Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

248 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
for two years I had sought in vain in other
localities. But I was most pleased to find a moss
with large laciniato-ciliate leaves so novel a
feature in this tribe that I took it for a Plagiochila,
until I found the capsules nestling amongst the
terminal leaves.
To return, however, to our Cascarillas, of which
there are two sorts in Llalla, the one called
" Ciichi-cara" or Pig-skin, because dried pieces of
the bark resemble morsels of pig's skin boiled and
then grilled (which is a favourite dish in Ecuador).
The same bark is sometimes called Chaucha, a
term implying thickness without much consistence ;
as, for example, in this bark, which shrinks much
in drying, and in a sort of large watery potato,
called Chauchas. The other bark is called " Pata
de gallinazo
" or Turkey-buzzard's foot ;
it does not
peel off freely like the other, and when dried gener-
ally occurs in small split fragments,
but as it is
rather deeper -coloured it is more esteemed than
the Cuchicara. The same or similar kinds are
known in other districts as Cascarilla naranjada.
The demand for either kind has of late years been
very slight,
so that there has not been such
destruction of these barks as of the red, and on a
hill-side not far from the hut I found above
stony
twenty large trees of the Cuchicara, from 40 to 50
feet high. All had fruited freely
this year, but the
capsules were already empty, with the exception ol
one small corymb. In the forest of Yalancay, on
the opposite side of the river and near the road
leading from Alausi to Guayaquil,
found a tree with recent fruit and even a few
I afterwards
flowers. The latter are deep brick- red, and the