On the surface of the tranquil pools, amid the recesses of the forest,
float the wide-spreading circular leaves of the magnificent Victoria
regia, like vast dishes--their edges turned up all round--with beautiful
flowers rising amid them. The colour varies from the velvety white
outer petals through every shade of rose to the deepest crimson, and
fading again to a creamy yellowish tint in the heart of the flower. The
natives call it the _forno do piosoca_, or oven of the jacana--the
leaves being like that of the baking-pans, or ovens, on which the
mandioca meal is roasted. The leaf rises from the root at the bottom of
the pool, on a stock armed with sharp spines.
When young, the leaf may be seen in the form of a deep cup or vase
surrounded with ribs, at that time comparatively small, the whole green
expanse of the adult leaf covered in between them in regular rows of
puffings. As the ribs grow their ramifications stretch out in every
direction, the leaflets one by one unfolding to fill the ever-widening
spaces; till at last, when it reaches the surface of the water, it rests
horizontally above it without a wrinkle--the colossal leaf being thus
supported by a heavy scaffold of ribs beneath it, sufficient not only to
support the light-stepping jacana, but even a young child. Some of the
leaves have a diameter of from four to five feet; some may grow even to
a larger size.
"Here, seen in its own home, it has in addition to its own beauties the
charm of harmony with all that surrounds it," observes Mrs
Agassiz,--"with the dense mass of forest, with palm and parasite, with
birds of glowing plumage, with insects of all bright and wonderful
tints, and with fishes which, though hid in the water beneath it, are
not less brilliant and varied than the world of life above."