Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/33

Rh agricultural experiment station, where are to be seen many varieties of the principal tropical fruits, especially oranges and mangoes. The latter are especially fine in Trinidad.

Among the most striking features of the botanical garden are the palms, of which there are many magnificent specimens, both native and exotic. In the town itself palms are planted in great numbers, especially the stately cabbage palm "palmiste" of the French Creoles, probably the finest of all palms. It is a common sight to see clumps of epiphytic orchids attached to the trunks of trees in the gardens of Port of Spain. These are said to be very beautiful during the early winter, but in July only a very few were in blossom.

In Port of Spain there are magnificent trees in the parks and gardens and along the roads. These are often of enormous size, and their branches are frequently covered with epiphytes of various kinds, among which the most conspicuous are the Bromeliads, and the curious Rhipsalis Cassytha, a member of the Cactaceæ, but very different from most of the family. This plant grows in immense pendent masses, sometimes ten feet or more in length, and is exceedingly common in Trinidad. Of the numerous large trees, the silk-cotton (Ceiba), the West Indian cedar (Cedrela odorata), and the sand-box (Hura crepitans) were the commonest of the native species; but mahogany trees of large size, and gigantic specimens of Pithecolobium Saman, are frequently seen. A very curious native tree, Couropita guianensis, is sometimes seen planted. This produces many short branches from the main trunk, upon which the large red flowers are borne in great numbers. These are followed by enormous globular fruits of such size as to fairly entitle the tree to its popular name, "cannon-ball" tree. Space will not permit of any further enumeration of the beautiful and curious plants with which the gardens are filled.

Much of the country about Port of Spain is still but little disturbed, and even where it has been cleared, the neglected land soon reverts to jungle. The wetter lowlands abound in palms, Aroids, Scitamineæ, etc., much the same types that occur in the Guiana forest. The drier hillsides, however, show a good many forms different from those of the lower levels. A very common palm of the dry hillsides is Acrocomia sclerocarpa, a species common to the Antilles also, and very common in Jamaica. A very showy shrub of this region is a rubiaceous plant, Warscewiczia coccinea. In this plant, as in the related Mussaenda of the eastern tropics, one of the calyx lobes is much enlarged and petallike in color and texture. In Mussaenda this is white, but in Warscewiczia it is a vivid carmine red, and the whole inflorescence strongly suggests the familiar poinsettia—indeed the plant is locally known as wild poinsettia.

Ferns are much commoner in Trinidad than in Guiana, although