Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/189

 *[Footnote: quite resembles in appearance a small palm-tree. This Phytelephas, of which the Indian name is Tagua, is besides, as Kunth remarks, the only one of the Pandaneæ found (according to our present knowledge) in the New Continent. The singular Agave-like and at the same time very tall-stemmed Doryanthes excelsa of New South Wales, which was first described by the acutely observing Correa de Serra, is an Amaryllidea, like our low-growing Narcissuses and Jonquils.

In the Candelabra shape of plants of the Aloë form, we must not confound the branches of an arborescent stem with flower-stalks. It is the latter which in the American Aloë (Agave Americana, Maguey de Cocuyza, which is entirely wanting in Chili) as well as in the Yucca acaulis, (Maguey de Cocuy) presents in the rapid and gigantic development of the inflorescence a candelabrum-like arrangement of the flowers which, as is well known, is but too transient a phenomenon. In some arborescent Euphorbias, on the other hand, the physiognomic effect is given by the branches and their division, or by ramification properly so called. Lichtenstein, in his "Reisen im südlichen Africa" (Th. i. S. 370), gives a vivid description of the impression made upon him by the appearance of a Euphorbia officinarum which he found in the "Chamtoos Rivier," in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope; the form of the tree was so symmetrical that the candelabrum-like arrangement was regularly repeated on a smaller scale in each of the subdivisions of the larger branches up to 32 English feet high. All the branches were armed with sharp spines.]*