fine Ccelogynes, whose
large clusters of yellow
flowers ornament the
gloomiest forests, and
that most extraordinary
plant, Yanda Lowii,
which last is particularly
abundant near
some hot springs at
the foot of the Penin-
jauh Mountain. It
grows on the lower
branches of trees, and j
its strange pendant I
flower - spikes often t
hang down so as almost
to reach the ground.
These are generally six or eight feet
long,bearing large and handsome flowers O' o o
three inches across, and varying in
colour from orange to red, with deep
purple-red spots. I measured one spike,
which reached the extraordinary length
of nine feet eight inches, and bore
thirty-six flowers, spirally arranged
upon a slender thread-like stalk. Spe,
VANDA LOWII.
cimens grown in our English hot-houses have produced
flower-spikes of equal length, and with a much larger
number of blossoms.
Elowers were scarce,, as is usual in equatorial forests,
and it was only at rare intervals that I met with anything
striking. A few fine climbers were sometimes seen,
especially a handsome crimson and yellow iEschynanthus,
and a tine leguminous plant with clusters of large Cassialike
flowers of a rich purple colour. 0 nce I found a
number of small Anonaceous trees of the genus Polyalthea,
producing a most striking effect in the gloomy forest
shades. They were about thirty feet high, and their
slender trunks were covered with large star-like crimson
flowers, which clustered over them like garlands, and
resembled some artificial decoration more than a natural
product. (See illustration, next page.)
The forests abound with gigantic trees with cylindrical,
buttressed, or furrowed stems, while occasionally the
traveller comes upon a wonderful fig-tree, whose trunk is
itself a forest of stems and aerial roots. Still more rarely
are found trees which appear to have begun growing in
mid-air, and from the same point send out wide-spreading
branches above and a complicated pyramid of roots descending
for seventy or eighty feet to the ground below,
and so spreading on every side, that one can stand in the
very centre with the trunk of the tree immediately over-
VOL. I. K