Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/205

Rh Hibiscus, very much like the hau tree (Hibiscus tiliaceus) of Hawaii (perhaps identical), was also abundant. A most characteristic small tree or shrub was a screw pine (Pandanus), with long slender leaves arranged in a dense spiral, and big heads of fruit, the color and size of ripe pineapples. Of the flowering shrubs, much the showiest was a species of Wormia with big golden yellow flowers and handsome foliage. There were also several leguminous shrubs with yellow and purple flowers. A considerable number of climbing plants occur, among them several species of Ipomæa very much like our common morning glories. A species of Gnetum, with clusters of showy salmon-pink berries, was also common along the shore.

The ascent of the mountain is decidedly arduous, as the trail is very steep, and at times it is necessary to scale the face of almost sheer rock ledges, where one must pull one's self up by the roots of trees or by clinging to such shrubs and roots as could find lodgment in the rock crevices.

The forest is comparatively open, and did not offer much collecting until the summit was reached. Here the forest is composed of gnarled and dwarfed trees whose trunks and branches are moss-covered and serve as a foothold for a host of beautiful epiphytes. The latter included two superb rhododendrons with snowy white and brilliant flame colored flowers; a number of interesting orchids and several pitcher plants (Nepenthes), one of which N. veitchii, is one of the finest of the genus, with pitchers a foot or so in length.

The ground was covered with a dense cushion of moss, in some places sphagnum much like that found in our northern bogs, and seeming rather out of place in the tropics.

The great forests of Borneo are hardly equalled in the variety and size of the trees of which they are composed. As in other parts of the Malayan region, the most important timber trees belong mainly to a family, Dipterocarpaceæ, which is quite unrepresented in the New World. The Dipterocarps are often trees of great size, with straight trunks which may rise a hundred feet or more without a branch, and yielding timber of great value. There are also many leguminous trees, remotely related to our own locusts and honey-locust. One of these, the tapang (Abauria excelsa), is the tallest tree yet measured in the Malayan region. Beccari mentions one of these two hundred and thirty feet in height.

Many other trees, unfamiliar to the American botanist, are components of the Bornean forest. Wild figs and banyans are conspicuous, and several species of Artocarpus, related to the cultivated bread-fruit, and also wild species of durian and mangosteen, the two choicest fruits of the eastern tropics.

A few types, however, appear less strange. Oaks of several species