NATURAL HISTORY
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constitute a fatal dose and that death follows within a few hours. It is sometimes used by country people to commit suicide. Wild edible fruits include a wild jack-fruit, artocarpus, the fruit of the rose-myrtle, wild bananas and raspberries. Several species of per- simmon 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 English hedge- rows, has five close relatives in Hong Kong. There are four wild violets but they are scentless, like the English dog violet. The English honey-suckle has five relatives whose Cantonese name is kam ngan fa (gold and silver flower) because of their change in colour from white to yellow.
More than 70 species of native orchids are recorded in the flora. Most of the epiphytic species possess small flowers which are not of particular interest to the horticulturist. Some of the ground orchids are very beautiful and have long been cultivated in other countries. Probably the best known of the local species is the Nun orchid, bearing flowers four inches across with white petals and a purple lip. Other noteworthy species are the white Susanna orchid, the yellow Buttercup orchid, the pink Bamboo orchid and the purple Lady's Slipper orchid.
There is a fine wild iris, Iris speculatrix, further south than any other true iris. Its violet flower, from two and a half to three inches in diameter, is tinged with bright orange and blooms from the middle of March to the end of April. A wild lily, Lilium Brownii, appears in June with its trumpet flowers up to seven inches in length, white and sometimes purple-streaked. A wild crinum with long sword-like leaves and bunches of white flowers is found by the sea, and also the belamcanda, one of the iris family, with red- dotted orange-yellow flowers. The Chinese Bell-flower, Platycodon,
very widely distributed in eastern Asia, being abundant as far north as Manchuria and as far south as Hong Kong. This lovely violet giant harebell is common on grassy slopes on the south side of Hong Kong Island. It is a perennial plant with thick fleshy root stock valued for medicinal purposes and was introduced into cultivation in England as far back as the seventeenth century.
In damp ravines may be found the chirita, several begonias, a fragrant-leaved rush, stag's horn mosses, giant aroids, tree-ferns