BROOM-RAPES, BALANOPHORE^, RAFFLESIACEiE. 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 

 Balanophoreoe can lay 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 Goryncea, which resembles it in having 

 facetted bract-scales like nails and a cone-like inflorescence, but differs entirely 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- 

 phorese, upon the roots of trees. One of them, Goryncea Turdiei, 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 Balanophoreae. 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 cm. thick. The 

 protuberances are light-brown in colour, and resemble in form a cycad-cone, 

 Rhopalocnemis, a drawing of which is given in fig. 40 ^ on a scale of one-half the 

 natural size, is distinguished, like Goryncea, from Helosis by having no runners 

 issuing from the tuberous axes. 



The Lophophytese are set apart as a further group of parasitic Balanophorese, 

 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, Omhrophytum, and Lathrophytum) into particulars of which we 

 cannot enter without exceeding our limits. Only the genus Lophophytum, which 

 is in many respects different from other Balanophorese, and in particular has been 

 more thoroughly studied with reference to its peculiar mode of connection with the 

 host-plant, demands special consideration. The Lophophytum mirabile (see 

 fig. 41 ^ ) found in the primeval forests of Brazil adhering to the roots of Mimoseae, 

 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 



Vol. I. 13 



