William Jackson Hooker

“ 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. ”

“ A space, more than a mile broad and nearly a mile long, is covered with the large floating leaves, each of which has a raised edge two inches high. The foliage is smooth above and furrowed below with numberless regular compartments, formed by the projecting, thick, hollow nerves, the air in which keeps the leaf upon the surface of the water. ”

“ It is true that the Victoria has not yet produced its blossoms in England:, but we have growing plants in the Royal Gardens of Kew, which germinated from seeds brought from Bolivia by Mr. Bridges. These have hitherto made satisfactory progress; although we have our fears that the plant being possibly annual and the season late (December) , they may not survive the winter; or, at any rate, may not produce perfect flowers. Many are the disappointments and delays of Science! ”

“ From what I observed of the nature and habits of this most interesting plant, I conclude that it cannot and does not exist in any of the rivers, where the immense rise and fall, of twenty feet, would leave it dry, during many months of the year, especially in the season when there is no rain. The lagoons, being subject to little variation in the height of their waters, are the places where it grows in all its beauty and grandeur. ”

“ The traveller, after spending a year among Indians, may easily appreciate the privilege of meeting with a human being who can understand and exchange sentiments with him; and I eagerly embraced the opportunity of conversing with this venerable old man, who had passed thirty years of his life among savages. In one of our interviews he happened to mention the famous botanist Haenke, who had been sent by the Spanish government to investigate the vegetable productions of Peru, and the fruit of whose labours has been unfortunately lost to science. ”

“ The Victoria grows in 4-6 feet of water, producing leaves and flowers, which rapidly decay and give place to others. From each plant there are seldom more than four or five leaves on the surface, but even these in parts of the lake where the plants were numerous, almost covered the surface of the water, one leaf touching the other. ”

“ Seldom has any plant excited such attention in the botanical world; the interest being specially enhanced by the name it is privileged to bear. If it could be said, in reference to the royal ancestor of Queen Victoria, the Consort of His Majesty, George III., that the Strelitzia was peculiarly appropriated to Her, because of the patronage which she gave to Botany, b improving and embellishing the Royal Gardens of Kew, much more does the name of Victoria claim to be handed down to posterity on similar grounds ”

“ Victoria Cruziana, D'Orbigny, l. c. p. 57 ("foliis utrinque concoloribus, petalis cunctis concoloribus roseis")
It has always been our endeavour to commence a New Year in this Magazine with some eminently rare or beautiful plant; but never had we the good fortune on any occasion to devote a Number to a production of such pre-eminent beauty, rarity, and we may add celebrity, as that now presented to our Subscribers; worthy, as we have no doubt they will agree with us in thinking,
to occupy the entire Number. ”

“ I now turned over in my thoughts how and in what way flowers and leaves might be obtained, and I clearly saw that a canoe was necessary, and therefore promptly returned to the town, and communicated my discovery and wants to the Correjidor or Governor, Don José Maria Zarate, who with much kindness immediately ordered the Cacique to send Indians with a yoke of oxen for the purpose of drawing a canoe from the river Yacuma to the lake. ”

“ The base of the trunk, or rather stem, situated in the soft mud, appears to decompose in proportion as new leaves and flowers issue from the centre, keeping the plant from elevating itself above water, which but for such an arrangement, might be the case, from the rapidity of its growth. ”

“ He had gathered them in the Province of Corrientes, in a river tributary to the Rio de la Plata. The evident analogy between the foliage of this plant and that of Euryale, induced the French botanists also to rank it as a species of that genus. The dried flowers and fruit, which M. D'Orbigny had transmitted, were unfortunately neglected, and nothing remained of his specimens but a single leaf, of immense dimensions and somewhat injured, which had been folded for insertion in the Herbarium. ”

“ 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 inches and a half high, and the flowers a foot and a quarter across. A beetle (Triclius sp. ?) infests the flowers to their great injury, often completely destroying the inner part of the disc; we counted sometimes from twenty to thirty of these insects in one flower. ”

“ No one can have examined the aquatic plants, either of our own or of foreign countries, without remarking that those parts which come in contact with the fluid are apt to turn purple, without any apparent cause for such change. ”

“ From the inner edge of the cavity, just beneath the inner crown of sterile stamens, and articulated, as it were, at their base (or the base of the torus) rises a circle of stigmas, as many as there are cells in the ovary, large, fleshy, ovate, acuminated, laterally compressed, but geniculated, so to speak, in the middle ”

“ Bridges from Bolivia. A portion of the leaf is given, supposed to be a transverse section taken near the petiole, but so much fore-shortened (to allow of its being introduced at all) as to convey little idea of the magnificence of the entire foliage; drawn from a fine dried specimen in the author's possession, obtained from Bolivia.
Tab. 4277.
Fig 1. Exhibits an unexpanded flower (from Bolivia) :–natural size. Fig. 2. A portion of the underside of the leaf (natural size) showing more particularly the remarkable venation. Fig. 3. ”

“ Bolivia, at Rio Mamoré, upper tributary of the Amazons, found there by Haenke, about 1801, and some time afterwards seen by Bonpland; Igaripé, a branch of the Amazons, Poeppig (1832) ; Paranà and Riochuèlo rivers, province of Corrientes, on the frontier of Paraguay, D'Orbigny (1827) ; Rio Madeiras, near the sources of the Mamord, between the confluence of the rivers Apere and Tijamuche, province of Moxos, Bolivia, D'Orbigny (1832) ; Berbice river, British Guiana, Sir R. Schomburgk (1837) : and also in the Rupununi, a tributary of the Essequibo [6] (1842) ”

“ It is to be regretted there were no ripe capsules (ours is drawn from the figure of Sir R. Schomburgk) , and of the seeds the majority were decayed; so that out of twenty-two which we purchased, only two have germinated, the rest being in a state equally unfit for examination and description. ”