Tropical vegetation

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are huge points of rock which time and nature are clothing with velvet garments of moss. Layer after layer of dust settles in the hollows, the rains beat it down, and the birds bring seeds. The tropical vegetation spreads out luxuriantly in thickets and underbrush, while curtains of interwoven vines hang from the branches of the trees and twine about their roots or spread along the ground, as if Flora were not yet satisfied but must place plant above plant. ”

“ From every foothold springs a dense growth of tropical vegetation and from every crevice hang vines and shrubbery swaying like green curtains in the breeze, and dipping their foliage in the river. Higher up are giant trees, covered with thousands of beautiful orchids, which cast their shadows in the deep blue waters underneath. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 fine tropical flowering-plants cultivated in our hothouses have been culled from the most varied regions, and therefore give a most erroneous idea of their abundance in any one region. Many of them are very rare, others extremely local, while a considerable number inhabit the more arid regions of Africa and India, in which tropical vegetation does not exhibit itself in its usual luxuriance. ”

“ The most luxuriant vegetation of a tropical landscape cannot unfold as great wealth of form, while in the variety and splendour of colour it would stand far behind this garden landscape, which is strangely composed exclusively of animals, and not of plants; for, characteristic as the luxuriant development of vegetation of the temperate zones is of the sea bottom, the fullness and multiplicity of the marine Fauna is just as prominent in the regions of the tropics. ”

“ It is very easy to see what has led to this erroneous view of the nature of tropical vegetation. In our hothouses and at our flower-shows we gather together the finest flowering plants from the most distant regions of the earth, and exhibit them in a proximity to each other which never occurs in nature. A hundred distinct plants, all with bright, or strange, or gorgeous flowers, make a wonderful show when brought together ”

“ ENTRANCE TO RIO HARBOUR.
growth and vegetation, the wild, disordered beauty of nature’s arrangements, the rich-growing wilderness of tropical greenery that springs up everywhere is past belief. When examined closer, the vegetation upon the islands and the mountain slopes is bewildering in its profusion. The colour of all nature, under the tropical sun which shines through the misty haze of the moist heated atmosphere, is full of mystery and charm. The forms that the giant trees assume, with innumerable parasites clinging to them, are indescribable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another result is that the superabundant moisture, falling upon a soil under the influence of a burning sun, produces an extent and luxuriance of tropical vegetation such as is nowhere else to be seen on the surface of the earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Far different is it when we follow the same zone of elevation into the interior of the mountains, along the courses of the larger rivers, which, owing to the great depths of their valleys, carry a tropical flora into the very heart of the mountain region. The sheltered and confined beds of these rivers, where the two great requisites for tropical vegetation, heat and humidity, are at their maximum, often afford the finest specimens of forest scenery, varied by an admixture of the temperate forms of vegetable life, which here descend to their lowest level. ”

“ 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 gardens and parks are filled with the most luxurious tropical plants, while birds of brilliant plumage flit about in the air or rest on the undulating masses of foliage. Gigantic trees of a species before unknown are seen on every side, here grouped into shady avenues, there dotted about in the parks and gardens, and surrounded by smaller but not less beautiful masses of vegetation. In some places the ground is coloured like a rainbow by the infinite variety of tropical plants, while the boughs of the trees are loaded down to the ground by the most luscious fruits. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Without beginning and without end, the perpetual motion of tropical vegetation is but slightly influenced by the weather. Who is to say that this plant is early or that late, when early or late, like Kipling's east and west, are one? It is not that all flowering trees and plants are of continuous growth. Many do have their appointed seasons, producing flowers and fruit according to date and in orderly progress, leaving to other species the duty of maintaining a consecutive, unbroken series which defies the mechanism of cold countries with their cast-iron calendars. ”

“ In the forests all trees, and shrubs, and creepers struggle upwards to the light, there to expand their blossoms and ripen their fruit. Hence, perhaps, the abundance of climbers which make use of their more sturdy companions to reach this necessary of vegetable [p. 64] life. Yet even on the upper surface of the forest, fully exposed to the light and heat of the tropical sun, there is no special development of coloured flowers. When from some elevated point you can gaze down upon an unbroken expanse of woody vegetation, it often happens that not a single patch of bright colour can be discerned. ”

“ Tropical families and forms successively vanish with an increase of distance from the equator, and new phases of vegetation mark the transition from hot to temperate climates. Vividly green meadows, abounding with tender herbs, replace the tall rigid grasses which form the impenetrable jungle; and instead of forests composed of towering evergreen trees, woods of the deciduous class appear, which cast their leaves in winter, and hybernate in the colder season, the oak, ash, elm, maple, beech, lime, alder, birch, and sycamore. ”

“ The arid sands are succeeded by fertile and well-cultivated plains, fields of sugar-cane, Indian corn, bananas, goyaviers, and other productions of the tropical flora. By degrees the gloomy black oaks and pines, which only grow on the mountains, become rarer, and eventually disappear entirely, to make room for poplars, fan-palms, calabash trees, sumachs, Peru trees, and thousands of others, which proudly wave their superb crowns over the spontaneous vegetation that surrounds them. ”

“ THE TROPICS AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT The growth of vegetation in tropical lands is a revelation of what rich soil aided by a hot sun and an abundance of water can do. There are localities in the world where is found the rich soil, but either warmth or water is wanting and they are comparatively barren. ”

“ But if I have excluded many that I know to be unsuitable, every type of the vegetation of northern and temperate countries has been searched for valuable kinds; and as no tropical or subtropical subject that is really effective has been omitted, the result is the most complete selection that is possible from the plants now in cultivation. ”

“ The luxuriant vegetation of the tropics throughout the entire year affords so much concealment, that colour may there be safely developed to a much greater extent than in climates where the trees are bare in winter, during which season the struggle for existence is most severe, and even the slightest disadvantage may prove fatal. ”

“ Three vegetable forms of peculiar beauty are proper to the tropical zone in all parts of the globe; Palms, Plantains or Bananas, and Arborescent Ferns. It is where heat and moisture are combined that vegetation is most vigorous, and its forms most varied; and hence South America excels the rest of the tropical world in the number and beauty of her species of Palms. ”