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#13 Fleeting parasites, bane of great
trees, in the province of Rio
de Janeiro
Latin translation by
Ben Hennelly
In describing Brazil's
plant life, we have already often had occasion to speak about parasites
-- that is, if we follow the common way of talking, about those plants
which grow upon other plants. But in this etching #13, we have tried
to display several remarkable plants of this kind right up under, as
it were, our kind reader's eyes, and with such great skill that one
might be able to judge clearly and distinctly concerning their forms.
You see here the shore of what they call Ilha
do governador, which, situated in the bay of Rio de Janeiro, excels
in its varied, thriving plant growth; in an earlier time, for this reason,
the hunt-loving royal family used to foster wild animals there. To the
back, you will see the shore wrapped in thick forest -- from which several
trunks of Euterpe edulis,
that slender palm, rise up -- as well as in tall grasses. In front,
to the left and in the middle, you see two trunks of Fici shooting up straight, covered with many parasites, while another tree
is entirely veiled by an immense multitude of these plants and, oppressed
by their weight, slopes obliquely to such a degree that it traverses
the entire length of the illustration.
This tree has already ceased thriving, its leaves have fallen away,
its wood has already begun to rot. Nonetheless, it is thickly covered
with parasites  of different kinds, which find in it, as if in fertile
soil, greater nutriment for growth. To the left side of this tree adheres
a large plant of Philodendron
undulatum, which, sending many roots up into the air, both
has found several holds on the trunk itself and rests quite firmly on
the soil. The vines that descend
from the upper branches of the tree and have insinuated themselves into
the earth, have over a long stretch produced neither leaves nor flowers.
Although the genera to which these belong escape me, they should likely
be assigned to the Menispermeae or Asclepiadeae.
When you wound those two vines, or "lianas", which twisted
together form a cord more than a thumb thick, they emit a thick, pungent,
milky juice, such as Asclepiadeae quite often do. The bark
of these lianas is fairly thick, corky, full of cracks, and whitish.
A small Aracea, whose
seed seems to have been brought here by a bird, has sprouted on this
contorted liana and is stretching out its spear-shaped leaves. Next
to the tree, from the rich humus that surrounds it below, grows the
noteworthy fern, Diplazium
Riedelianum.
The tree itself,
which here, like a small botanical garden, is covered everywhere with epiphytes, supports a large
clump of Philodendron cannaefolium on the arm of a root torn from the earth. The lowest part of this arm,
which extends obliquely upwards, itself attests to the tenacious vitality
for which tropical vegetation stands out. For desirous, as it were,
of insinuating itself into the earth, it sent out an aerial root that,
descending straight down and gradually gaining the soil, firmly fixed
itself there; this sort of thing is observed rather infrequently, and
here, as the tree was already ailing, clearly demonstrates the rapid
rate of growth.A little higher, near
the base of the trunk itself, a clump of Anthurium
crassinervium spreads, whose leaves you would admire no less
for their size (they are often, it is easy to see, five or six feet
long), than for a leathery thickness and succulent greenness. Next to
this most noble Aracea you will see another smaller one, Syngonium
auritum (Caladium Vent.),
which, with its copious foliage and the close-set windings of its stalk,
binds and envelops the trunk in such a way that space is left for only
one Orchidea, Cattleya
guttata.
Cattleya guttata
 
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