Cecropia

Surrounded by lofty airy cassias, broad-leaved, white-stemmed cecropias, thick-crowned myrtles, large-flowered bignonias, climbing tufts of the mellifluous paullinias, far-spreading tendrils of the passion-flower, and of the richly flowering hatched coronilla, above which rise the waving summits of Macaubu palms, we fancied ourselves transported into the gardens of the Hesperides.

The chief characteristic of the Amazonian forest, aside from its magnitude, is the great diversity of genera and species. In the northern temperate zone we find forests of a single species, others of three or four species; in this great tropical forest the habit of growth is solitary and an acre of ground will contain hundreds of species—palms, myrtles, acacias, mimosas, cecropias, euphorbias, malvaceas, laurels, cedrellas, bignonias, bombaceas, apocyneas, malpigias, lecythises, swartzias, &c.

[…]: the hopelessness of attemps at plant identification for anyone but a botanist resides in the fact that the flora of the Amazon basin is the most complex on earth; the majority of all plant species known to man are to be found in this vast forest, and Louis Agassiz once identified one hundred and seventeen distinct woods, including palms, myrtles, laurels, acacias, bignonias, rosewood, cecropias, bombaceas, Brazil-nuts or castanheiras, rubber, fig, and purplehearts, in an area a half-mile square.

Also called the trumpet tree, cecropias are popular with many animal species for their leaves and fingerlike catkins, which turn to fruits.