190 BROOM-RAPES, BALANOPHOREA, RAFFLESIACE. 
brandtii, which is represented on the left side of the figure 39, occurs in the 
Comoro Islands off the east coast of Africa; seven species inhabit the islands of 
Java, Ceylon, Borneo, Hong-Kong, and the Philippines, and three species the East 
Indies. Balanophora fungosa, first discovered by Forster, is parasitic on the roots 
of Eucalyptus and Ficus, and is indigenous to Australia and the New Hebrides. 
The more elevated regions of Java and the Himalaya abound especially in 
these singular organisms. Balanophora elongata is so prevalent in Java on 
mountains of between 2000 and 3000 metres, that it is collected in quantities for 
the sake of the wax-like matter obtained from it. In that island candles are made 
from Balanophoras as they are from Langsdorffias in New Granada, or else rods of 
bamboo are smeared with the viscid substance, as they are then found to burn quite 
quietly and slowly. In the Himalaya, Balanophora dioica or B. polyandra are 
the commonest and most widely distributed species, and Balanophora involucrata 
is there met with upon the roots of oaks, maples, and araliads even at a height of 
from 2300 to 2500 metres above the sea-level. They possess in almost all cases 
very vivid and conspicuous colouring—deep-yellow, purple, red-brown or flesh-tint, 
thus resembling the Gastromycetes, Clavariex, and Toad-stools, in whose company 
they grow, and with which they manifest an additional uniformity in being all of 
fleshy consistence and containing no trace of chlorophyll. At a certain distance, 
moreover, the inflorescences rising from the dark ground in a wood, have the 
appearance of fungi, and all the early observers describe these Balanophore with 
one accord as truly abnormal growths, viz. as fungi which by some marvellous 
accident bear flowers. They were also the object of the boldest speculations and 
most exuberant imagery on the part of the botanists belonging to the school of the 
“nature philosophers ” of the first decades of this century. Even as late as the forties 
a famous German botanist says of them: “They are in the position of a hiero- 
glyphie key between two worlds, which intercept and evade one another in an 
infinite variety of ways, like dreaming and waking moments”, and the worthy 
Junghuhn, who discovered several of these plants in Java, writes: “Those are 
words which we may hope will be rightly interpreted thousands of years hence. 
Their sublime truth affected me deeply. There, flowerless and leafless, stood the 
mysterious plants which afford an instance of the combination of special vessels 
in a stalk like that of Balanophoreze with the fructification of imperfect Hypho- 
mycetes!” 
A young Balanophora not in flower is not unlike a Seybaliwm in appearance 
at the corresponding stage of its development. It consists of an irregular tuberous 
stem, which rests upon the creeping root of a tree or shrub. The exterior of this 
structure, which sometimes attains to the size of a man’s head, is uneven, and in 
some cases convoluted like the human brain, or it may project in humps and knobs, 
or be divided into lobes or short branches like a coral-stem. The resemblance to 
the latter is heightened by the fact that the surface is covered by little papille 
shaped like stars or forget-me-nots, which distinguish the genus Balanophora 
from all allied genera. 
