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“...When Kingsley visited Trinidad
in 1869 the old Government House had been
destroyed, and the Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon
—the present Lord Stanmore—with whom he
stayed, lived in a cottage just outside the gardens.
The huge umbrella-shaped tree at the comer of
Government House is a saman tree (Inga saman).
Its branches give footholc^^^^nnumerable plants
(Epiphytes), which live on air, and consequently do
not sap the energy of their host. Orchids which
would be considered rare at home grow in pro-
fusion, and a variety of grasses and lianes hang
from the giant limbs of this monster, which also
affords sanctuary to all sorts of creeping and
crawling things, from the manicou, a kind of
opossum, to the hairy tarantula spider. A clump
of bamboos over 80 feet high cannot fail to
excite remark, and screw-pines (Pandanus), groo-
groo palms (Acrocomia selerocarpa), sand-box trees
(Hura crepitans), cannon-ball trees and banyans,
to say nothing of the more familiar hibiscus,
poinsettias, dracaenas, and...”
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