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Otago Daily Times, Issue 18454, 16 January 1922, Page 3

iU ~ ...... I Nature, even when decorating the j world with flowering plants, is not always ,a j creator of beauty. Like any great human , artist, she has her moods when she creates u things curious; fantastic, startling, or just j, nasty, writes N. Tourneur, in Everyday Science. Those nearly all are found in tropical jungles, where growth is so rapid and luxuriant that Nature is,. as it were, r intoxicated. Orchid-hunters in tropical ! ' forests come across spectre heads, faces, and “ shapes that at first glance do not seem to he j flowers at all. In the Pectorale orchid, for a instance, Nature has copied with horrid fidelity the inside of the human chest—the ’ cavity of the body formed by the spine, ribs, and breast-bone. The neck, collar--8 bone, ribs, breast bone, and truncated arms l- are exactly represented, and the whole If flower itself is of the roudecl shape of 'iho fj human thorax. Equally startling, is a 11 South American orchid which looks as if five bleeding wounds had just been made, h in it. In Mexico there grows a flowering P tree so strange that it was once worshipped, '• and the natives to-day, though Christians at L ' least in name, still regard it with superstitioua fear. Its botanical name is Cheiros- “ tomon platnnoides. The Aztecs called it ’■ “Macpalxochiquaukitl,” and to them it was a deity, to which sacrifices and worship must be' made. Both names mean “Hand i- Flower Tree.” It is a big tretf, and whdn e if, blooms it is covered with flowers which ). wave aloft a thousand blood-stained jpgers. e From the, middle of each flower there arises il a column-like tube singularly like an arm d and wrist. At the top this divides into live slender narts. coloured blood-red and afy ranged like the fingers and thumb of an out h spread clutching hand. The points of the )) fingers curve over, resembling the talons ir. with which the painters of old ornamented >r the hands of demons. And the talons are ir clawed. The five fingers are tipped by a vegetable copy of overgrown nails. The whole flower, wrist and clutching fingers, is ) of considerable size, and stands up well ,r above the stalk petals. Plant mimicry of t ] the animal world is common among the I. orchids native to England, but hero Nature’s mood is gentle, not horrifying. A _ wonderful repetition of an animal form in lr vegetable growth is to be seen in the Tr.o----r pte’alum canariense, or canary-bird creeper, ir a south American plant common enough in English gardens. In each of its blossoms at a certain stage it shows the image of a canary as it modelled and coloured by hand. The bent head of the bird is joined n to" the body by a delicate nock, ami the e fringed petals, canary yellow in hue, mimic j. the canary feathers.