Note 95 — IDEAS FOR A PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS.

p. 227—“Lianes, Creeping Plants, (Span. Vejuccos.)”

According to Kunth’s division of Bauhinias, the true genus Bauhinia belongs to the New Continent. The African Bauhinia, B. rufescens (Lam.), is a Pauletia (Cav.), a genus of which we also discovered some new species in South America. In the same manner the Banisterias of the Malpighiaceæ are actually an American form. Two species are indigenous to the East Indies, and one—described by Cavanilles as B. leona—to Western Africa. In the tropical zone, and in the Southern hemisphere, species of the most different families belong to the climbing plants which in those regions render the forests so impenetrable to man and so accessible and habitable to the whole monkey family (Quadrumana), the Cercoleptes, and the small tiger cats. The Lianes thus afford whole flocks of gregarious animals an easy means of rapidly ascending high trees, passing from one tree to another, and even of crossing brooks and rivulets.

In the south of Europe and in the north of America, Hops from the Urticeæ, and the species of Vitis from the Ampelideæ, belong to Climbing Plants; while this form is represented in the tropics by climbing and trailing grasses. We found on the elevated plains of Bogota, in the pass of Quindiu in the Andes, and in the Cinchona forests of Loxa, a Bambusa allied to Nastus, our Chusquea scandens, twined round powerful trunks of trees, adorned at the same time with flowering Orchideæ. Bambusa scandens (Tjankorreh), which Blume found in Java, belongs probably to Nastus, or to the 332grass-genus Chusquea, the Carrizo of the Spanish settlers. In the pine forests of Mexico, Climbing Plants seem to be entirely wanting; but in New Zealand a fragrant Pandanus, Freycinetia Banksii, together with one of the Smilaceæ, Ripogonum parviflorum (R. Brown), which renders the forests almost impenetrable, winds round a gigantic fir-tree more than 200 feet high, Podocarpus dacryoides (Rich.), called Kakikatea in the language of the country.^[QC]

A striking contrast to these Climbing Grasses and Creeping Pandaneas is afforded by the splendid many-coloured blossoms of the Passion flowers (among which, however, we ourselves found one arborescent, upright, species (Passiflora glauca) in the Andes of Popayan, at an elevation of nearly 10,500 feet, and by the Bignoniaceæ, Mutisiæ, Alströmeriæ, Urvilleæ, and Aristolochiæ. Among the latter, our Aristolochia cordata has a coloured (purplish red) calyx, about seventeen inches in diameter; “flores gigantei, pueris mitræ instar inservientes.” Owing to the quadrangular form of their stalks, their flattening, which is not occasioned by any external pressure, and a band-like undulatory motion, many of these climbing plants have a peculiar physiognomy. The diagonal intersections of the stems of Bignonias and Banisterias form, by means of furrows in the ligneous substance, and through its clefts, where the bark penetrates to some depth, cruciform or mosaic-like figures.^[QD]