Viewing page 31 of 70

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[preprinted]] 54 [[/preprinted]]

firmly decided that I shouldn't need any guide. However, as I was walking around, one of the gardeners came up and asked me if I should like to see the orchids. I should have realized that this was a leader. Before we got to the orchids he had shown me a number of other things. He picked up, and crushed so I could smell them, leaves from the following trees - bay, cinnamon, cloves, and camphor. He also gave me a piece of rubber from a rubber tree. He picked the following flowers for me - coralitas, chinaman's hat, mexican oyster, Napoleon's button, coffee, a small orchid like flower, and Indian laburnum (Cassia fistula). I discovered that the flamboyant &  poinciana are the same tree - one name popular the other botanical (Poinciana regia). The gardener showed me the difference between the cabbage palm and the royal palm - the cabbage has 4 leaves on each side of the stalk, while the royal has just 2. The orchids were hardly worth the bother. The pink lily which looks like a single Cala lily is called anthurium lily. Other trees which I saw were logwood, cyprus (not in very good condition, banyan, eucaly-

[[end page]]
[[start page]]

[[preprinted]] 55 [[/preprinted]]

ptus, ebony, teak, mora, silk cotton, brazil nut, beetle nut, nutmeg, the spice trees mentioned above, monkey puzzler, many kinds of mahogany, acacia, cannon ball tree (Couroupita guianensis), Amherstia nobilis (sc. [[insertion]] Burma [[/insertion]] name), and many kinds of mangoes.
One little plant interested me. It is a fernlike thing which grows in the grass. The leaf looks like this [[image - ink pen drawing of a straight, upright stem with two rows of leaves extending from top to bottom, much like a fern]]. These leaves are very sensitive to touch and when merely grazed, the sides close up along the mid-rib, and remain so for a long while.
There are a great many palm trees, may of them native, but they have introductions such as the oil palm of West Africa, date palms & other species of (Phoenix) and the vegetable ivory palm (Phytelephas macrocarpa) - [[strikethrough]] of [[/strikethrough]] [[insertion]] from [[/insertion]] which so much of our ivory jewelry comes.
I saw for the first time a yellow poinsettia and a pink bougainvillea. There are more kinds of hibiscus than I can mention and they are very effective as a single clump or as a hedge.
At the end of our tour I felt obliged

Transcription Notes:
author is describing Mimosa pudica - sensitive plant, sleepy plant or the touch-me-not