OCR Text |
Show 352 PHYSIOGNOMY 01!' PLANTS. rarely, that in four years we were only twice able to procure blossoms; once on the unfrequented banks of the Oassiquiare (the arm which connects the Orinoco with the Rio Negro and the Amazons River), and once in the province of Popayan between Buga and Quilichao. It is striking to see plants in particular localities grow with the greatest vigor without producing flowers: it is thus with European Olive-trees, which have been planted for centuries between the tropics near Quito, 9000 (about 9590 English) feet above the level of the sea, and also in the Isle of France, with Walnut-trees, Hazel-nuts, and, as at Quito, Olive-trees (Olea europea) : see Bojer, Hortus Mauritianus, 1837, p. 291. As some of the Bambusacere (arborescent grasses) advance into the temperate zone, so, within the tropics, they do not suffer from the temperate climate of the mountains. They certainly grow more luxuriantly as social plants from the seacoast to the height of about 2560 English feet; for example, in the province de las Esmeraldas, west of the Volcano of Pichincha, where Guadua angustifolia (Bambusa Guadua, in our Plantes equinoxiales, t. i. tab. XX.) produces in its interior much of the silicious Tabaschir (Sanscrit tvaklcschi?·a, ox-milk). In the Pass of Quindiu, we saw the Guadua growing at an elevation which we found by barometric measurement to be 5400 (5755 English) feet above the level of the Pacific. Nastus borbonicus is called by Bory de St. Vincent a true alpine plant; he states that it does not descend lower on the declivity of the volcano in the Island of Bourbon than 3600 (3837 English) feet. This recunence or repetition as it were at great elevations of the forms characteristic of the hot plains, recalls the mountain group of palms before pointed out by me (Kunthia Montana, Oeroxylon andicola, and Oreodoxa frigida), and a grove or thicket of Musacere sixteen English feet high (Heliconia, perhaps Maranta), which I found growing isolated at an elevation of 6600 (7034 English) feet, on the Silla de Oaraccas. (Relation hist. t. i. p. 605-606.) As, with the exception of a few isolated herbaceous dicotyledones, grasses form the highest zone of phrenogamous vegetation round the snowy summits of lofty mountains, so also, in advancing in a horizontal direction towards either pole of the Earth, the phrenogamous vegetation terminates with grasses. To my young friend, Joseph Hooker, who, but just returned with |