Plate XV.
WELWITSCHIAS GROWING IN A PLAIN NEAR MOSSAMEDES.
To face page 229.
The following account of it is an extract from Dr. Hooker’s work:—“The ‘Welwitschia’ is a woody plant, said to attain a century in duration, with an obconic trunk, about two feet long, of which a few inches rise above the soil, presenting the appearance of a flat, two-lobed, depressed mass, sometimes (according to Dr. Welwitsch) attaining fourteen feet in circumference (!), and looking like a round table. When full grown it is dark-brown, hard, and cracked over the whole surface (much like the burnt crust of a loaf of bread); the lower portion forms a stout tap-root, buried in the soil, and branching downwards at the end. From deep grooves in the circumference of the depressed mass two enormous leaves are given off, each six feet long when full grown, one corresponding to each lobe: these are quite flat, linear, very leathery, and split to the base into innumerable thongs that lie curling upon the surface of the soil. Its discoverer describes these same two leaves as being present from the earliest condition of the plant, and assures me that they are in fact developed from the two cotyledons of the seed, and are persistent, being replaced by no others. From the circumference of the tabular mass, above but close to the insertion of the leaves, spring stout dichotomously branched cymes, nearly a foot high, bearing small, erect scarlet cones, which eventually become oblong and attain the size of those of the common spruce-fir. The scales of the cones are very closely imbricated, and contain, when young and still very small, solitary flowers, which in some cones are hermaphrodite (structurally but not functionally), in others female. The hermaphrodite flower consists of a perianth of four pieces, six monadelphous stamens with globose three-locular anthers, surrounding a central ovule, the integument of which is produced into a styliform sigmoid tube, terminated by a discoid apex. The female flower consists of a solitary erect ovule contained in a compressed utricular perianth. The mature cone is tetragonous, and contains a broadly-winged fruit in each scale.”
I first saw the plant in my first journey inland from Mossamedes. On a second visit to Mossamedes I went one day specially to obtain the large specimens now at Kew, which were growing about six miles south of the town on the sandy plain near the sea.
I found a considerable number of the plants growing, and having secured my specimens, placed fresh cones in spirit, and transplanted a couple of the small plants into a box of earth, I prepared to return. I had ridden an old mule, and taken with me a number of blacks with poles to carry the specimens. I tied the mule to a pole and left her to graze about on the scanty tufts of grass whilst I dug out the plants. The little refreshment she had picked up made her quite skittish, and all our efforts to catch her were unavailing. For more than an hour did she manage to elude us over the burning white sand, and I was fairly tired out when she was at last caught.
I several times witnessed the “mirage” at Mossamedes. At a distance of a few hundred yards before me I seemed to see the surface of the ground covered with about two feet of water, and only the tops of the grass and bushes could be seen out of it. The illusion is absolutely perfect: the little waves and ripples of the water, and the reflection of the sun from the surface, are all there, and only seeing the tops of the grass still further increases the reality of the impression, which continues sometimes for more than a quarter of an hour.
I found most agreeable society at Mossamedes, many of the Portuguese there having their wives and families with them, which was not the case at Benguella or elsewhere in Angola.
The climate at Mossamedes is remarkably healthy, and for many years fevers were quite unknown there. I saw the white children looking as healthy and rosy and strong as in Europe, and the white men working in the plantations as in Portugal. Subsequently fever made its appearance there, and once of a rather severe type, which I cannot help thinking originated from the total want of sanitary arrangements for the greatly increased population.
The Portuguese in Angola are everywhere remarkably neglectful and careless of these matters, so necessary for the preservation of health, especially in a hot climate.