Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/593

Rh to insect visits—flowers of handsome colors and strange shapes. But many orchids have small greenish or white flowers, and these are the ones most common in the Buitenzorg garden. There is also a good collection of species which have been 'planted' not planted in the ground, but simply tied to tree trunks. Here they get along very well without drawing any water from the soil. There is plenty of moisture in the air and these plants are provided with absorbing tissues to take in what they need.

Things grow on a large scale in the tropics. Many of our tiny herbs at home have tropical relatives which are large trees. There

are tree ferns, the tree-daisy and the tree-tomato. In our own part of the world the sunflower is the largest plant of the composite family, but in the tropics there are many shrubs and trees belonging to this order of plants. Fruits of great size are common. A good example is seen in the 'sausage tree' the fruits of which are great sausage shaped structures two feet long, weighing many pounds. The jak tree has a fruit which looks something like an enormous watermelon, except for the roughened warty outer rind. The flowers, and hence the fruit, are on old wood—not developed at the tips of young branches as are the apples, peaches and other fruits familiar to us. Such production of flowers and fruits on the older parts of the tree is known as