4 
THE NATURALIST AND COLLECTOR 
Marvels of Plant Life. 
T HE development of plant life is 
a page from the wonderland of 
natural history. At the begin¬ 
ning of a line we have micro¬ 
scopic plants that are difficult to dis¬ 
tinguish from animals; at the end we 
might place the giant redwoods or the 
Colossi of Calaveras grove—trees cen¬ 
turies old, that tower high in the air 
hundreds of feet above the pines, and 
others that look up to them as the 
giants of plant life. 
Giants are found in the ranks of ani¬ 
mal life; but they do not attract so 
much attention nor appeal to us as ab¬ 
normally large plants. I shall never 
forget the feeling I experienced when 
on the California coast range I entered 
an ancient grove of redwoods. The 
giants that probably saw the ships of 
Drake, and possibly the caravels of 
Cabullo in 1542, were gone, cut down 
and burned; but from the outer circle 
of the trunks had grown a girdle of 
younger trees, one hundred feet high 
in some cases, that stood extending 
their limbs and branches to the vast 
hollow space that once marked the in¬ 
terior of the parent tree. I did not 
measure the trunk spaces of the old 
trees, but each enclosure would have 
held a large house, or 200 or 300 people 
could have crowded into it. 
One of the most sensational discov¬ 
eries, sensational in every particular, 
comes from Sumatra. Some years ago 
several botanists were traveling 
through the country in search of new 
things in plant life, when the natives 
told them of a gigantic flower, describ¬ 
ing it in such weird terms that they at 
first did not believe the account; but 
one day Dr. Arnold, one of the party, 
came upon the wonder. He was not 
only amazed, but dumbfounded, the 
strange object that met his view mak¬ 
ing a profound impression upon him. 
Later he said: “To tell the truth, had r 
I been alone, and there had been no 
witnesses, I should, I think, have been 
fearful of mentioning the dimensions 
of this flower, so much does it exceed 
every flower I have seen or heard of.” 
Passing from the bush to some trees, 
the discoverer was confronted by a 
gigantic flower, apparently growing 
alone, without leaves or verdure, from 
the ground. The petals, five in num¬ 
ber, were thick and fleshy, over an inch 
in thickness, while the center pre¬ 
sented the appeai-ance of a bowl, from 
which projected curious spikes. The 
entire flower was nearly four .feet 
across; each petal weighed almost three 
pounds, and the entire flower, if it 
could have been held up, would have 
entirely concealed the person holding 
it. The flower weighed, in some speci¬ 
mens, twenty-five or thirty pounds. 
The nectary alone could catch and hold 
twelve pints of water. 
'The new discovery was startling in 
many ways. It was a flower without 
leaves, or anything but the attachment 
to the earth—a complete puzzle—and 
at first it looked like a gigantic toad¬ 
stool that had taken the form of a 
flower. Tipping one of the flowers 
over, it was found that it grew from a 
delicate leafless stem not larger than 
two fingers, and was, in short, a won¬ 
derful flower parasite growing and de¬ 
riving its sustenance from the body of 
a huge vine that in turn wound about 
the trees of the forest. 
The story of this flower was re¬ 
ceived with incredulity, but it has 
since been seen by many, and been 
named, after Sir Stamford Raffles, raf- 
flesia. 
