I had gone to Madagascar with some wild idea of finding and dragging back to civilization the fabled man-eating tree. That I failed was probably due in part to the fact that it never existed, save in some retired colonel's fevered imagination. I panted off on the trail of the Aepyornis and had to be satisfied with a much addled egg, still on display in the Springville Free Museum and Loan Library. I shot lemurs and hunted for missing links, for Darwin's "Origin of Species" had been very much before the undergraduate eye during my college career. All I found, in the end, was the Zulu rose.
What first attracted me to the plant was the fact that it was never twice the same. There was a family likeness--about as much as there is between me and my brother Charles--but that was as far as it went. No self-respecting plant behaves like that.
The first that I saw was in a young lady's hair, and I only noticed in passing that it was very much like a full-blown rose, with crimson, satiny petals. The following morning, on my way back to the hotel, I saw the same rather spectacular blossom in a private garden and was somewhat puzzled by the fact that it was growing on a stalk very much like an Easter lily, with long, swordlike leaves in a whorl about its base. There were several colors on the same bed--reds and creamy whites and one lot of a striking orange color.
Then, in the forest, I found the things growing in an entirely different manner. At least, the crotchety old duffer who was guiding me swore that they were the same plant, although these were growing like parasitic orchids on huge mats of threadlike roots. The petals were more orchid-like, too, and less flamboyantly colored, and I assumed that this might be an ancestral form from which the cultivated varieties had been developed.
All in all, I think I saw some twenty different varieties of Zulu rose and no two of them were alike. That I did not see the one thing that was of importance, or even hear of it, can be ascribed only to the notoriously bad luck of the Abercrombies. I saw Zulu roses that were like thistles, and others that were like sunflowers. I saw them growing like water-lilies, like cactus, and like edelweiss. They weren't common, but wherever they were they seemed to be perfectly adapted to the environment they were in. Their perfume was really overpowering and not entirely pleasant, and I noted in passing that there were never any bees or other insects near them. Unfortunately, while I mentioned the fact to my old teacher in the letter I sent with cuttings of three or four of the plant's many varieties, I let it go at that.