222 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
after all is nothing but soft, fibrous, pithy wood inside the hard rind ; its gouty 
limbs springing from the massive trunk and so inadequately fulfilling the 
promise of majesty ; and the leprous look of the whole object with its smooth, 
shiny, dirty-pink bark make up a total that is wholly 
grotesque. The leaves only remain on this tree for 
about five months, and even then they are so thinly 
scattered as to give no shade. The flowers are hand¬ 
some as they open, but soon tarnish and turn brown, 
as though the whole tree were permeated with a sickly 
taint. The seed vessels, shaped like huge bean-pods, 
hang perpendicularly from the branches by string-like 
stalks and are covered with a thin grey plush. Broken 
open they will be found to contain a white pith, yield¬ 
ing a pleasant acid taste, which can be made into a 
drink faintly resembling lemonade. 
Another grotesque thing is the Euphorbia , which 
grows in the plains—a cube-like stem with a few flat 
segments branching off it; or the Candelabra Euphor¬ 
bia found in the low country and on the harsher 
uplands. The species of this Euphorbia which grows 
in the hills does not reach the same size as the 
monster of the plains. It looks, with the blood-red 
aloes growing in the same locality, a fit vegetation to 
surround the entrance to a witches’ cavern. The 
subsidiary branches are like innumerable scorpion 
tails, as though a congeries of immense scorpions 
the euphorbia of the plains were collected in a knot with their tails in the air. 
There are many other Euphorbias not already 
instanced which are distinctly quaint, though their absurdity has a dash of the 
saturnine. Their determination to grow absolutely green flowers, when nearly 
every other plant goes in for colour, 
shows a trait of originality. 
The Aloe when it is in blossom 
and throws up its spike of coral 
coloured tubes, can be almost pretty ; 
otherwise without flowers it is gro¬ 
tesque as it sprawls over the ground 
and its thick-spotted red and green 
leaves with sharp serrated edges and 
long whip-like terminations writhe in 
ascending whorls from the crouching 
woody stem. 
The Kniphofia (the “ red - hot 
poker ” of our gardens) is on the 
borderland between the grotesque 
and the beautiful. When its flower 
spike is in full bearing and the many 
little tube-like flowers are scarlet, lightening into yellow, it offers a fine body 
of colour ; but without the bloom the plant with its limp attenuated leaves 
(green and spotted with white, having much of the aloe’s fleshiness without 
its pompous stiffness) looks like some monstrous caricature of a lily made in 
CANDELABRA EUPHORBIAS 
