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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The Rhododendron Of Lapland Grows Also At Eight Or Nine
Hundred Toises Lower Than The Rhododendron Of The Alps And The
Pyrenees.
We were surprised at not meeting with any species of
befaria in the mountains of Mexico, between the rhododendrons of
Santa Fe and Caracas, and those of Florida.
In the small grove which crowns the Silla, the Befaria ledifolia is
only three or four feet high. The trunk is divided from its root
into a great many slender and even verticillate branches. The
leaves are oval, lanceolate, glaucous on their inferior part, and
curled at the edges. The whole plant is covered with long and
viscous hairs, and emits a very agreeable resinous smell. The bees
visit its fine purple flowers, which are very abundant, as in all
the alpine plants, and, when in full blossom, they are often nearly
an inch wide.
The rhododendron of Switzerland, in those places where it grows, at
the elevation of between eight hundred and a thousand toises,
belongs to a climate, the mean temperature of which is +2 and-1
degrees, like that of the plains of Lapland. In this zone the
coldest months are-4, and-10 degrees: the hottest, 12 and 7
degrees. Thermometrical observations, made at the same heights and
in the same latitudes, render it probable that, at the Pejual of
the Silla, one thousand toises above the Caribbean Sea, the mean
temperature of the air is still 17 or 18 degrees; and that the
thermometer keeps, in the coolest season, between 15 and 20 degrees
in the day, and in the night between 10 and 12 degrees.
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