The Largest Known Flower.

Manawatu Herald, 18 April 1893, Page 3

The Largest Known Flower.

Pearson's Weekly states that the largest known flower tc botanists is found in Minclinac, the farthest southern island in the Philippine group. Upon one of its mountains, the Volcanic Apo, a party of botanical and ethnograpical explorers found recently, at a height of 2500 feet above the sea level, a colossal flower. The discoverei 1 , Dr Alex. Schad?nberg, could scarcely believe his 3yes when he saw amid the lowgrowing bushes the immense buds of this flower, growing like gigantic cabbage heads. But he was still more astonished when he found a specimen in full bloom, a five petaled flower nearly a yard in diameter, as large as a carriage wheel, in fact. This enormous blossom was borne on a sort of vine creeping on the ground. The native who accompanied Dr Schadenberg called it " balo." The party had no scale by which the weight of the flower could be ascertained, but they improvised a swinging scale, using their boxes and specimens aa weights. Weigh • these when opportunity served it was found that a single flower weighed over twenty two pounds. It was impossible to transmit the fresh flower, so the travellers photo 1 graphed it, and dried a number of its leaves by the heat of a fire.