THE SPIDER TREE OF AFRICA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1264, 21 May 1896, Page 23

THE SPIDER TREE OF AFRICA.

DR WELWITSCIUS STORY.

Travellers who visited or passed the Capo Negro country of Africa often heard from the natives of a plant that was part spider, and that, growing, throw its legs about in continual struggles to escape. It was the good fortune of Dr W r ehvitsch to discover tho origin of the legend. Strolling along through a wind-swept tableland country, ho came upon a plant that rested low upon the ground, but had two enormous leaves that blew and twisted about in the wind like serpents—in fact, it looked, as the natives had said, like a gigantic spider. Its stem was four feet across and but a foot high. It had but two leaves in reality, that were six. or eight feet long, and split up by the wind so that they resembled ribbons. This is probably the most extraordinary treo known. It grows for nearly if not quite a century, but never upward beyond about a foot, simply expanding until it reaches tho diameter given, looking in its adult state like a singular stool on tho plain from ten to eighteen Ret in cireuui-

fereuce. When the wind came rushing in from tho sea, lifting the curious ribbon like leaves and tossing them about, it almost seemed to tho discoverer that the strange plant had suddenly become imbued with life and was struggling to escape. When a description and picture of tho plant were sent to England, it was, like many other discoveries, discredited, but soon the plant itself was received, and now Welwitsehia mirabilis is well known to botanists.— Northwestern < 'hristinn, Adrccate.