Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/38

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cactus-like mistletoes are thickly scattered. These half parasites win out in the struggle against drouth by allowing other plants to find water for them.

In the moist hollows, or on northern slopes of Cinchona Hill, many plants of temperate zones have established themselves, being brought there, presumably, with vegetable seeds imported from England. Clover, dandelion, dock, mullein, plantain and yarrow grow beside the trail. Wild strawberries bloom and ripen throughout the year. Side by side with these old acquaintances are thick clumps of the spicy-flowered wild ginger, and, towering over them are orchids and begonias as high as the head, canes and bamboos twenty feet tall, gray-barked, red-leafed cinchona trees and brilliant-flowered Melastomaceous shrubs. The lantana, Cherokee rose, passion flower, prickly-leafed ferns and the wiry-stemmed grass Chusquaea clamber over every thicket. Ferns abound everywhere, in sun or shade, and in moist or dry situations. Along one trail from