Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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We Had Not Heard Thunder More Than Once Or Twice At Atures, And The
Vegetation Everywhere Displayed That Vigorous Aspect, That Brilliancy
Of Colour, Seen On The Coast Only At The End Of The Rainy Season.
The
old trees were decorated with beautiful orchideas,* (* Cymbidium
violaceum, Habenaria angustifolia, etc.) yellow bannisterias,
blue-flowered bignonias, peperomias, arums, and pothoses.
A single
trunk displays a greater variety of vegetable forms than are contained
within an extensive space of ground in our countries. Close to the
parasite plants peculiar to very hot climates we observed, not without
surprise, in the centre of the torrid zone, and near the level of the
sea, mosses resembling in every respect those of Europe. We gathered,
near the Great Cataract of Atures, that fine specimen of Grimmia* with
fontinalis leaves, which has so much fixed the attention of botanists.
(* Grimmia fontinaloides. See Hooker's Musci Exotici, 1818 tab. 2. The
learned author of the Monography of the Jungermanniae (Mr. Jackson
Hooker), with noble disinterestedness, published at his own expense,
in London, the whole collection of cryptogamous plants, brought by
Bonpland and Humboldt from the equinoctial regions of America.) It is
suspended to the branches of the loftiest trees. Of the phaenerogamous
plants, those which prevail in the woody spots are the mimosa, ficus,
and laurinea. This fact is the more characteristic as, according to
the observations of Mr. Brown, the laurineae appear to be almost
entirely wanting on the opposite continent, in the equinoctial part of
Africa. Plants that love humidity adorn the scenery surrounding the
cataracts. We there find in the plains groups of heliconias and other
scitamineae with large and glossy leaves, bamboos, and the three
palm-trees, the murichi, jagua, and vadgiai, each of which forms a
separate group. The murichi, or mauritia with scaly fruits, is the
celebrated sago-tree of the Guaraon Indians. It has palmate leaves,
and has no relation to the palm-trees with pinnate and curled leaves;
to the jagua, which appears to be a species of the cocoa-tree; or to
the vadgiai or cucurito, which may be assimilated to the fine species
Oreodoxa. The cucurito, which is the palm most prevalent around the
cataracts of the Atures and Maypures, is remarkable for its
stateliness. Its leaves, or rather its palms, crown a trunk of eighty
or one hundred feet high; their direction is almost perpendicular when
young, as well as at their full growth, the points only being
incurvated. They look like plumes of the most soft and verdant green.
The cucurito, the pirijao, the fruit of which resembles the apricot,
the Oreodoxa regia or palma real of the island of Cuba, and the
ceroxylon of the high Andes, are the most majestic of all the
palm-trees we saw in the New World. As we advance toward the temperate
zone, the plants of this family decrease in size and beauty. What a
difference between the species we have just mentioned, and the
date-tree of the East, which unfortunately has become to the landscape
painters of Europe the type of a group of palm-trees!
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