164 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



shaped pips are the eatable portion, of a fine fibry texture, and 

 full of a rich fragrant juice, the flavor and aroma of which is some- 

 thing like that of a pineapple and banana combined, very lus- 

 cious and pleasant to the taste, but soon satisfying. Unless fully 

 ripe the fruit contains some minute crystals or spiculre which are 

 quite irritating to the mouth. The fragrance is so powerful that a 

 single fruit will fill the whole of the house in which it grows with 

 a delicious perfume. 



The plant has a scrambling mode of growth adapting it for 

 creeping over massive rockwork, or the back wall of a tropical 

 house. The stout stem, as thick as a man's wrist, produces 

 numerous pendent aerial roots, often as thick as one's finger and 

 eight or ten feet long. The leaf is upwards of two feet across, of 

 a blunt ovate heart-shaped figure, and furnished between the prin- 

 cipal veins with several series of oblong perforations, while the 

 margin is deeply slashed half-way to the midrib in a pinnatifld 

 manner. The young leaf is at first beautifully rolled up like a 

 roll of paper, and as it keeps unfolding the points are held up bj'^ 

 threads until they are able to bear their own weight. Without 

 these filaments the tender portions of the leaf would not be able 

 to support themselves. Irrespective of its fruit-bearing quality 

 the whole plant is most curious and interesting, whether we con- 

 sider its singular perforated and gashed leaves, the long roots 

 which it sends out into the air and along the ground, or the pecu- 

 liar inflorescence. It has been used with excellent efiect in sub- 

 tropical gardening for which its striking appearance well adapts it. 

 Messrs. Hovey have found it, in our somewhat semi-tropical cli- 

 mate, to succeed admirably bedded out, or plunged in a pot, dur- 

 ing the summer months, its immense curiously perforated and deep 

 green coriaceous leaves being especially novel, attractive, and 

 beautiful. In England houses have been built solely for the culti- 

 vation of this plant for the sake of its fruit. 



