CHAPTER II 
AROIDS, STOVE PLANTS AND NEPENTHES 
Entering the Gardens by the chief entrance on Kew Green, the 
visitor will notice a plant-house immediately on his right. This 
is now the oldest structure in Kew devoted to the cultivation of 
plants. It originally stood in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, 
and was removed thence to the spot on which it now stands 
by William IV. in 1836. It represents a type of plant-house very 
characteristic of its time — heavy, solid, and dark — built with 
much more regard to the ideas of the architect than to those 
of the gardener. William IV. contemplated the erection of a 
large Palm House at Kew about 1834, but, the idea being for the 
time abandoned, this house at first served as a substitute. On the 
completion of the present Palm House in 1848, its contents were 
removed thither. It was then used for the cultivation of Australian 
plants, which in their turn were taken in 1863 to the newly finished 
Winter Garden. Ever since it has been filled with the shade-loving 
denizens of the tropical forest — which is, perhaps, the most appro- 
priate use to which it could be put. 
This house contains, in fact, the best reproduction which Britain — 
or even Europe — can show of a certain type of vegetation seen only 
in the humid depths of tropical forests. It is rather 
the floor of the forest than the forest itself. It is only 
in the equatorial belt, where the atmosphere is very 
hot and laden with moisture, and where a certain amount of 
shade prevails, that such a vegetation as this exists. The tree- 
ferns, the tall palms of extremely slender stem, the rampant 
climbers, all these are eminently characteristic of such areas, and 
equally so is the natural order of plants known as the aroids, which 
constitute the majority in this house and give to it its name. The 
aroids are represented in the flora of Great Britain by the “ cuckoo- 
pint,” or “ lords and ladies,” and several others are hardy there, 
136 
The Forest 
Floor. 
