144 Subtropical Gardening. 



was so impenetrable that no one who has not beheld it 

 can imagine so entangled a mass of dying and dead 

 trunks. I am sure that often for more than ten minutes 

 together our feet never touched the ground, and we were 

 frequently ten or fifteen feet above it ; so that the seamen, 

 as a joke, called out the soundings !" Yet I have grown 

 this plant to great size in a cold British bog. Mr. Darwin 

 does not speak of the inflorescence, which is more 

 remarkable than the leaves. The little flowers and seeds 

 are seated densely on conical fleshy masses a few inches 

 long, and these in their turn being seated as densely as 

 they can be packed on a thick stem, the whole has the 

 appearance of a compound cone a couple of feet high (on 

 strong plants), very heavy, and perhaps the oddest-look- 

 ing thing ever seen in the way of fructification. This 

 great spike springs from the root itself, the leaves also 

 springing from the root, as in the case of the rhubarbs. 

 I had two plants in a wet peat bog one in deep rich 

 soil, with the crown well raised above the level, and 

 the whole protected under a couple of barrowloads of 

 leaf mould ; the other left exposed, and not allowed any 

 particularly good soil. Both plants survived the severest 

 winters, but the protected and well-fed one grew much 

 the larger. The leaves of the larger plant used some- 

 times to grow 4 ft. in diameter, the texture being of extra- 

 ordinary thickness and rugosity. I have, however, in the 

 Royal Gardens at Kew, seen it grown to a larger size 

 than that. The bottom there is the reverse of bog, while 

 the situation is warmer and more sheltered than where 

 I grew it. But the Kew people met its wants very 

 cleverly, by building a little bank of turf around it, so 



