Tropical plant

“ The grey Spanish moss hangs from the green branches, and reeds, rushes, and all kinds of long tropical grasses form an impenetrable jungle down to the water’s edge—nay,{215} encroach upon the water’s self and sway gently on its surface; and flowers of immense size and brilliant colours are abundant everywhere; they spread over the surface of the water, and flourish on the vines, on the trees, on everything or on nothing, for we catch an occasional glimpse of the mysterious golden-hued air plant among the luxuriant green foliage. ”

“ Every vegetable and plant are so peculiarly significant of the low latitudes, that we must pause for a moment to notice them.
The tall, stately palm, the king of the tropical forest, with its tufted head, like a bunch of ostrich feathers, bending its majestic form here and there over the verdant and luxuriant undergrowth, the mahogany tree, the stout lignumvit‘, the banana, the fragrant and beautiful orange and lemon, and the long, impregnable hedge of the dagger aloe, all go to show us that we are in the sunny clime of the tropics. ”

“ When we have succeeded in naturalizing some tropical plant in a temperate climate, nothing prevents us from attempting gradually to extend its distribution to higher latitudes, or to greater elevations above the level of the sea, allowing equal quantities of time, or an equal number of generations, for habituating the species to successive increments of cold. ”

“ From their home in subtropical Asia the lemon, lime, and orange have invaded every part of the tropical world. Once, in the most remote part of the Sierra Maestra Mountains in eastern Cuba, where only by the most arduous cutting could a passage through the dense tropical forest be forced, the writer found within a few square rods an orange and a tree from tropical India. Such cases could be multiplied, and all over the world we see this endless struggle of plants to conquer new territory, often at the expense of existing vegetation. ”

“ Some tropical forests exhibit dense foliage from the forest floor to the topmost leafy layer; and the traveler finds the mass of foliage almost impenetrable. Other tropical forests afford a free passage and a clear outlook. It is obvious that tropical forests will eventually be subdivided into plant associations; but the difficulties of determining the relative abundance of the species of plants in the upper layers of tropical rain and monsoon forests are very great. ”

“ The leaves are extremely irregular in their form, and, when the plant is in a sickly state, the older ones are subject to be slightly blotched, on the under side. Few tropical plants that thrive with so little heat, or care; nevertheless, we have not any hopes, of its ever becoming a proper subject for the green-house; but as yet our experience on that point will not permit us to decide upon it. It should be planted in a mixture of leaf mould, rotten dung, and loam; and may be propagated by cuttings. ”

“ In the Northern states the growing-season is not sufficiently long to get best results from such tropical plants as tomato, egg-plant and pepper if the seeds are sown outside. A longer growing-season is afforded to these plants by raising them in a greenhouse or hotbed, and transplanting them to the garden when the earth has warmed up and danger of frost is over. ”

“ With some kinds of bamboo growing over two feet a day, and a eucalyptus tree in Java forty-five feet in three years—and these are not isolated cases—the tremendous annual increase in the amount of vegetation can be glimpsed. Of course not all the plants in them grow at any such rate, but the great heat and abundant moisture does make tropical rain forests irresistible in their power. Plantation owners, and railways that have been run through such forests, wage constant warfare against the recapture by the teeming forest of man’s intrusion of it. ”

“ Tropical rainforest is the climatic vegetation in the tropics wherever rainfall and low temperatures are not limiting factors. But any definition of tropical rainforest begs the question: 'what is a forest?' As we will show, it is far more than a collection of trees; all forests contain non-tree plant communities such as "tree" ferns and bamboo, and the forest ecosystem is comprised of plants, animals, microbes and soils and their interrelationships. ”

“ The tropical forests have something growing wherever a plant can find foothold—a population in which the struggle for food is secondary to that for light and air, and yet the soil supporting this vegetation is marvelously rich. Every leaf that falls remains where it fell until in the warm, moist, half-lighted forest it becomes a little heap of mold. The bacteria of decomposition require warmth and moisture for their life; light is deleterious to them, but they thrive in the dense shade of the jungle. ”

“ Tropical plants, as is well known, cannot be cultivated beyond their natural limits, except under circumstances where their natural conditions are nearly imitated by the gardener; and even in our stoves and hot-houses, these plants do not compare in vigor with their fellows that luxuriate in the hot and steaming atmosphere of the tropics, under the stronger light of such a clime as is natural to them. ”

“ In a general way, there is a measure of fixity to plant distribution. Certain plants have elected [Pg 41] the tropics as their home; and only under the greatest stress of circumstance can they be induced to go elsewhere.
Tropical heat and moisture make for luxuriance of vegetation. There is a much greater variety there than in the North. Woody Vines climb the tallest trunks, where they intermingle their leaves and blossoms with those of their host. Gorgeous Air Plants beautify and perfume the forest. ”

“ Where light does enter the forest, the high intensity of the tropical sun causes an explosion of growth: in the interior, regeneration of many plant species only occurs with the collapse of a dead mature tree, cutting a slash of light through the canopy to the forest floor. ”

“ Exotic palms, the bamboo, the sugar-cane, and the cotton plant grow in the open, and tropical mosses and orchids hang from the trees. Outside on the breezy downs one may drink in pure ozone from the Atlantic, and revel in an atmosphere untainted by microbes or bacilli. ”

“ Where the character of the soil is favorable, trees and smaller plants grow in profusion of species and, especially in the southern part, with tropical luxuriance. Some of the common species are magnolia, live oak, persimmon, sweet-gum, passion-flower, pitcher-plant, hibiscus, and wistaria. ”

“ The tropical forest, which represents the maximum of plant luxuriance, stimulated by the heaviest rainfall, greatest heat and strongest light. These divisions merge one into the other, and admit of almost indefinite subdivision, while they are subject to great modifications by human interference in clearing and cultivating. Plants exhibit the controlling power of environment to a high degree, and thus vegetation is usually in close adjustment to the bolder geographical features of a region. ”

“ The traveller Belt, in his Naturalist in Nicaragua, mentions that those trees which had been entirely drained of their rubber by the Indian gatherers were riddled by beetles, and in an unhealthy, dying condition.
Almost all the important rubber plants are found in wet, unhealthy, tropical forests; they are by far the most important jungle product in West Africa, as well as on the Congo River and in the Amazon valley. ”

“ What I don't know about tropical plants and trees, as to their names and such, would fill a shelf in a library, but I can testify that I met and wrestled with at least a hundred varieties of vegetable obstacles in the next half hour, from invisible trees that took advantage of the black darkness to get squarely in the way to thorny ground palms that bayoneted me in passing and tangles of vine and brier that caught and tripped me at every step. ”

“ The plant being decidedly tropical in character, the seedlings should not be transplanted into the open ground until the commencement of summer weather; when they may be set out in rows two feet apart, and two feet asunder in the rows. ”

“ In the tropical zone Myrtaceæ, Leguminosæ, and tree-ferns are common, and the air is near saturation during a great part of the year. Vaccinia are found at from 5000 to 8000, and snow occasionally falls at 6000 feet. A sub-tropical vegetation penetrates far into the interior along the banks of the great rivers, and tree-ferns, rattans, plantains, and other tropical plants are found at 5000 feet, in the Ratong valley. ”

“ The tropics embrace the largest land areas in the world, and are richer by a thousand times in species of plants and animals than all the rest of the earth in a lump put together. That richness necessarily results from the fierceness of the competition. Now among this enormous mass of tropical plants it naturally happens that some have finer flowers than any temperate species; while as to the animals and birds, they are undoubtedly, on the whole, both larger and handsomer than the fauna of colder climates. ”

“ Instead of being scantily occupied by such of the tropical plants as could support a stunted and precarious life in ungenial climes, they are abundantly stocked with a multitude of vegetables which appear to be constructed expressly for them, inasmuch as these species can no more flourish at the equator than the equatorial species can in these temperate regions. ”

“ The fossil species of this period, to the number of 133, begin to resemble those which enrich our landscapes. Already tropical plants are associated with the vegetables of temperate climates; but they are not yet the same as existing species. Oaks grow side by side with Palms, the Birch with Bamboos, Elms with Laurels, the Maples are united to the Combretaceæ, to the Leguminales, and to the tropical Rubiaceæ. The forms of the species, belonging to temperate climates, are rather American than European. ”

“ Though littoral floras are as a rule chiefly made up of two sets of plants, one brought through the agency of the currents from regions outside, and the other derived from the inland flora of the region concerned, the proportion of the two varies much amongst temperate and tropical strand-floras, the current-borne plants forming the majority in the tropics, and those from the inland flora of the region prevailing in the temperate zone. ”

“ All the commoner forms of tropical vegetation abound. Palms, bamboos, bananas, orchids and the other plants familiar to those who know the tropics grow everywhere, and the gardens in Kuching exhibit a wonderful profusion of rare and beautiful trees and shrubs. Moreover, the stems of the palms and the trunks and branches of the other trees are laden with ferns, orchids and other epiphytes in bewildering profusion, while creepers with brilliant flowers of every hue are draped over the fences and clamber up the trees. ”

“ One does not behold the graceful waving of the cocoa palm, the broad and vivid green foliage of the plantain, nor the beautiful luxuriance of a tropical vegetation, which delight the vision of the wearied voyager on a first approach to a tropical region, where the soil teems with cultivation, or a profuse natural vegetation extending from the loftiest mountains even to the ocean’s brink. ”

“ OF all the graceful, beautiful and bizarre plants that grow in the tropics none are more graceful and none give such character to tropical vegetation as do the palms. Varied in form and size, adapting themselves to a wide range of elevation, sweeping up from the sandy shores of the sea across marshes, flood-plains and well-watered forests, over barren and thirsty deserts to the subalpine slopes of lofty mountains, they are, above all plants, the ones that give character and picturesqueness to every tropical landscape. ”

“ There is such a superabundance of vegetation, the plants so crammed together, one on the top of the other, as it were, all untidy, fat with moisture, and of such deep, coarse, blackish-green tones that they give the scenery a heavy leaden appearance instead of the charming beauty of more delicate tints of less tropical vegetation. ”

“ It is on the roadside and on the rivers' banks that we see all the beauty of the tropical vegetation. There we find a mass of bushes and shrubs and trees of every height, rising over one another, all exposed to the bright light and the fresh air; and putting forth, within reach, their flowers and fruit, which, in the forest, only grow far up on the topmost branches. Bright flowers and green foliage combine their charms, and climbers with their flowery festoons cover over the bare and decaying stems. ”

“ The absence of heat with plenty of light is shown in the vegetation of mountainous districts, where there is great size, but the absence of leafy expansion, as in the pine tribe (fig. 5) . Where both light and heat are deficient, nothing but fungi, mosses, and lichens of the most stunted nature will grow. Experiments in hothouses prove that although tropical plants be supplied with their proper amount of heat, yet without the very greatest supply of light that can be obtained, they do not come to any degree of perfection. ”

“ Here we had at last the tropical vegetation in its fullest glory. Nothing can exceed the prodigality and luxuriance of nature when a vertical sun beats down on fields and forests and jungles that have been drenched for months in rain. Vegetation of every kind springs up, as in the temperate zone it appears only when forced in heated conservatories (as in the Duke of Devonshire's gardens at Chatsworth) , and the land waves with these luxuriant growths. In the forest creeping plants wind round the tall trunks, and vines hang in festoons from tree to tree. ”