FAUNA AND FLORA
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Among fruits that are either poisonous or useful for medicine are Strophanthus, Strychnos, Gelsemium and Cerbera, abundant near the sea. Edible fruit includes a wild jackfruit, Artocarpus, rose-myrtle fruits and wild bananas. Several species of persimmon are wild, but their fruits are too astringent to be eaten raw.
There are numerous plants which closely resemble their European relatives. Old Man's Beard, the common clematis of the English hedgerow, has five close relatives here. There are four wild violets, but, like the English dog violet, they are scentless. English honeysuckle has five relatives; their Cantonese name is 'kam ngan fa' (gold and silver flower), given because of their change in colour with age from white to yellow.
There is a fine wild iris, further south than any other true iris, and a wild lily growing on some hillsides, with in- dividual flowers sometimes seven inches long. By the sea a wild Crinum is found, and Belamcanda, in the iris family.
In damp ravines may be found Chirita, several begonias, a fragrant-leaved rush, stag's horn mosses, numerous orchids, giant aroids, tree ferns and countless kinds of smaller ferns, including maidenhair and the local Royal ferns. On hillsides English bracken, a cosmopolitan plant, may be seen growing together with the so-called Hong Kong bracken, Gleichenia, and a fragrant-leaved myrtle called Baeckea.
The Colonial Herbarium, which provided the foundation for the work of Dunn and Tutcher's Flora of Kwangtung and Hong Kong, has been added to considerably since their time. At present over 27,000 specimens are preserved.