BOTANY 
22 3 
a madman’s world. The Protea has tried to be beautiful but it merely succeeds 
in being strange, with its immense saucer-shaped flowers like gigantic daisies. 
These soon wither and yet remain on the bush, hideous black objects, for many 
months afterwards. The Protea shrub is only fit to look at during one month 
in the year. 
The many creepers of the forests develop huge lianas. These are chiefly 
characteristic of the various rubber-vines of the genus Latidolphia. 
The Sansevmria plants should be classed amongst 
the grotesque if they did not lead us by a natural 
transition to the useful. They are absurd things, just 
segments of crude vegetation which might be stalks, 
but which are, I suppose, leaves that come up out of 
the ground anyhow. One triangular leaf may be standing 
alone, although there may be a Stonehenge clump of 
four or five others growing stiffly together and yet having 
as little connection with each other as possible. It is very 
rare to see these things in flower. When they do flower 
the blossom comes out at the side of the leaf, which makes 
you think that the leaf after all is a stalk. Ordinarily 
they look as though they had forgotten where 
they came from and what they were doing, 
and whether they should or should not 
have leaves or stalks or flowers. 
They are fleshy, but with limp 
leathery edges, and they produce 
excellent fibre. A company has 
been started for the cultivation of 
the Sansevieria, which grows in 
dry, stony ground ; but unfortu¬ 
nately at the present time the 
price of fibre is so low that the 
export of the Sansevieria will 
yield large profits. 
Fibre is also obtained from the 
Aloes, Baobab and the arboreal 
Hibiscus ; the extraordinary Kigelia tree (whose seed pods are sometimes nearly 
as thick as a man’s thigh and like a huge pendant sausage in shape) contains in 
its seed pods a fibrous material like the Egyptian Lufah which can be used for 
rubbing the skin after a bath, and might be utilised for many other purposes. 
The natives take the seeds of these Kigelia pods and roast and eat them in 
times of scarcity. A species of hemp, probably introduced, grows wild all 
over British Central Africa. It is smoked by the natives, as I have already 
stated. This hemp might also be got to yield a fibre, and some of the palms 
would do the same. 
Oils are produced by the Sesamum (a handsome flowering plant with large 
mauve-pink blossoms), by several species of Vitex, by the Castor oil plant 
{Ricinus) (which grows in extravagant abundance in and near to the native 
settlements), by the Oil palm found in North-West Nyasaland, by the ground 
nuts (Arachis and Voandzeia, which are almost indigenous); and by other 
seeds and nuts not yet identified. 
For timber there are the African teak (Oldjieldia) ; the Khaya; the 
A LANDOLPHIA I.IANA 
