202 



BEOOM-EAPES, BALANOPHOEE^E, EAFFLESIACEjE. 



from them; but, in the one case the flowers belong to a foreign parasite living 

 under the cortex and have broken through it, whereas in Mezereon it is the 

 flowers of the plant itself that have unfolded. In the case of Pilostyles 

 Hausslcnechtii, which is parasitic on the low bushy tragacanth shrubs of the 

 Persian plateaus, the buds are formed regularly on both sides of the leaf-bases of 

 the host, so that at the insertion of every one of the older foliage-leaves, one finds 

 a pair of buds, which subsequently expand into flowers (see fig. 43 a ). 



i'ig. 44. — Parasitic Bafflesiacea {Brugmansia ZipeUU) upon a Cissus-root. 



Throughout the species of Apodanthes and Pilostyles the flowers are small — 

 about the size of elder, jasmine, or winter-green blossoms — and by no means 

 conspicuous. But this is not the case in the genera Brugmansia and Rafflesia. 

 The Brugmansias, indigenous to Borneo and Java, have very handsome flowers, 

 as may be seen in the above drawing, which represents on the natural scale 

 Brugmansia Zipellii parasitic upon the root of a Cissus. But in magnitude they 

 are far surpassed by the flowers of the Rafflesise, one of which, viz.: Rafflesia 

 Amoldii, may be described as actually the largest flower in the world. When 

 open it has a diameter of 1 meter, a dimension exceeding even that of the gigantic 

 blooms of South American aristolochias. At the period of emergence of the buds 

 of Rafflesia Amoldii from the roots of the vines which serve them as hostsj they 



