186 BROOM-RAPES, BALANOPHORE^, RAFFLESIACE^. 



and that the roots of the thyme, rock-roses, and other plants growing upon the hill 

 side by side with Teucriura 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 Balanophoreoe, which, together with these Oro- 

 banchese, 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 Rhinanthacece. The Orobanchese belong in 

 particular to the Mediterranean flora, and to the East, and the Rhinanthacese, as has 

 been already stated, adorn chiefly sunny pastures in arctic regions and in moun- 

 tain districts of the northern hemisphere. Balanophorese, 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 Balanophorere named Langsdorffia is confined exclusively to 

 tropical America. One of its species {Langsdorffia 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 {Langsdorffia rubiginosa) occurs in 

 Guiana and Brazil in the region of the sources of the Orinoco, and a third, the 

 most common of all {Langsdorffia hypoga^a) 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 Balanophoreae, Langsdorffia 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 cm. long; those which bear the female flowers are 

 usually somewhat shorter. They are all of a pale-yellowish colour; the thickly 

 tomentose Langsdorffia 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 



