Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/187

 *[Footnote: from among the Urticeæ, and the species of Vitis from among the Ampelideæ, belong to the class of twining climbers, and between the tropics we find climbing Grasses or Gramineæ. We have seen in the plains of Bogota, in the pass of Quindiu, in the Andes, and in the Quina-producing forests of Loxa, a Bambusacea allied to Nastus, our Chusquea scandens, twine round massive and lofty trunks of trees adorned at the same time with flowering Orchideæ. The Bambusa scandens (Tjankorreh), which Blume found in Java, belongs probably either to the genus Nastus or to that of Chusquea, the Carrizo of the Spanish settlers. Twining plants appear to me to be entirely absent in the Pine-woods of Mexico, but in New Zealand, besides the Ripogonum parviflorum of Robert Brown, (a climber belonging to the Smilaceæ which renders the forests almost impenetrable), the sweet-smelling Freycinetia Banksii, which belongs to the Pandaneæ, twines round a gigantic Podocarpus 220 English feet high, the P. dacryoides (Rich), called in the native language Kakikatea. (Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, 1843, Vol. i. p. 426.)

With climbing Gramineæ and Pandaneæ are contrasted by their beautiful and many-coloured blossoms the Passifloras (among which, however, we even found an arborescent self-supporting species, Passiflora glauca, growing in the Andes of Popayan, at an elevation of 9840 French (10487 English) feet);—the Bignoniaceæ, Mutisias, Alströmerias, Urvilleæ, and Aristolochias. Among the latter our Aristolochia cordata has a crimson-coloured flower of 17 English inches diameter! "flores gigantei, pueris mitræ instar inservientes." Many of these twining plants have a peculiar physiognomy and]*