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.
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