It would be difficult to find a parallel in any other corresponding group of flowering plants for the range in individual size met with in the Gramineae. At one end of the scale are the bamboos, which, as we have shown, may exceed 120 ft. in height. Although the bamboos arrive at greater statures than the other Gramineae, the examples of tall forms among grasses outside this tribe are more numerous than is generally realised by those accustomed only to the European flora. Spruce, in his account of the forests of Chimborazo, describes the Uva, Gynerium saccharoides H. et B. (Festuceae, related to Arundo), as attaining “its maximum of development on stony springy declivities, at an elevation of about 1500 feet above the sea, where a forest of Arrow-cane [Uva], with its tall slender stems of 30 to 40 feet, each supporting a fan-shaped coma of distichous leaves, and a long-stalked thyrse of rose and silver flowers waving in the wind, is truly a grand sight”. Spruce goes on to say— “The longest stem I ever measured was one I met a man carrying on his shoulder at Tarapoto. From that stem had been cut away the leaves and peduncle, and the base of the stem, which is generally beset with stout-arched exserted roots (serving as buttresses), to a height of 1 to 3 feet; yet the residue was 37 feet long, so that the entire length must have been at least 45 feet”.