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PLANT LIFE.
Puerto Rico seems to us to be one big flower garden. All kinds of fruit grow wild and most wild plants blossom and bear fruit several times a year.
Cultivated fruits, flowers and vegetables are planted several times a year in order that a fresh supply may always be at hand. Flowers bloom every month of the year, but are most plentiful in June. Ferns, in some instances, grow to spreading trees, with graceful drooping fronds. Many plants have colored leaves which are as brilliant as the flowers themselves.
[Illustration: BRANCH AND FRUIT OF THE CACAO TREE.]
Everywhere grow trees and shrubs valuable for their fruit or for their medicinal qualities.
The leading crops are sugar cane, coffee and tobacco. Over one-half of the exports consists of coffee, and a little less than one-fourth, of sugar. Cacao and fruits make a large part of the remainder.
[Illustration: A PUERTO RICAN SUGAR MILL.]
Rice forms the chief food of the laboring classes, and this grows, not on the wet lowlands, as in our country, but on the mountain sides.
Bananas and plantains are two of the important food products. Next to these, the yam and the sweet potato form the diet of the natives.