197 



107. Victoria regia, Lindl. — The Victoria regia is certainly the queen 

 of all water lilies, but in the narrow confines of the tank at Cas- 

 tleton, it is unable to expand to its full size and beauty. 



The first printed notice of this lily was in D'Orbigny's " Voyage 

 dans TAmerique meridionale," published in 1835. He says, " I 

 resumed my descent of the Parana, and arriving at the junction of 

 a small river called the San Jose, which spreads into a wide marsh 

 before falling into the Parana, I found one of the most beautiful 

 flowers that America can produce. The people of Guiana call 

 it Imps', deriving this name from the shape of its leaves, which 

 resembles the broad dishes used in the country, or the lids of their 

 large round baskets. A space more than a mile broad and nearly 

 a mile long, is covered with the large floating leaves, each of 

 which has a raised edge two inches high. The foliage is smooth 

 above and furrowed below with numberless regular compartments 

 formed by the projecting, thick, hollow nerves, the air in which 

 keeps the leaf upon the surface of the water. Leaf stalks, flower 

 stalks, and ribs of the leaves, are alike cellular and covered with 

 long prickles. Amid this expanse of foliage rise the broad flowers, 

 upwards of a foot across, and either white, pink, or purple ; always 

 double, and diffusing a delicious odour. The fruit, which succeeds 

 these flowers, is spherical, and half the size, when ripe, of the human 

 head, full of roundish farinaceous seeds, which give to the plant the 

 name of water maize (Mais del Agua), for the Spaniards collect the 

 seeds, roast and eat them. I was never weary of admiring this Co- 

 lossus of the Vegetable Kingdom, and reluctantly pursued my way 

 the same evening to Corrientes, after collecting specimens of the 

 flowers, fruits, and seeds.* 



Sir Robert Schomburgh discovered it in British Guiana, and 

 gave the following account to the Royal Geographical Society : — 



" It was on the 1st of January, 1837, while contending with the 

 difficulties that nature interposed in different forms, to stem our 

 progress up th,e river Berbice that we arrived at a part where the 

 river expanded and formed a currentless basin. Some object on 

 the southern extremity of this basin attracted my attention, and I 

 was unable to form an idea what it could be ; but, animating the 

 crew to increase the rate of their paddling, we soon came opposite 

 the object which had raised my curiosity, and behold, a vegetable 

 wonder ! All calamities were forgotten, I was a botanist, and felt 

 myself rewarded ! There were gigantic leaves, five to six feet 

 across, flat with a broad rim, lighter green above and vivid crim- 

 son below, floating upon the water ; while in character with the 

 wonderful foliage, I saw luxuriant flowers, each consisting of nu- 

 merous petals, passing in alternate tints, from pure white to rose 

 and pink. The smooth water was covered with the blossoms, and 

 as I rowed from one to the other, I always found something new 

 to admire. The flower-stalk is an inch thick near the calyx and 

 studded with elastic prickles, about three-quarters of an inch long. 

 When expanded, the four-leaved calyx measures a foot in diameter, 

 but is concealed by the expansion of the hundred petaled corolla. 

 This beautiful flower when it first unfolds, is white with a pink 

 centre ; the colour spreads as the bloom increases in age ; and, at a 



