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44 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
several trees and twiners, and the colours are
gayest and most varied in the months of July
and August. Then are scattered over the plain,
especially where the soil is sandy, dense posies of
the " Purple flower," a species of Physocalymma
(Lythraceae), and the less conspicuous
" Yellow flower" (Vochysia sp.) ;
ones of the
more sparingly is
seen mixed with these a larger mass of the orange
flowers of Vochysia ferruginea, and these are everywhere
set off by white bunches of Myrtles and
Melastomas. Near the Shillicaio rise here and
there magnificent trees of Ama-sisa (Erythrina
amasisa, Sp.), which have been spared by the axe
of the first settlers some of them as much as
80 or 100 feet high, and twice in the year, at
intervals of six months, clad with large flamecoloured
or vermilion flowers, sometimes with no
accompaniment of leaves and sometimes with
young leaves of a most delicate green just
appearing. I have been delighted to walk by the
Shillicaio at sunset and observe the tracery of the
crown of the Ama-sisa, with its copious red tassels,
projected on the pale blue eastern sky, when the
flowers of almost every tree showed a different
shade of yellow-red, not, however, paling to yellow
on the one hand or deepening to scarlet on the
other. It continues in flower nearly two months,
and before it has well done flowering the ripened
follicular pods splitting up on one side only, and
with the two or three seeds still adhering, begin to
strew the ground. The trunk is more or less closely
beset with shortly conical, sharply cusped prickles. 1
1 On this account it is constantly selected by the sagacious troopial (Cassiats
iftcronotus] for its long pensile nests ; though, as ,if doubting
that this were