Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

240 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
a species of Lucuma, producing an edible fruit ;
that name is applied to many species of Lucuma
and Achras, all natives of warm or hot countries.
Another evidence of the approach to a hot climate
was in the existence of a species of Echites,
twining among the bushes, and in an epiphytal
Marcgraviacea, quite similar in its long scarlet
spikes to AT orantea guianensis, though the bracts
are small patellae, not elongated sacs, as in that
species. A very odoriferous Citrosma, with large
thin leaves, three together, is known by the name
of Guayiisa, and is often taken in infusion, like the
Guayiisa of Canelos, which, however, is a species
of Ilex.
There were a good many herbs, of species not
seen elsewhere. One Composita, with virgate
stems 12 feet high, large alternate lobed leaves,
and from each axil a small leafy ramulus bearing at
its apex a corymb of white radiate flowers, was very
ornamental. Orchidese were tolerably abundant,
but prettier even than these were two Bromeliaceae;
the one seemed at first sight merely a mass of long
scarlet flowers growing out of the moss on'old trees
and stones, for the leaf-sheaths are imbricated into
a little bulb, and the blade is reduced to a spine ;
the other (apparently an /Echmea) has broadish
soft leaves and large violet flowers looking at
a distance more like those of an Iris or an
Amaryllidea.
On the 4th of August my company started for
the forest, our destination being the Rio de Puma-
cocha, a large stream rising in Azuay and falling
into the Chanchan at about 4000 feet altitude, on
the farther side of which much Red Bark has been