William Jackson Hooker

“ If there exist in the Animal Kingdom creatures, whose size, compared with our own, commands admiration by their enormous stature; if we also gaze with wonder on the giants of the Vegetable Kingdom, we may well take especial pleasure in surveying any peculiarly wonderful species of those genera of plants which are already known to us only in more moderate dimensions. I shall endeavour to express not only my own feelings, but those of M.M. Bonpland and Haenke, for we were all alike struck with profound emotion, on beholding the two species of Victoria which form the subject of this note. ”

“ I hastened to load my Pirogue with leaves, flowers and fruits: each leaf, itself as heavy as a man could carry, floats on the water by means of the air-cells contained in its thick projecting innumerable nerves, and is beset, like the flower-stalks and fruit, with long spines. The ripe fruit is full of roundish-black seeds, white and mealy within. ”

“ Professor Lindley mentions the plant to be annual, and only three or four inches high: in the greenhouse of the Botanical Garden of Glasgow its duration is more than annual, and it attains to about two feet. It is a very charming plant, no less deserving of cultivation for its beauty, than for the singular property of the column of stamens being endowed with a very active irritability, so that if touched with a pin on the out-side when curved, it bounds over to the opposite side of the flower and becomes inverted: this property is observable, in a greater or less degree, in the whole Genus. ”

“ In the winter months, care should be taken not to saturate the earth with
water, nor wet the leaves or stem more, than can be avoided. In dry weather
however, during the summer season, water may be freely given to the plants
about sunset, and a very essential point to be observed is, that, when they
are placed out in the open air in groups, the sun's rays should not be
allowd to fall directly on the sides of the pots, for if they are, all the feeding
spongioles of the tender roots round the inner side of the pot, will assuredly
be destroyed, and the life of the plant greatly endangered. ”

“ Leaf-stalks, flower-stalks, and ribs of the leaves, are alike cellular and covered with long prickles. Amid this expanse of foliage rise the broad flowers, upwards of a foot across, and either white, pink, or purple; always double, and diffusing a delicious odour. The fruit, which succeeds these flowers, is spherical, and half the size, when ripe, of the human head, full of roundish farinaceous seeds, which give to the plant the name of Water-Maize (Maïs del Agua) , for the Spaniards collect the seeds, roast and eat them. ”

“ The dark-flowering one, of which but two specimens have ever been found in bloom, is a real mourning flower; the upper portions of its stem, and lower portion of the corolla being covered, as it were, with black velvet: the corolla is deeply cleft, and expands about two inches. The species is not allied to any other yet discovered in the Swan River Settlement." The flower alone, independent of the curious sooty tomentum of the upper part of the plant, is indeed quite sufficient to distinguish this species ”

“ In our conservatories, where, accord-
ing to Hortus Kewensis, it has been an inhabitant since the
year 1803, it usually puts forth its oval heads of flowers in
March; and continuing its blossoms during the two suc-
ceeding months, is a most desirable plant for greenhouse
cultivation among other compatriots in our possession from
the sterile shores of South-western Australia–a locality, so
desert-like in aspect, yet so rich in the rarer and more
diversiformed species of the great and splendid family to
which our plant belongs. ”

“ Detail of illustration from title page.
" Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too:
Unconscious of a less propitious clime,
There blooms exotic beauty, warm and snug,
While the winds whistle and the snows descend." ”