Persons who have formed the usual ideas of the vegetation of the tropics who picture to themselves the abundance and brilliancy of the flowers, and the magnificent appearance of hundreds of forest trees covered with masses of coloured blossoms, will be surprised to hear, that though vegetation in Aru is highly luxuriant and varied, and would afford abundance of fine and curious plants to adorn our hothouses, yet bright and showy flowers are, as a general rule, altogether absent, or so very scarce as to produce no effect whatever on the general scenery. To give particulars: Ihave visited five distinct localities in the islands, I have wandered daily in the forests, and have passed along upwards of a hundred miles of coast and river during a period of six months, much of it very fine weather, and till just as I was about to leave, I never saw a single plant of striking brilliancy or beauty, hardly a shrub equal to a hawthorn, or a climber equal to a honeysuckle! It cannot be said that the flowering season had not arrived, for I saw many herbs, shrubs, and forest trees in flower, but all had blossoms of a green or greenish-white tint, not superior to our lime-trees. Here and there on the river banks and coasts are a few Convolvulaceae, not equal to our garden Ipomaeas, and in the deepest shades of the forest some fine scarlet and purple Zingiberaceae, but so few and scattered as to be nothing amid the mass of green and flowerless vegetation. Yet the noble Cycadaceae and screw-pines, thirty or forty feet high, the elegant tree ferns, the lofty palms, and the variety of beautiful and curious plants which everywhere meet the eye, attest the warmth and moisture of the tropics, and the fertility of the soil.
It is true that Aru seemed to me exceptionally poor in flowers, but this is only an exaggeration of a general tropical feature;for my whole experience in the equatorial regions of the west and the east has convinced me, that in the most luxuriant parts of the tropics, flowers are less abundant, on the average less showy, and are far less effective in adding colour to the landscape than in temperate climates. I have never seen in the tropics such brilliant masses of colour as even England can show in her furze-clad commons, her heathery mountain-sides, her glades of wild hyacinths, her fields of poppies, her meadows of buttercups and orchises--carpets of yellow, purple, azure-blue, and fiery crimson, which the tropics can rarely exhibit. We, have smaller masses of colour in our hawthorn and crab trees, our holly and mountain-ash, our boom; foxgloves, primroses, and purple vetches, which clothe with gay colours the whole length and breadth of our land, These beauties are all common. They are characteristic of the country and the climate; they have not to be sought for, but they gladden the eye at every step. In the regions of the equator, on the other hand, whether it be forest or savannah, a sombre green clothes universal nature. You may journey for hours, and even for days, and meet with nothing to break the monotony. Flowers are everywhere rare, and anything at all striking is only to be met with at very distant intervals.
The idea that nature exhibits gay colours in the tropics, and that the general aspect of nature is there more bright and varied in hue than with us, has even been made the foundation of theories of art, and we have been forbidden to use bright colours in our garments, and in the decorations of our dwellings, because it was supposed that we should be thereby acting in opposition to the teachings of nature. The argument itself is a very poor one, since it might with equal justice be maintained, that as we possess faculties for the appreciation of colours, we should make up for the deficiencies of nature and use the gayest tints in those regions where the landscape is most monotonous. But the assumption on which the argument is founded is totally false, so that even if the reasoning were valid, we need not be afraid of outraging nature, by decorating our houses and our persons with all those gay hues which are so lavishly spread over our fields and mountains, our hedges, woods, and meadows.
It is very easy to see what has led to this erroneous view of the nature of tropical vegetation. In our hothouses and at our flower-shows we gather together the finest flowering plants from the most distant regions of the earth, and exhibit them in a proximity to each other which never occurs in nature. A hundred distinct plants, all with bright, or strange, or gorgeous flowers, make a wonderful show when brought together; but perhaps no two of these plants could ever be seen together in a state of nature, each inhabiting a distant region or a different station.
Again, all moderately warm extra-European countries are mixed up with the tropics in general estimation, and a vague idea is formed that whatever is preeminently beautiful must come from the hottest parts of the earth. But the fact is quite the contrary.
Rhododendrons and azaleas are plants of temperate regions, the grandest lilies are from temperate Japan, and a large proportion of our most showy flowering plants are natives of the Himalayas, of the Cape, of the United States, of Chili, or of China and Japan, all temperate regions. True, there are a great number of grand and gorgeous flowers in the tropics, but the proportion they bear to the mass of the vegetation is exceedingly small; so that what appears an anomaly is nevertheless a fact, and the effect of flowers on the general aspect of nature is far less in the equatorial than in the temperate regions of the earth.
