168 ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW 
seen the wonderful Aristolochia gigas, a climbing plant from Guate- 
mala, whose flowers, measured at Kew, have been 18 inches wide 
and 22 inches long, with a tail 42 inches long — a total length of 
5 feet 4 inches. Over the tank in this house, sometimes with the 
pots partially immersed in the water, there has for years been grown 
a changing but always remarkable series of plants. It has been 
found that some of the most difficult and intractable of tropical plants 
succeed in this position. Here, in 1889, flowered for the first time 
in Europe that vegetable wonder, the giant aroid ( Amorphophallus 
Titanum), and here, at the present time, is the largest orchid ever 
seen in Britain ( Granwiatophyllum speciosum), which was in flower 
for several months in the autumn of 1907. 
