presents to us the greatest extension in length (longitudinal axis):
I say among tree vegetation, because, as we have already remarked,
among oceanic Algæ, Macrocystis pyrifera, which is found between the
coast of California and 68° S. lat., often attains from 370 to 400
(about 400 to 430 Eng.) feet in length. Of Coniferæ, (setting aside
the six Araucarias of Brazil, Chili, New Holland, Norfolk Island, and
New Caledonia), the loftiest are those which belong to the northern
temperate zone. As in the family of Palms we found the most gigantic,
the Ceroxylon andicola, above 180 French (192 English) feet high, in
the temperate mountain climate of the Andes, so the loftiest Coniferæ
belong, in the northern hemisphere, to the temperate north-west coast
of America and to the Rocky Mountains (lat. 40°-52°); and in the
southern hemisphere to New Zealand, Tasmania or Van Diemen Island,
the south of Chili and Patagonia (between 43° and 50° latitude). The
most gigantic forms belong to the genera of Pinus, Sequoia (Endl.),
Araucaria, and Dacrydium. I propose to name only those species which
not only attain but often exceed 200 French feet (213 Eng.) In order to
afford a standard of comparison, it should be remarked that in Europe
the tallest Red and White Pines, the latter especially, attain about
150 or 160 (160-170 Eng.) feet; that, for example, in Silesia the Pine
of the Lampersdorf Forest near Frankenstein enjoys great celebrity,
although, with a circumference of 17 English feet, its height is only
153 Prussian, or 148 French, or 158 English feet. (Compare Ratzeburg,
Forstreisen, 1844, S. 287.)
* * * * *
Pinus grandis (Douglas) in New California attains 224 English feet.
Pinus frémontiana (Endl.), also in New California, probably attains
the same stature as the preceding. (Torrey and Frémont, Report of the
Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1844, p. 319.)
Dacrydium cupressinum (Solander), from New Zealand, 213 English feet.
Pinus lambertiana (Dougl.), in North-west America, 224-235 English feet.
Araucaria excelsa (R. Brown), the Cupressus columnaris of Forster, in
Norfolk Island and the surrounding rocky islets, 181-224 English feet.
The six species of Araucaria which have become known to us hitherto,
fall, according to Endlicher, into two groups:
_a._ The American group (Brazil and Chili): A. brasiliensis (Rich.),
between 15° and 25° 8. lat.; and A. imbricata (Pavon), between 35° and
50° S. lat., the latter growing to 234-260 English feet.
_b._ The Australian group: A. bidwilli (Hook.) and A. cunninghami
(Ait.) on the east side of New Holland; A. excelsa on Norfolk Island,
and A. cookii (R. Brown) in New Caledonia. Corda, Presl. Göppert, and
Endlicher, have already discovered five species of Araucarias belonging
to the ancient world in the lias, in chalk, and in beds of lignite
(Endlicher, Coniferæ fossiles, p. 301.).
Pinus Douglasii (Sabine), in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains and on
the banks of the Columbia River (north lat. 48°-52°). The meritorious
Scotch botanist from whom this tree is named perished in 1833 by a
dreadful death in collecting plants in the Sandwich Islands, where he
had arrived from New California. He fell inadvertently into a pit in
which a fierce bull belonging to the cattle which have become wild
had previously fallen, and was gored and trampled to death. By exact
measurement a stem of Pinus Douglasii was 57-1/2 English feet in girth
at 3 feet above the ground, and its height was 245 English feet. (See
Journal of the Royal Institution, 1826, p. 325.)
Pinus trigona (Rafinesque), on the western declivity of the Rocky
Mountains, described in Lewis and Clarke’s Travels to the Source of the
Missouri River and across the American Continent to the Pacific Ocean
(1804-1806), 1814, p. 456. This gigantic Fir was measured with great
care; the trunks were often 38 to 45 English feet in girth, 6 feet
above the ground: one tree was 300 English feet high, and the first 192
feet were without any division into branches.
Pinus Strobus grows in the eastern parts of the United States of North
America, especially on the east of the Mississipi; but it is found
again in the Rocky Mountains from the sources of the Columbia to Mount
Hood, or from 43° to 54° N. lat. It is called in Europe the Weymouth
Pine and in North America the White Pine: its ordinary height does
not exceed 160 to 192 Eng. feet, but several trees of 250 to 266 Eng.
feet have been seen in New Hampshire. (Dwight, Travels, Vol. i. p. 36;
and Emerson’s Report on the Trees and Shrubs growing naturally in the
Forests of Massachusetts, 1846, p. 60-66.)
Sequoia gigantea (Endl.), Condylocarpus (Sal.) from New California;
like Pinus trigona, about 300 English feet high.
* * * * *
The nature of the soil, and the circumstances of heat and moisture on
which the nourishment of plants depend, no doubt influence the degree
to which they flourish, and the increase in the number of individuals
in a species; but the gigantic height attained by the trunks of a few
among the many other nearly allied species of the same genus, depends
not on soil or climate; but, in the vegetable as well as in the animal
kingdom, on a specific organisation and inherent natural disposition. I
will cite as the greatest contrast to the Araucaria imbricata of Chili,
the Pinus Douglasii of the Columbia River, and the Sequoia gigantea of
New California, which is from 245 to 300 Eng. feet in height,--not a
plant taken from among a vegetation stunted by cold either of latitude
or elevation, as is the case with the small Willow-tree, two inches in
height, (Salix arctica),--but a small phænogamous plant belonging to
the fine climate of the southern tropic in the Brazilian province of
Goyaz. The moss-like Tristicha hypnoïdes, from the monocotyledonous
family of the Podostemeæ, hardly reaches the height of 3 lines
(27/100ths, or less than three-tenths of an English inch.) “En
traversant le Rio Claro dans la Province de Goyaz,” says an excellent
observer, Auguste de St.-Hilaire, “j’aperçus sur une pierre une plante
dont la tige n’avoit pas plus de trois lignes de haut et que je pris
d’abord pour une mousse. C’étoit cependant une plante phanérogame, le
Tristicha hypnoïdes, pourvue d’organes sexuels comme nos chênes et les
arbres gigantesques qui à l’entour élevaient leur cimes majestueuses.”
(Auguste de St.-Hilaire, Morphologie Végétale, 1840, p. 98.)
Besides the height of their stems, the length, breadth, and position
of the leaves and fruit, the form of the ramification aspiring
or horizontal, and spreading out like a canopy or umbrella,--the
gradations of colour, from a fresh green or silvery grey to a
blackish-brown, all give to Coniferæ a peculiar physiognomy and
character. The needles of Douglas’s Pinus lambertiana from North-west
America are five French inches long; those of Pinus excelsa of Wallich,
on the southern declivity of the Himalaya, near Katmandoo, seven French
inches; and those of P. longifolia (Roxb.), from the mountains of
Kashmeer, above a French foot long. In one and the same species the
length of the leaves or needles varies in the most striking manner
from the influence of soil, air, and elevation above the level of
the sea. In travelling in an east and west direction through eighty
degrees of longitude (above 3040 geographical miles), from the mouth
of the Scheldt through Europe and the north of Asia to Bogoslowsk in
the northern Ural and Barnaul beyond the Obi, I have found differences
in the length of the needles of our common Fir (Pinus sylvestris) so
great, that sometimes a traveller may be misled by the shortness and
rigidity of the leaves, to think that he has discovered a new species
allied to the Mountain Pine, P. rotundata (Link), P. uncinata (Ram.)
Link has justly remarked (Linnæa, Bd. xv. 1841, S. 489) that such
instances may be regarded as transitions to Ledebour’s P. sibirica of
the Altai.
In the Mexican highlands I have looked with particular pleasure on the
delicate cheerful green of the Ahuahuete, Taxodium distichum (Rich.),
Cupressus disticha (Linn.), which, however, is much given to shedding
its leaves. In this tropical region the above-mentioned tree, (of which
the Aztec name signifies water-drum, from _atl_, water, and _huehuetl_,
a drum, the trunk swelling to a great thickness), flourishes 5400 and
7200 (5755 and 7673 English) feet above the level of the sea, while in
the United States of North America it is found in the low grounds of
the cypress swamps of Louisiana, in the 43d parallel. In the Southern
States of North America the Taxodium distichum (Cyprès chauve) reaches,
as in the Mexican highlands, the height of 120 (128 English) feet,
and the enormous thickness of 30 to 37 (32 to 39 English) feet, in
diameter measured near the ground. (Emerson, Report on the Forests,
pp. 49 and 101). The roots present the striking phenomenon of woody
excrescences which project from 3 to 4-1/2 feet above the earth,
and are conical and rounded, and sometimes tabular. Travellers have
compared these excrescences in places where they are very numerous to
the grave tablets in a Jewish burying-ground. Auguste de St. Hilaire
remarks with much acuteness:--“Ces excroissances du Cyprès chauve,
ressemblant à des bornes, peuvent être regardées comme des exostoses,
et comme elles vivent dans l’air, il s’en échapperoit sans doute des
bourgeons adventifs, si la nature du tissu des plantes conifères ne
s’opposoit au développement des germes cachés qui donnent naissance à
ces sortes de bourgeons.” (Morphologie végétale, p. 91). A singularly
enduring power of vitality in the roots of trees of this family is
shown by a phenomenon which has excited the attention of vegetable
physiologists, and appears to be of only very rare occurrence in other
dicotyledonous trees. The remaining stumps of White Pines which have
been cut down continue for several years to make fresh layers of wood,
and to increase in thickness, without putting forth new shoots, leaves,
or branches. Göppert believes that this only takes place by means of
root nourishment received by the stump from a neighbouring living tree
of the same species; the roots of the living individual which has
branches and leaves having become organically united with those of the
cut tree by their having grown together. (Göppert, Beobachtungen über
das sogenannte Umwallen der Tannenstöcke, 1842, S. 12). Kunth, in his
excellent new “Lehrbuch der Botanik,” objects to this explanation of
a phenomenon which was known, imperfectly, so early as Theophrastus.
(Hist. Plant. lib. iii. cap. 7, pp. 59 and 60, Schneider.) He considers
the case to be analogous to what takes place when metal-plates, nails,
carved letters, and even the antlers of stags, become enclosed in the
wood of a growing tree. “The cambium, _i. e._ the viscid secretion
out of which new elementary organs are constructed either of woody or
cellular tissue, continues, without reference to the buds (and quite
apart from them), to deposit new layers of wood on the outermost layer
of the ligneous substance.” (Th. i. S. 143 and 166.)
The relations which have been alluded to, between elevation above
the level of the sea and geographical and thermal latitude, manifest
themselves often when we compare the tree vegetation of the tropical
part of the chain of the Andes with the vegetation of the north-west
coast of America, or with that of the shores of the Canadian Lakes.
Darwin and Claude Gay have made the same remark in the Southern
Hemisphere, in advancing from the high plains of Chili to Eastern
Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, where they found Drymis winteri and
forests of Fagus antarctica and Fagus forsteri forming a uniform
covering throughout long continuous lines running from north to
south and descending to the low grounds. We find even in Europe
small deviations (dependent on local causes which have not yet been
sufficiently examined), from the law of constant ratio as regards
stations or habitat of plants between elevation above the sea and
geographical latitude. I would recall the limits, in respect to
elevation, of the birch and the common fir in a part of the Swiss
Alps, on the Grimsel. The fir (Pinus sylvestris) extends to 5940, and
the birch (Betula alba) to 6480 French (6330 and 6906 English) feet;
above the birches there is a higher line of Pinus cembra, whose upper
limit is 6890 (7343 English) feet. Here, therefore, we have the birch
intervening between two zones of Coniferæ. According to the excellent
observations of Leopold Von Buch, and the recent ones of Martins,
who also visited Spitzbergen, the following geographical limits were
found in Lapland:--Pinus sylvestris extends to 70°; Betula alba to
70° 40´; and Betula nana quite up to 71°; Pinus cembra is altogether
wanting in Lapland. (Compare Unger über den Einfluss des Bodens auf
die Vertheilung der Gewächse, S. 200; Lindblom, Adnot. in geographicam
plantarum intra Sueciam distributionem, p. 89; Martins, in the Annales
des Sciences naturelles, T. xviii. 1842, p. 195).
If the length and arrangement of the needle-shaped leaves go far to
determine the physiognomic character of Coniferæ, this character is
still more influenced by the specific differences in the breadth
of the needles, and the degree of development of the parenchyma of
the appendicular organs. Several species of Ephedra may be called
almost leafless; but in Taxus, Araucaria, Dammara (Agathis), and the
Salisburia adiantifolia of Smith (Gingko biloba, Linn.), the surfaces
of the leaves become gradually broader. I have here placed the
genera in morphological succession. The specific names first chosen
by botanists testify in favour of such a succession. The Dammara
orientalis of Borneo and Java, often above ten feet in diameter,
was first called loranthifolia; and Dammara australis (Lamb.) of
New Zealand, which is 140 (149 English) feet high, was first called
zamæfolia. In both these species of trees the leaves are not needles,
but “folia alterna oblongo-lanceolata, opposita, in arbore adultiore
sæpe alterna, enervia, striata.” The under surface of the leaves is
thickly set with porous openings. This passage or transition of the
appendicular system from the greatest contraction to a broad-leaved
surface, like all progression from simple to compound, has at once a
morphological and a physiognomic interest (Link, Urwelt, Th. I. 1834,
S. 201-211). The short-stalked, broad, cleft leaf of the Salisburia
(Kämpfer’s Gingko) has also its breathing pores only on the under side
of the leaf. The original native country of this tree is unknown to us.
By the connection and intercourse of Buddhistic communities it early
passed from the temple-gardens of China to those of Japan.
In travelling from a port on the Pacific to Mexico, on our way to
Europe, I witnessed the singular and painful impression which the first
sight of a pine forest near Chilpanzingo made on one of our companions,
who, born at Quito under the equinoctial line, had never seen needle
trees, or trees with “folia acerosa.” It seemed to him as if the trees
were leafless; and he thought that as we were travelling towards the
cold North, he already recognised in this extreme contraction of the
vegetable organs the chilling and impoverishing influence of the pole.
The traveller whose impressions I here describe, whose name neither my
friend Bonpland or myself can pronounce without regret, was Don Carlos
Montufar (son of the Marquis of Selvalegre), an excellent young man,
whose noble and ardent love of freedom led him a few years later, in
the war of independence of the Spanish Colonies, to meet courageously a
violent death, of which the dishonour did not fall on him.
[24] p. 26.--“_The Pothos-form, Aroideæ._”
Caladium and Pothos are exclusively forms of the tropical world; the
species of Arum belong more to the temperate zone. Arum italicum, A.
dracunculus, and A. tenuifolium, extend to Istria and Friuli. No Pothos
has yet been discovered in Africa. India has some species of this genus
(Pothos scandens and P. pinnata) which are less beautiful in their
physiognomy, and less luxuriant in their growth, than the American
species. We discovered a beautiful and truly arborescent member of the
group of Aroideæ (Caladium arboreum) having stems from 16 to 21 English
feet high, not far from the convent of Caripe, to the East of Cumanas.
A very curious Caladium (Culcasia scandens) has been discovered by
Beauvois in the kingdom of Benin. (Palisot de Beauvois, Flore d’Oware
et de Benin, T. i. 1804, p. 4, pl. iii.) In the Pothos-form the
parenchyma is sometimes so much extended that the surface of the leaf
is interrupted by holes as in Calla pertusa (Kunth), and Dracontium
pertusum (Jacquin), which we collected in the woods round Cumana.
The Aroideæ first led attention to the remarkable phenomenon of the
fever-heat, which in certain plants is sensible by the thermometer
during the development of their inflorescence, and which is connected
with a great and temporary increase of the absorption of oxygen from
the atmosphere. Lamarck remarked in 1789 this increase of temperature
at the time of flowering in Arum italicum. According to Hubert and Bory
de St. Vincent the vital heat of Arum cordifolium in the Isle of France
was found to rise to 35°and 39° Reaumur, (110°.6 and 119°.6 Fahr.)
while the temperature of the surrounding air was only 15°.2 R. (66°.2
F.) Even in Europe, Becquerel and Breschet found as much as 17-1/2°
difference, Reaumur (39°.4 Fahr.) Dutrochet remarked a paroxysm, an
alternate decrease and increase of vital heat, which appeared to reach
a double maximum in the day. Théodore de Saussure observed analogous
augmentations of temperature, though to a less amount, only from 0°.5
to 0°.8 of Reaumur’s scale (1°.15 to 1°.8 Fahr.), in plants belonging
to other families; for example, in Bignonia radicans and Cucurbita
pepo. In the latter plant the use of a very sensitive thermoscope shews
that the increase of temperature is greater in the male than in the
female plant. Dutrochet, who previous to his early death made such
meritorious researches in physics and in vegetable physiology, found by
means of thermo-magnetic multiplicators (Comptes rendus de l’Institut,
T. viii. 1839, p. 454, T. ix. p. 614 and 781) an increase of vital heat
from 0°.1 to 0°.3 Reaumur, (0°.25 to 0°.67 Fahr.) in several young
plants (Euphorbia lathyris, Lilium candidum, Papaver somniferum), and
even among funguses in several species of Agaricus and Lycoperdon.
This vital heat disappeared at night, but was not prevented by placing
the plants in the dark during the day-time.
A yet more striking physiognomic contrast than that of Casuarineæ,
Needle trees, and the almost leafless Peruvian Colletias, with
Aroideæ, is presented by the comparison of those types of the greatest
contraction of the leafy organs with the Nymphæaceæ and Nelumboneæ. We
find in these as in the Aroideæ, leaves, in which the cellular tissue
forming their surface is extended to an extreme degree, supported on
long fleshy succulent leaf-stalks; as in Nymphæa alba; N. lutea; N.
thermalis (once called N. lotus, from the hot spring of Pezce near
Groswardein, in Hungary); the species of Nelumbo; Euryale amazonica
of Pöppig; and the Victoria Regina discovered in 1837 by Sir Robert
Schomburgk in the River Berbice in British Guiana, and which is
allied to the prickly Euryale, although, according to Lindley, a very
different genus. The round leaves of this magnificent water plant are
six feet in diameter, and are surrounded by turned up margins 3 to
5 inches high, light green inside, and bright crimson outside. The
agreeably perfumed flowers, twenty or thirty blossoms of which may
be seen at the same time within a small space, are white and rose
coloured, 15 inches in diameter, and have many hundred petals. (Rob.
Schomburgk, Reisen in Guiana und am Orinoko, 1841, S. 233.) Pöppig
also gives to the leaves of his Euryale amazonica which he found near
Tefe, as much as 5 feet 8 inches French, or 6 English feet, diameter.
(Pöppig, Reise in Chile, Peru und auf dem Amazonenstrome, Bd. ii. 1836,
S. 432.) If Euryale and Victoria are the genera which present the
greatest extension in all dimensions of the parenchyma of the _leaves_,
the greatest known dimensions of a _flower_ belong to a parasitical
Cytinea, the Rafflesia Arnoldi (R. Brown), discovered by Dr. Arnold
in Sumatra, in 1818: it has a stemless flower of three English feet
diameter, surrounded by large leaf-like scales. Fungus-like, it has an
animal smell, resembling beef.
[25] p. 26.--“_Lianes, rope-plants_, (_‘Bush ropes;’ in Spanish,
Vejuccos._”)
According to Kunth’s division of the Bauhinieæ, the true genus Bauhinia
belongs to the New Continent: the African Bauhinia, B. rufescens,
(Lam.) is a Pauletia (Cav.) a genus of which we found some new species
in South America. So also the Banisterias, from among the Malpighiaceæ,
are properly an American form; although two species are natives of
India, and one species, Banisteria leona, described by Cavanilles, is
a native of Western Africa. Within the tropics and in the Southern
Hemisphere we find among the most different families of plants the
twining rope-like climbers which in those regions render the forests at
once so impenetrable to man, and on the other hand so accessible and
habitable to the Quadrumanæ (or Monkeys) and to the Cercoleptes and
the small tiger-cats. The rapid ascent to the tops of lofty trees, the
passage from tree to tree, and even the crossing of streams by whole
herds or troops of gregarious animals, are all greatly facilitated by
these twining plants or Lianes.
In the South of Europe and in North America, Hops from among the
Urticeæ, and the species of Vitis from among the Ampelideæ, belong
to the class of twining climbers, and between the tropics we find
climbing Grasses or Gramineæ. We have seen in the plains of Bogota, in
the pass of Quindiu, in the Andes, and in the Quina-producing forests
of Loxa, a Bambusacea allied to Nastus, our Chusquea scandens, twine
round massive and lofty trunks of trees adorned at the same time with
flowering Orchideæ. The Bambusa scandens (Tjankorreh), which Blume
found in Java, belongs probably either to the genus Nastus or to that
of Chusquea, the Carrizo of the Spanish settlers. Twining plants
appear to me to be entirely absent in the Pine-woods of Mexico, but
in New Zealand, besides the Ripogonum parviflorum of Robert Brown, (a
climber belonging to the Smilaceæ which renders the forests almost
impenetrable), the sweet-smelling Freycinetia Banksii, which belongs to
the Pandaneæ, twines round a gigantic Podocarpus 220 English feet high,
the P. dacryoides (Rich), called in the native language Kakikatea.
(Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, 1843, Vol. i. p. 426.)
With climbing Gramineæ and Pandaneæ are contrasted by their beautiful
and many-coloured blossoms the Passifloras (among which, however, we
even found an arborescent self-supporting species, Passiflora glauca,
growing in the Andes of Popayan, at an elevation of 9840 French (10487
English) feet);--the Bignoniaceæ, Mutisias, Alströmerias, Urvilleæ,
and Aristolochias. Among the latter our Aristolochia cordata has
a crimson-coloured flower of 17 English inches diameter! “flores
gigantei, pueris mitræ instar inservientes.” Many of these twining
plants have a peculiar physiognomy and appearance produced by the
square shape of their stems, by flattenings not caused by any external
pressure, and by riband-like wavings to and fro. Cross sections of
Bignonias and Banisterias shew cruciform or mosaic figures produced
by the mutual pressure and interpenetration of the stems which twine
around each other. (See very accurate drawings in Adrien de Jussieu’s
Cours de Botanique, p. 77-79, fig. 105-108.)
[26] p. 27.--“_The form of Aloës._”