BROOM-RAPES, BALANOPHORE®, RAFFLESIACEE. 193 
starting-point of that runner, perishes, and another tuber belonging to the net-work 
above described, or rather the system of runners proceeding from it, becomes the 
basis for the development of new inflorescences. To this extent we may regard 
these Helosis species as perennial plants, whereas the majority of the other 
Balanophorex can Jay no claim to this distinction, inasmuch as in their case the 
whole plant dies after it has flowered and ripened its seeds. The floral spadices in 
Helosis have a purple or blood-red colour, and in Brazil are called “Espigo de sangue”. 
Only three species of Helosis have been discovered up to the present time, and 
those are distributed over equatorial America, in the Antilles, and from Mexico to 
Brazil. 
Nearly allied to Helosis is the genus Corynea, which resembles it in having 
facetted bract-scales like nails and a cone-like inflorescence, but differs catirely in 
other respects in its mode of growth, especially in being without runners. Four 
species of this genus have been discovered in the Andes of South America, in Peru, 
Ecuador, and New Granada, where they are parasitic, like the rest of the Balano- 
phorex, upon the roots of trees. One of them, Corynea Twrdiei, is worthy of 
notice as living on the roots of Peruvian-bark trees, and is rendered conspicuous by 
its purple spadix, borne on a white shaft. Rhopalocnemis phalloides (see fig. 40*) 
is another root-parasite related to Helosis, and the single representative in Asia of 
these pre-eminently American groups. It is found preying upon the roots of 
fig-trees, oaks, and various lianes, in mountainous parts of Java and the eastern 
Himalayas, and is one of the biggest of all the Balanophoree. The fleshy, 
yellowish or reddish-brown tuber-stock attains to the size of a man’s head; the 
inflorescences, which burst from the protuberances of this lumpy mass and are 
from two to six in number, are over 30 cm. long and from 4 to 6 em. thick. The 
protuberances are light-brown in colour, and resemble in form a eycad-cone. 
Rhopalocnemis, a drawing of which is given in fig. 40! on a scale of one-half the 
natural size, is distinguished, like Corynaa, from Helosis by having no runners 
issuing from the tuberous axes. 
The Lophophytex are set apart as a further group of parasitic Balanophoree, 
and differ from all the groups hitherto described in having their flowers arranged in 
separate roundish capitula upon a fleshy rachis springing from the tuberous-stock. 
They, again, belong to Central America, and are divided into three genera 
(Lophophytum, Ombrophytum, and Lathrophytwm) into particulars of which we 
cannot enter without exceeding our limits. Only the genus Lophophytwm, which 
is in many respects different from other Balanophorez, and in particular has been 
more thoroughly studied with reference to its peculiar mode of connection with the 
host-plant, demands special consideration. The Lophophytwm mirabile (see 
fig. 411) found in the primeval forests of Brazil adhering to the roots of Mimosex, 
to those of Inga-trees especially, occurs at some places in such profusion that areas 
of ground, occupied by Inga-roots, from twenty to thirty paces in circumference 
appear to be entirely overgrown by the parasite. Hundreds of tubers, some large, 
some small, rest upon the roots of the trees, covered by fallen leaves and a light 
Vou. I. 13 
