VICTORIA REGIA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7233, 21 October 1901, Page 3

VICTORIA REGIA.

One of the mosb interesting plants ill existence is Victoria Regia, the giant South American- water lily. A specimen grown at Kew died recently, leaving only the one at the Regent's Park Gardens to represent the spEcies in London. The lily has leaves eight feet in diameter and flowers from eleven to fifteen inches across. The discoverer of Victoria. Regia in its native country was {3ia famous botanical traveller, Hasnke, who had been rent out by the Spanish Government to investigate the vegetable productions of Peru. He found it growing in fhe mar- his bordering on the Rio Mamore, one cf the great tributaries of the Amazon, somewhere about the year 1801, but as the whole of his collections were lost, no notice of it readied Europe. In the year 1827, according to the "Pall Mall Gazette," M. D'Orbigny discovered it again on the River Parana at a part of the stream nearly a league in breadth, although distant 900 miles from its junction with the Rio Plata. Ten years later, in 1837, Sir Robert Schomburgk, well known for his scientific researches" 1 in distant lands, when investigating the natural productions of British Guiana, discovered the pknt there. Immediately on the publication of a letter, which gave a glowing account of the lily, a great desire was felt by British horticulturists and others to transplant it to Great Britain, but not until 1849 was the task successfully accomplished. After every ether means had been tried an-d failed, two gentlemen of Georgetown, Demetara, sent some of the seeds by mail to Kew in a bottle of pure water, and before the summer was over fifty plants had been raised and distributed. At the present time there is scarcely a garden of importance in the world which does not beast its Victoria, and notwithstanding nearly fifty years of cultivation, the public interest in it has never abated. From the London gardens, see-ds have been seht to America, to Australia, the Society Islands, pjid a few years ago Mr Joseph Thomsdn, the late African explorer, took some with him to. plant in Lake Victoria Nyanza, in Central Africa. The lily at the Regent's Park Gardens covers a space of over 400 square feet. It grows in a huge tank in a glass hous; ■with a low roof, plenty of heat and light being necessary. Sown in a pot j>!unged in warm water, tihe little seed sent up slender stalks in a few weeks, and in a month or so the tub was too small to hold it.