WOODEX F LOWE US 



67 



Fig. 2. A Branch of Citrus medica, showing the parasitic Lorenthus Ladebeckii (Engl.) in 

 situ, taken in front of a mirror so as to show both sides of the same specimen. The right-hand 

 view also shows one of the cup-like ' flowers,' from which a plant of L. Ladebeckii has fallen. 

 This photograph was kindly made for the writer by Dr. Voigt, of the Botanical Museum of 

 Hamburg. 



vindication and fulfilment of the natives' warning has fastened the 

 tradition unalterably upon their beliefs, and no amount of enlighten- 

 ment ever shakes their confidence in the direful results that will follow 

 the too close inspection of these terrible ' roses of hell.' 



This peculiar botanical formation, though strange in its gigantic 

 size, is easily explained when the specimens are carefully examined. 

 An examination of a number of them by the writer showed them to 

 have a ' stem ' of wood, upon the end of which was the enlargement or 

 ' flower.' The outer or convex side of the enlargement is covered with 

 a continuation of the bark of the ' stem,' the bark ending at the outer 

 edge of the ' petals.' The concave or inside of the ' flower ' is delicately 

 creased like the veins of a petal, running from the center to the 

 periphery, as shown by the photographs. Many of the flowers showed 

 decided indentations in the periphery, as if divided roughly into four- 

 parted ' corollas,' and varying from eighteen to twenty inches in diam- 

 eter down to minute growths. They might, therefore, easily be mis- 

 taken for flowers by those who can not reason from effect back to cause. 



The real cause of these peculiar growths is found in the biological 

 law that every organism will protect itself against outside intrusion if 

 it can. Thus when any foreign substance, whether living or inert, 

 enters the living organism, the intrusions are resented by the organism, 

 which tries to protect itself by either assimilating the intruder, ejecting 

 it, or by building up a barrier around it. Thus when the seeds of the 

 parasitic order Lorentheacea? adhere to the bark of a tree by the gelat- 

 inous coating which surrounds them and there germinate, sending 



