2*74 REMARKS ON THE PANKE. 



The Panke (Gunnera Chilensis or scabra Auct.), though stemless, 

 acquires very great dimensions. Its facies is that of a Rheum, with a 

 more considerable development. No other plant is more proper to 

 adorn the landscape or large flower-gardens. 



From a very thick round rhizoma, formed with persistent vestiges 

 of the old leaves, rise cylindric petioles embracing and dilated at the 

 base, nearly the size of a child's arm, 1 or H metre long, ordinarily 

 purple, covered with short conic and herbaceous prickles. The foli- 

 aceous limb is not less than a metre in diameter, and palmatifid, 

 live-lobed, five-nerved ; each nerve is doubly dichotomous, each lobe 

 bilobulate, with slightly acuminated coarsely duplicidentate segments. 

 These two pages are scabrous, covered with scarce hairs, and, below 

 particularly, along the nervures, the same prickles as on the petioles. 

 The young leaves, before their entire development, are of beautiful 

 reddish purple, which slowly disappears as they grow older. The 

 lloral scapes, hardly 35 to 40 centimetres high, are pyramidal and 

 covered from half to summit with hermaphrodite flowers, which are 

 sessile and little remarkable in themselves, but, however, of a pretty 

 good effect by their mode of insertion. 



The Gunnera scabra grows in humid places, in Peru and Chili ; 

 and according to travellers it is very refreshing. The natives drink a 

 decoction of its leaves for that purpose; they also eat the thick pe- 

 tioles raw or cooked, after having pealed off the bark. Dyers cut the 

 loots in little pieces, boil them, and thence extract a beautiful and 

 solid black colour. Tanners soak their leathers in a water saturated 

 with its juice, which thus acquire a thickness and pliancy that no 

 other procedure would or can give it. 



If one takes into consideration that the temperature of Chili and 

 Peru is nearly identical with that of the climates of the centre and of 

 the south of Europe, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the Gun- 

 nera scabra may easily be acclimated, and produce high results here. 

 It is with this view that we publish this note; let us hope that both 

 medicine and domestic economy may draw some advantage from it. 



