length of twenty feet.
Ferns are abundant, but are not so varied as on the volcanic mountains
of Java; and Tree-ferns are neither so plentiful nor so large as on that
island. They grow, however, quite down to the level of the sea, and are
generally slender and graceful plants from eight to fifteen feet high.
Without devoting much time to the search I collected fifty species of
Ferns in Borneo, and I have no doubt a good botanist would have obtained
twice the number. The interesting group of Orchids is very abundant,
but, as is generally the case, nine-tenths of the species have small
and inconspicuous flowers. Among the exceptions are the fine Coelogynes,
whose large clusters of yellow flowers ornament the gloomiest
forests, and that most extraordinary plant, Vanda Lowii, which last
is particularly abundant near some hot springs at the foot of the
Penin-jauh Mountain. It grows on the lower branches of trees, and its
strange pendant flower-spires often hang down so as almost to reach the
ground. These are generally six or eight feet long, bearing large and
handsome flowers three inches across, and varying in colour from orange
to red, with deep purple-red spots. I measured one spike, which reached
the extraordinary length of nine feet eight inches, and bore thirty-six
flowers, spirally arranged upon a slender thread-like stalk. Specimens
grown in our English hot-houses have produced flower-spires of equal
length, and with a much larger number of blossoms.
Flowers were scarce, as is usual in equatorial forests, and it was only
at rare intervals that I met with anything striking. A few fine
climbers were sometimes seen, especially a handsome crimson and yellow
Aeschynanthus, and a fine leguminous plant with clusters of large
Cassia-like flowers of a rich purple colour. Once I found a number
of small Anonaceous trees of the genus Polyalthea, producing a most
striking effect in the gloomy forest shades. They were about thirty feet
high, and their slender trunks were covered with large star-like crimson
flowers, which clustered over them like garlands, and resembled some
artificial decoration more than a natural product.
The forests abound with gigantic trees with cylindrical, buttressed, or
furrowed stems, while occasionally the traveller comes upon a wonderful
fig-tree, whose trunk is itself a forest of stems and aerial roots.
Still more rarely are found trees which appear to have begun growing in
mid-air, and from the same point send out wide-spreading branches above
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