May 24, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



225 



mens of both plant and fibre were procured for Kew from 

 the Argentine Republic. This species resembles B. fastuosa 

 very closely. Another handsome stove-plant, which is also 

 of some importance on account of the fibre of its leaves, is B. 

 Penguin, the Penguin of Central America and the West Indies. 

 It has long been in cultivation at Kew, where it sometimes 

 flowers, and is as attractive as any of the Bromeliads. 



London. W. Wa/SO?l. 



a horse, and about thirty stems, each as thick as a child's 

 leg, and measuring from five to eight feet in length. This 

 giant is accommodated in the same house with the Victoria 

 regia and the Double Cocoanut, and where the great Amor- 

 phophallus Titanum flowered in 1889. Should the Orchid 

 flower in this house it will be a sensational event, for G. 

 speciosum, although often tried, has only rarely bloomed 

 in Europe. Even then the display has been disappointing 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



Grammatophyllum speciosum. — Probably the largest speci- 

 men Orchid ever seen alive in Europe is a huge mass of this 

 plant, which Messrs. Sander & Co., of St. Albans, have re- 

 cently presented to Kew. It weighs about a quarter of a 

 ton and consists of a mass of roots as large as the body of 



Fig. 35. — Bromelia fastuosa. — See page 224. 



to those who know what the inflorescence is like in the 

 Malayan regions. The plant there grows on the trunks of 

 the Durian and other large trees in moist places, luxuriating 

 when thus situated so as to reach the water of a river or 

 creek with its roots. Specimens measuring over forty feet in 

 circumference have been seen, bearing thirty tall scapes of 

 flowers. Although the scapes are described in Vetich's 

 Manual as being seven feet high, I am assured by Mr. San- 

 der that they have been seen fifteen feet high. They are 



