"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 {194} 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 downward 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 cases are hermaphrodite (structurally but not functionally), in others female." After describing these flowers in botanical terms. Dr. Hooker adds, "The mature cone is tetragonous, and contains a broadly winged scale. Its discoverer observes that the whole plant exudes a resin, and that it is called 'tumbo' by the natives. It inhabits the elevated sandy plateau near Cape Negro (lat 14° 40' S. to 23° S.) on the south-west coast of Africa." Dr. Hooker regards the _Welwitschia_ as "the only perennial flowering-plant which at no period has other vegetative organs than those proper to the embryo itself,--the main axis being represented by the radicle, which becomes a gigantic caulicle and develops a root from its base, and inflorescences from its plumulary end, and the leaves being the two cotyledons in a very highly developed and specialized condition." [Footnote 29] [Footnote 29: "Transactions of the Linnean Society," vol. xxiv., part i.]