Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/480

472 endogenous, it belonged. Its petals, moreover, furnish the best example of the gradual transition of petals into stamens,—illustrating that wonderful law of identity which is the great discovery of modern science. Every child knows this peculiarity of the water-lily, but the extent of it seems to vary with season and locality, and sometimes one finds a succession of flowers almost entirely free from this confusion of organs.

Our readers may not care to know that the order of Nymphæaceæ "differs from Ranunculaceæ in the consolidation of its carpels, from Papaveraceæ in the placentation not being parietal, and from Nelumbiaceæ in the want of a large truncated disc containing monospermous achenia"; but they may like to know that the water-lily has relations on land, in all gradations of society, from poppy to magnolia, and yet does not conform its habits precisely to those of any of them. Its great black roots, sometimes as large as a man's arm, form a network at the bottom of the water. Its stem floats, an airy four-celled tube, adapting itself to the depth, though never stiff in shallows, like the stalk of the yellow lily: and it contracts and curves when seed-time approaches, though not so ingeniously as the spiral threads of the European Vallisneria, which uncoil to let the flowers rise to the surface, and then cautiously retract, that the seeds may ripen on the very bottom of the lake. The leaves show beneath the magnifier beautiful adaptations of structure. They are not, like those of land-plants, constructed with deep veins to receive the rain and conduct it to the stem, but are smooth and glossy, and of even surface. The leaves of land-vegetation have also thousands of little breathing-pores, principally on the under side: the apple-leaf, for instance, has twenty-four thousand to a square inch. But here they are fewer; they are wholly on the upper side, and, whereas in other cases they open or shut according to the moisture of the atmosphere, here the greedy leaves, secure of moisture, scarcely deign to close them. Nevertheless, even these give some recognition of hygrometric necessities, and, though living on the water, and not merely christened with dewdrops like other leaves, but baptized by immersion all the time, they are yet known to suffer in drought and to take pleasure in the rain.

We have spoken of the various kindred of the water-lily; but we must not leave our fragrant subject without due mention of its most magnificent, most lovely relative, at first claimed even as its twin sister, and classed as a Nymphæa. We once lived near neighbor to a Victoria Regia. Nothing, in the world of vegetable existence, has such a human interest. The charm is not in the mere size of the plant, which disappoints everybody, as Niagara does, when tried by that sole standard. The leaves of the Victoria, indeed, attain a diameter of six feet; the largest flowers, of twenty-three inches,—less than four times the size of the largest of our water-lilies. But it is not the mere looks of the Victoria, it is its life which fascinates. It is not a thing merely of dimensions, nor merely of beauty, but a creature of vitality and motion. Those vast leaves expand and change almost visibly. They have been known to grow half an inch an hour, eight inches a day. Rising one day from the water, a mere clenched mass of yellow prickles, a leaf is transformed the next day to a crimson salver, gorgeously tinted on its upturned rim. Then it spreads into a raft of green, armed with long thorns, and supported by a frame-work of ribs and cross-pieces, an inch thick, and so substantial, that the Brazil Indians, while gathering the seed-vessels, place their young children on the leaves;—yrupe, or water-platter, they call the accommodating plant. But even these expanding leaves are not the glory of the Victoria; the glory is in the opening of the flower.

We have sometimes looked in, for a passing moment, at the green-house, its dwelling-place, during the period of flowering,—and then stayed for more than an hour, unable to leave the fascinating