Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

292
NOTES OF A BOTANIST
which the fertile fronds were shrivelled up, having been in perfection
in the wet season, and two or three Hymenophylla in the
same state ; so that if we make allowance for the few species
which must have eluded my search, we may safely assume that
I left at least 20 ferns ungathered, and the whole number may
be taken at 140, that is, of ferns existing in a space not more
than four miles long by three-quarters of a mile broad, or of three
square miles. Perhaps few parts of the world possess so many
species of ferns growing naturally in so small an area.
The five species of tree-ferns gathered in fruit all grow in
tolerable abundance, and one of them, an Alsophila, with a trunk
40 feet high, large, stout, pale green fronds, and exactly opposite
pinnae, is perhaps the handsomest tree-fern I ever saw. The
Cyathea has almost constantly, below its own fronds, a supplementary
crown of numerous deep green, widely arched, sterile
fronds of a Lomaria, among which spring vertically the slender,
pectinate, fertile fronds ; while the trunk is enveloped in a
continuous sheath of the soft, pale, but clear green foliage of
Bartmmia viridissima, C. Mull. the whole ; forming one of those
lovely pictures which only those who seek out Nature in her
remotest recesses are privileged to see.
Musci
This Bartramia was in good fruit, but the great part of the
mosses had fruited during the rainy season, and the number of
species was by no means so great as one would have supposed,
to see the dense festoons of moss depending from old trees.
They are in main part composed of two or three species, which
modern botanists would refer to Trachypus, of as many Meteoria,
and of a Frullania. Rhacopilinn tomentosum is frequent, as it is
all through the roots of the Cordillera, on both sides; and
another Rhacopilum (7?. pofythrincium, MSS.) grows in some
abundance. Orthotricha, common enough in the region of the
Hill Barks, scarcely descend below 6000 feet, and at Limon their
place is supplied by Macromitrium and Schlotheimia, both very
sparingly represented. Hookerise, so abundant and ornamental
on the eastern slope of the Cordillera, in the same latitude and
altitude, barely exist at Limon.
HEPATIC.*:
Hepaticoi are rather more varied than mosses, and the genus
Plagiochila, especially, is well represented. Notwithstanding the
vast variety of Plagiochilce I have gathered on the Amazon and
on the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Quito, I still found
new forms at Limon. The favourite site of this genus is in the
warm and temperate region of the Andes. Lower down the