Tropical tree

“ 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. ”

“ There were clumps of palms, there were giant tree-ferns, there were wild bananas, and tall, stately trees all coated with thick green moss from top to root, impenetrable thickets of broad-leafed plants, and beads of moisture everywhere, besides tiny rillets oozing out every few yards from under the matted tangle of vivid green and bedewed undergrowth. It was the best specimen of a tropical conservatory I had ever seen. It could not be excelled if art had lent its aid to improve nature. In every tree-fork and along the great horizontal branches grew the loveliest ferns and lichens ”

“ Rarely is the natural tropical rainforest a nightmare 'jungle' of vines and thick undergrowth. More often the dense tree canopy above ensures that light intensity on the forest floor is limited, so that there is little undergrowth and passage is easy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 forest is full of climbing plants bent upon reaching the sunlight. But some climb by coiling round the trunk of a tree like a snake, some swarm up it by holding on with claws, some ascend by means of adhering aerial roots, and some reach what they want by pushing through a tangle of branches spreading out arms and hauling themselves up. And when plants have attained maturity and flowered, the flowers employ numberless ways of attracting insects for the purpose of fertilisation. ”

“ As these often overtop the hedges or bushes on which they grow and fall down by the weight of their leaves, so the lianas of tropical countries overtop the largest and tallest trees and, descending to the ground in vast festoons, pass from tree to tree and bind the whole forest in a maze of network, often by cables as thick as those of a ship. ”

“ Between their rough trunks cypress scrub, sturdy cabbage palms, mangrove, custard apple and other varieties of tropical trees found space to grow; and between the trunks of the smaller trees was a tangle of palmetto, saw grass, jungle vine, Virginia creeper and the beautiful moon vine and its dainty flowers. Blue, yellow and red flowers peeped from the tangle. Air plants bearing in their hearts scarlet orchids clung to the trunks of hoary live oak, and the Spanish moss, fragile, listless, drooping, hung like delicate drapery over all. ”

“ The whole forest has a tropical luxuriance, the abundant vegetation being well sustained by a rich soil of sandy loam, with a layer of marl and decomposed shells. Besides the orange, we see the live-oak, magnolia, hickory, bay-tree, and many other native woods, interspersed with grape-vines measuring three feet in circumference, climbing to the tops of the tallest trees, forming a dense shade, where sunbeams can rarely or ever penetrate. ”

“ Whenever we happen to come upon a spot where the trees stand back and permit the rays of the sun to penetrate, orchids and other tropical blooms can be seen in profusion, dangling often from the tree tops. ”

“ The palms are the most familiar of all tropical trees and a landscape hardly seems tropical without these graceful trees. It is doubtful if there is a single class of the tropical trees 95so essential to the native as the palms. Houses, timber, firewood, fodder, food and drink, needles and threads, wax and drugs are all obtained from palms of various species. The Royal palm is the most graceful and majestic of all, and there is no more imposing scene of arboreal beauty than the long avenues of these beautiful trees so common in the American tropics. ”

“ The Climbing Plants of the Equatorial Forests.—Next to the trees themselves the most conspicuous and remarkable feature of the tropical forests is the profusion of woody creepers and climbers that everywhere meet the eye. They twist around the slenderer stems, they drop down pendent from the branches, they stretch tightly from tree to tree, they hang looped in huge festoons from bough to bough, they twist in great serpentine coils or lie in entangled masses on the ground. Some are slender, smooth, and root-like; others are rugged or knotted ”

“ More and more amazing also is the interminable interweaving of roots: the whole forest is thus spun together—not underground so much as overground. These tropical trees do not strike deep, although able to climb steep slopes of porphyry and basalt: they send out great far-reaching webs of roots,—each such web interknotting with others all round it, and these in turn with further ones;—while between their reticulations lianas ascend and descend: and a nameless multitude of shrubs as tough as india-rubber push up, together with mosses, grasses, and ferns. ”

“ The great plain, some five hundred miles in extent, through which it runs here, is covered for the most part with dense tropical jungle, abounding in rare and valuable forms of plant-life. Tree ferns, and many varieties of orchids yet undescribed, are common, as well as the wild coffee shrub, several kinds of plants yielding India-rubber, mahogany, and other splendid timber-trees. ”

“ An English forest generally consists of one, or, at the most, four or five varieties of tree—the oak, the pine, the ash, the birch, the beech—with an undergrowth of wild nuts and bramble, and a still lower one of bracken fern and grass. In a tropical forest almost every tree and shrub is wholly different from its neighbour. ”

“ The leaves put on their best attire while budding instead of falling—passing, as they come to maturity, through different shades of red, brown, and green. The majority of tropical trees bear small flowers. The most conspicuous trees are the palms, to which the prize of beauty has been given by the concurrent voice of all ages. ”

“ To the traveler its tall cylindrical trunk, slightly curved near the base, often sixty to eighty or more feet in height, seems to impart as nothing else a tropical character to the landscape. Few tropical trees can surpass it in utility. In some of the regions where it grows it supplies to the inhabitants almost all the necessaries of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ About forty species are distinguished, the largest number occurring in the tropical regions of southern Asia, and in China and Japan. Of the four species found within the territory of the United States one only is a small tree. Many of the species are rich in bitter and astringent principles, and are drastic and slightly stimulant. Many are valued as ornaments of gardens and parks. ”

“ Several other tropical trees possess, like the banyan, the property of producing adventitious roots which spring from the trunk or branches which implant themselves in the soil; but not one enjoys an equal power of reproduction and multiplication. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dazzling sun shone on the white road, the white buildings visible up and down the street, the white walls enclosing their gardens, and the greenery and colours of the trees within them. For from what we could see from our window we immediately voted tropical vegetation quite up to advertisement: whole trees of gaudy red or yellow or bright orange blossoms, flowering vines, flowering shrubs, peered over the walls or through the fences; and behind them rose great mangoes or the slenderer shafts of bananas and cocoanut palms.
Up and down wandered groups of various sorts of natives. ”

“ Its blue is less mysterious and deep than the closed gentian’s, and yet how many name it the cup of autumn delight!
In the woods where leafless boughs give them blue sky at last are revealed in quaint perfection the ferneries of the moss: palm trees towering higher than a snail’s house, gallant green plumes with cornelians at the tip, vast tropical forests spreading for long inches, gray trailing rivers [58] and orange cliffs of lichen, leagues of delicate jungle lost under a fallen leaf. A beetle clad in shining mail presses through the wilderness. ”

“ Among the plants are wood-sorrel, bramble, nut, spiraea, and various other South European and North American genera.
The climate is no longer stifling and the leeches have disappeared. We miss many beauties of the tropical forest. But, with the vegetation more and more resembling what we are accustomed to in Europe, we are feeling more at home. The path winds through cool and pleasant woods, following the varying contour of the mountain-sides. We are no longer oppressed by the strangeness of the life around us. At almost every turn we come across something new yet not wholly unfamiliar. ”

“ The natural tropical forest, running up a great ravine into the mountains, is intersected by broad and winding paths that lead from one fair view to another by mossy flights of rough stone steps. Through a rift in the hillside, down an abyss of heavy, wet foliage of a green so intense that the eye can scarcely conceive its depth of colour, cataracts of water leap through the abiding shade, through the ever-growing, ever-dying processes of nature, down into a pool whose depths reflect the blue glimmering sky and the vivid green of over-hanging vines in opalescent sheen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A traveler through a tropical jungle may see very few flowers and be inclined to disparage it. It is necessary to go on adjacent rising ground and look down where trees and trailers are exhibiting their gorgeousness. Unlike the coarse weeds which form so much of the undergrowth in Japan, everything which grows in these forests rejoices the eye by its form or color; but things which hurt and sting and may kill, lurk amidst all the beauties. A creeping plant with very beautiful waxy leaves, said by Captain Murray to be vanilla, grows up many of the trees. ”

“ You cannot imagine how crowded together this tropical vegetation is. There is not room for half of it on the ground, so it seeks and finds its home high up on the strong, majestic trees which bear it up into the sunshine, where, indeed one has to look for most of the flowers. ”

“ The peculiar charm of a tropical forest is increased by the mystery of its impenetrable thicket. Within that dense, matted shrubbery, and behind that phalanx of trees, the imagination of the traveler sees all manner of four-footed beasts and creeping things. Tropical vegetation is of fresher verdure, more luxuriant and succulent, and adorned with larger and more shining leaves than the vegetation of the north. The leaves are not shed periodically—a character common, not only to the equator, but also to the whole southern hemisphere. ”