons before the opening of the cavern.
We were unable to bring many things from the camp. The principal were, the firearms and one parcel of my seeds, which I had managed to keep dry, containing eighty-seven species. All my specimens were left behind, which I regretted very much: for though much injured, the collection contained specimens of very beautiful trees, shrubs, and orchideae.
The few stunted trees were loaded with parasitical plants, among which the beauty and delicious fragrance of some of the orchideae were most to be admired. As the sun rose, the day became extremely hot, and the reflection of the light and heat from the white sand was very distressing. We dined at Mandetiba; the thermometer in the shade being 84 degs.
We walked to a stream, which flows at the base of the retiring sand-cliffs, and nourishes a dense and richly-varied jungle, producing many plants, as beautiful Acanthaceae, Indian horse-chesnut, loaded with white racemes of flowers, gay Convolvuli, laurels, terrestrial and parasitic Orchideae, Dillenia, casting its enormous flowers as big as two fists, pepper, figs, and, in strange association with these, a hawthorn, and the yellow-flowered Indian strawberry, which ascends 7,500 feet on the mountains, and Hodgsonia, a new Cucurbitaceous genus, clinging in profusion to the trees, and also found 5000 feet high on the mountains.
Here, too, grows the spotted coryanthes, of the order of the Orchideae Coryanthes maculata hanging from the branches of trees, and suspending in the air the singular lips of its flowers, like fairy buckets, as if for the use of the birds and insects that inhabit the surrounding foliage.
On the following day we visited Rajghat, a steep ghat or pass leading up the cliff to Rotas Palace, a little higher up the river. The woods were full of monkeys, and amongst other plants I observed Murraya exotica, but it was scarce. Though the jungle was so dense, the woods were very dry, containing no Palm, Adroideae, Peppers, Orchideae or Ferns.
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