What, after all, are the bamboos but gigantic grasses. They belong to the same family, and possess the family likeness, growing in dense tufts, or tussocks, with seeds resembling those of oats. They are natives of tropical countries, where their uses are manifold. "The bamboo, full grown, forms usually a more or less developed stock, sometimes up to three feet high, formed chiefly of old trunks of the dead haulms and an entanglement of roots, from which ten to fifty, and even up to a hundred haulms arise of the thickness of one's arm to that of the human thigh, often attaining upwards of one hundred and twenty feet in height."
The rapidity of the growth of bamboo shoots has often been alluded to. The usual period during which they attain their full height varies between two and three months. A bamboo in a hothouse in Glasgow was seen to grow one foot in twenty-four hours. Mr. Fortune made various measurements of the growth of bamboos in the Chinese jungles, and has reported the growth to have been from two to two and a half feet in twenty-four hours, with the greatest growth during the night. The culms, or stems, are hollow, like a reed, with joints at regular distances, so that, except for size, they would be accepted as reeds. Cut off at the joints they are convertible into kitchen utensils, some being large enough for pails; and when pierced through at the joints, so as to form continuous pipes, they are employed as aqueducts. Only those who have visited India, China, or Malayan countries could imagine the innumerable uses to which these gigantic grasses are applied.
Palms are tropical trees of a peculiar growth, having usually a single erect stem without branches, only one or two species ever producing a branch. In appearance, with their large expanded fronds, or leaves, they have but little in common with ordinary trees. Some of the palms attain to a considerable size, although not comparable with the big trees of California or Australia, yet not less remarkable when their structure is taken into account. It is, however, the leaves to which we would allude as especially worthy of notice here. We may have the pinnate, or feathery leaf, similar to an ordinary fern frond, and the fan-shaped leaf. Of the former, the Jupati, one of the Brazilian palms (Raphia taedigera), Wallace says, "Its comparatively short stem enables us to fully appreciate the enormous size of the leaves, which are at the same time equally remarkable for their elegant form. They rise nearly vertically from the stem, and bend out on every side in graceful curves, forming a magnificent plume seventy feet in height, and forty in diameter. I have cut down and measured leaves forty-eight and fifty feet long, but could never get the largest." Of another palm he writes (Maximiliania regia): "The leaves of this tree are truly gigantic. I have measured specimens which have been cut by the Indians fifty feet long; and these did not contain the entire petiole, nor were they of the largest size." Of the fan palms the most magnificent are the leaves of the Talipat palm (Corypha umbraculifera) of Ceylon, which are used as umbrellas and for tents, a large one being sufficient to cover and protect fifteen persons from the sun and rain. In making tents two or three leaves are usually sewn together.
Periodically the botanical world has been astonished by the report of some newly-discovered giant. At one time it was the great Rafflesia, then the royal water-lily, and last, but not least, the monster arum of Beccari. The one solitary example of this family which belongs to our climate is the little "wake-robin," or "lords and ladies" of our hedgerows. In the centre of the tuft of glossy leaves rises the singular flower, or what is commonly designated as the flower, but which really is a large colony of minute flowers, surrounding the base of an erect club-shaped column called a spadix, and enclosed in a sheath or envelope, rising to a sharp point and opening on one side so as to expose but a glimpse of the column within. The root is a small tuber, or corm, containing a quantity of starch, which, during the time of Queen Elizabeth, was collected for starching the "ruffles" of the court. Just such a plant, on an enlarged scale, was discovered by the Italian botanist in Sumatra. The tuber in this species was five feet in circumference. The leaves, on foot stalks ten feet in length, were much divided, and covered an area of forty-five feet in circumference. The spadix, or central column, was nearly six feet in height. The diameter of the spathe was nearly three feet, of a bell shape, with crumpled and deeply-toothed edges, of a pale greenish colour within, and externally of a bright blackish purple.
In the accompanying woodcut, the central spadix rising out of the bell-shaped cup should be near six feet, so that the figure is reduced to one twenty-fifth of the height of the original, which has been named Amorphophallus titanum.
<!-- image -->Fig. 80. Giant Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) greatly reduced.
The monarch of flowers, in respect to size, is that first discovered by Sir Stamford Raffles, and named after him, Rafflesia. It is a large fleshy parasite, growing on the roots of other plants, without leaves, and consisting entirely of a single enormous flower, "of a very thick substance, the petals and nectary being in but few places less than a quarter of an inch thick, and in some places three quarters of an inch: the substance of it was very succulent. When I first saw it, a swarm of flies were hovering over the mouth of the nectary, and apparently laying their eggs in the substance of it. It had precisely the smell of tainted beef. It measured a full yard across; the petals, which were subrotund, being twelve inches from the base to the apex, and it being about a foot from the insertion of the one petal to the opposite one. The nectary, in the opinion of all of us, would hold twelve pints, and the weight of this prodigy we calculated to be fifteen pounds."
<!-- image -->Fig. 81.—Rafflesia arnoldi, reduced from photograph of living flower.
The flower was first discovered in 1818, on the Manna River in Sumatra, where it is said to be known by the name of the "Devil's Siri box!" Dr. Arnold says that when he first saw it in the jungle it made a powerful impression on him. "To tell the truth, had I been alone, and had there been no witnesses, I should, I think, have been fearful of mentioning the dimensions of this flower, so much does it exceed every flower I have ever seen or heard of." Another species has been found in Java, but not quite of such an enormous size.
Second in size are the flowers of one of the birthworts, climbing aristolochias of tropical forests. Humboldt gave the first intimation of the existence of these giants in these words: "On the shady banks of the Magdalena River, in South America, grows a climbing aristolochia, whose blossoms, measuring four feet in circumference, the Indian children sportively draw on their heads as caps." This species (Aristolochia grandiflora), or what is believed to be the same species, is called "pelican flower" in the West Indies, from the resemblance of its young and unopened flower to the head of a pelican at rest. Miers states that he had often seen it in Brazil, where he was led to compare the large flaccid blossoms on the bushes with coloured pocket-handkerchiefs laid out to dry. Lunan remarks that the odour is so abominably foetid that it is detested and shunned by most animals; and when hogs venture, through necessity, to eat of it, it destroys them. Tussac, noting the same plant in the Antilles, says that a whole herd of swine, having been driven into the woods where this plant was common, had entirely perished from eating the roots and young stems. Another species, which has now flowered two or three times in this country (Aristolochia goldieana), comes from Old Calabar River and Sierra Leone. The flowers reach to twenty-six inches in length and eleven inches in diameter at the mouth, when grown here. Like the other, it has a strong and powerful odour as of putrid meat. Our figure of this species is very considerably reduced, but it represents the form, and from the measurements of its diameter at the funnel-like mouth, it must be conceded that it is no exaggeration to say that it may be placed like a cap on the head of a very broad-headed adult.
<!-- image -->Fig. 82.—Aristolochia goldieana, greatly reduced.
The flowers of the night-blooming cereus (Cereus grandiflorus) are very different in character, and inferior in size; they have, however, the merit of possessing a very grateful fragrance. It is alluded to here as one of the largest of blossoms, attaining, it is said, when fully expanded, a diameter of a foot, but as this measurement is taken from tip to tip of the petals, it does not seem so large as a cup-shaped flower would be.
Amongst lilies there are two or three magnificent species which deserve remembrance. Such, for example, is Lilium giganteum, of which a dried stem is preserved in one of the museums at Kew. Let the imagination strive to picture a gorgeous white lily, with a flower stem eleven and a half inches in circumference at the base, and rising to a height of thirteen feet, bearing blossoms as large as tumbler glasses. It might be said literally that "Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
No allusion to extraordinary flowers would be considered as complete without reference to the royal water-lily (Victoria regia), dedicated to the Queen, and made the subject of two entire volumes, one on each side of the Atlantic, which, for size of page, are almost the largest of modern books. The oft-repeated account of its discovery on New Year's Day, 1837, by Sir Robert Schomburgk, whilst on his way up the River Berbice, has become a historic record, and is the basis of all detailed chronicles. "There were," he says, "gigantic leaves, five to six feet across, flat, with a broad rim, lighter green above, and vivid crimson below, floating upon the water; while in character with the wonderful foliage I saw luxuriant flowers, each consisting of numerous petals, passing in alternate tints, from pure white to rose and pink. The smooth water was covered with the blossoms, and as I rowed from one to the other I always found something new to admire. The flowerstalk is an inch thick near the calyx, and studded with elastic prickles about three quarters of an inch long. When expanded the four-leaved calyx measures a foot in diameter, but is concealed by the expansion of the hundred-petaled corolla. This beautiful flower, when it first unfolds, is white with a pink centre; the colour spreads as the bloom increases in age; and at a day old the whole is rose-coloured. As if to add to the charm of this noble water-lily, it diffuses a sweet scent. Ascending the river we found this plant frequently, and the higher we advanced the more gigantic did the specimens become; one leaf we measured was six feet five inches in diameter, the rim five and a half inches high, and the flowers a foot and a quarter across."
If one were asked to determine the largest fruit hitherto known, it is probable that the answer must be some species of gourd or "pumpkin," the dried external portion of one such specimen being suspended in one of the museums of the royal gardens, Kew, with a diameter of about two feet. This far exceeds the largest "double cocoa-nut" (Lodoicea seychellarum) of which we have any experience. As far as we know, the full dimensions of the largest gourds have not been recorded, since they may attain, in their native and warmer climes, a much greater diameter than in cultivation.