Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1896 — Flowers in the Phillippines. [ARTICLE]

Flowers in the Phillippines.

Nearly every traveler in the Phlllippines finds much interest in the prodigious growth of flowers. There are over thirty varieties of orchids in the forests, and dozens of lilies of mammoth proportions that are never seen outside of the tropics. The Malapo lily is the largest. Its leaves are often six feet long and two feet wide, while its stems are three inches in diameter. It is in bloom five months in the yeatj and its blossoms are as large as a peck measure. Carnations grow in phenomenal variety all over the rural districts, and frequently cover an acre or more, while geraniums, whose luxuriance excites exclamations of surprise from nearly every beholder for the first time, grow like trees and great clumps of bushes. Geraniums that have grown up the trunk and along the limbs of immense forest trees are to be seen frequently. The lazy, Indifferent natives seldom touch them, and they grow on and on for years. Along tne rural roads {here are everywhere wild poppies of the most delicate yellow flowers and large stems. From the trees in the forest there aue hundreds of vines and parasites of the most brilliant blossoms, and in the spring season the air all over the several islands is for a time fairly heavy with floral fragrance. Both the Tagals and the Bocals have no taste for the superb flora of the Phllllppines, and one seldom sees any kind of a flower or vine cultivated at .the home of a native. The tropical luxuriance sometimes causes a beautiful wild geranium or a species of chrysanthemum to spring up at the side of a bamboo hut, and, because the natives are too lazy to do what is not absolutely necessary to comfort or life, It will not be torn up or molested.