Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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On the
alpine palm-trees, see my Prolegomena de Dist.
Plant. page 235.) We
here discovered plants of European forms, situated below those of
the torrid zone.
After proceeding for the space of four hours across the savannahs,
we entered into a little wood composed of shrubs and small trees,
called el Pejual; doubtless from the great abundance here of the
pejoa (Gaultheria odorata), a plant with very odoriferous leaves.*
(* It is a great advantage of the Spanish language, and a
peculiarity which it shares in common with the Latin, that, from
the name of a tree, may be derived a word designating an
association or group of trees of the same species. Thus are formed
the words olivar, robledar, and pinal, from olivo, roble, and pino.
The Hispano-Americans have added tunal, pejual, guayaval, etc.,
places where a great many Cactuses, Gualtheria odoratas, and
Psidiums, grow together.) The steepness of the mountain became less
considerable, and we felt an indescribable pleasure in examining
the plants of this region. Nowhere, perhaps, can be found collected
together, in so small a space, productions so beautiful, and so
remarkable in regard to the geography of plants. At the height of a
thousand toises, the lofty savannahs of the hills terminate in a
zone of shrubs which, by their appearance, their tortuous branches,
their stiff leaves, and the magnitude and beauty of their purple
flowers, remind us of what is called, in the Cordilleras of the
Andes, the vegetation of the paramos and the punas.* (* For the
explanation of these words, see above Chapter 1.5.) We there find
the family of the alpine rhododendrons, the thibaudias, the
andromedas, the vacciniums, and those befarias with resinous
leaves, which we have several times compared to the rhododendron of
our European Alps.
Even when nature does not produce the same species in analogous
climates, either in the plains of isothermal parallels,* (We may
compare together either latitudes which in the same hemisphere
present the same mean temperature (as, for instance, Pennsylvania
and the central part of France, Chile and the southern part of New
Holland); or we may consider the relations that may exist between
the vegetation of the two hemispheres under isothermal parallels.)
or on table-lands, the temperature of which resembles that of
places nearer the poles,* we still remark a striking resemblance of
appearance and physiognomy in the vegetation of the most distant
countries. (* The geography of plants comprises not merely an
examination of the analogies observed in the same hemisphere; as
between the vegetation of the Pyrenees and that of the Scandinavian
plains; or between that of the Cordilleras of Peru and of the
coasts of Chile. It also investigates the relations between the
alpine plants of both hemispheres. It compares the vegetation of
the Alleghanies and the Cordilleras of Mexico, with that of the
mountains of Chile and Brazil. Bearing in mind that every
isothermal line has an alpine branch (as, for instance, that which
connects Upsala with a point in the Swiss Alps), the great problem
of the analogy of vegetable forms may be defined as follows:
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