156 BROOM-RAPES, BALANOPHORE&, RAFFLESIACE. 
and that the roots of the thyme, rock-roses, and other plants growing upon the hill 
side by side with Teuerium montanum do not share this property. 
Whereas the Broom-rapes constitute a family of plants, the species of which, 
though very numerous, are so similar in the structure of flowers and fruit, in the 
history of their development and in the general impression they convey, that it is 
necessary to discover minute distinctive marks in order to be able to classify them 
with tolerable completeness, the Balanophorew, which, together with these Oro- 
banchex, belong to the fourth series of parasitic Phanerogams, are related to one 
another in a manner quite the reverse. Only forty species of them are known, but 
they are so various that, on the basis of the obvious differences, no less than 
fourteen genera have been distinguished, among which the forty species are fairly 
equally divided. In respect of distribution and occurrence they also contrast 
strikingly with both Broom-rapes and Rhinanthacee. The Orobanche belong in» 
particular to the Mediterranean flora, and to the East, and the Rhinanthacez, as has 
been already stated, adorn chiefly sunny pastures in arctic regions and in moun- 
tain districts of the northern hemisphere. Balanophorex, on the other hand, 
are only found within a belt encircling the Old and New Worlds, which stretches 
little beyond the equatorial zone to the north or south, and they almost all inhabit 
the dark bed of primeval forests, where they are parasitic on the roots of woody 
plants, beneath a covering of vegetable mould. 
The genus of Balanophoree named Langsdorffia is confined exclusively to 
tropical America. One of its species (Langsdorfia Moritziana) is found native 
in the damp forests of Venezuela and New Granada, where it is parasitic on the 
roots of palms and fig-trees; a second species (Langsdorjjia rubiginosa) occurs in 
Guiana and Brazil in the region of the sources of the Orinoco, and a third, the 
most common of all (Langsdorfia hypogea) represented in fig. 38, has an area of 
distribution extending from Mexico to the south of Brazil. They all avoid the 
hottest districts, remaining rather in cool regions; indeed the species first named 
has been found at an elevation of from 2000 to 3000 meters. Unlike all the 
rest of the Balanophorex, Langsdorfia exhibits a branched, cylindrical stock 
ascending from the place of attachment to the nutrient root, more or less felted 
externally, and before putting forth any flowers has a remote resemblance to a 
doe’s antlers with their winter covering of downy skin. These stems are almost as 
thick as a little finger, have a fleshy consistence, and exhibit a clavate expansion 
at the base where they rest upon the root of the host. Many of those stems which 
bear the male flowers are 30 em. long; those which bear the female flowers are 
usually somewhat shorter. They are all of a pale-yellowish colour; the thickly 
tomentose Langsdorfia rubiginosa looks as if it were covered with a yellowish 
velvet. At the extremity of each of the ramifications of the stem, which are often 
extremely short, having then the form of lobes or knobs, a bud is developed sooner 
or later in the lower cortical layer. This bud swells, bursts the outer layer of 
cortex, uplifts itself and grows out as an inflorescence between the four lobes 
formed by the cruciform rupture of the bark. The inflorescence is surrounded, like 
