I could not find a
specimen of my plant to show him, but gave him a minute description of
it as an annual, with very large, tough, permanent roots, also that it
exuded a thick milky juice when the stem was broken, and produced its
yellow seeds in a long, cylindrical, sharply-pointed pod full of
bright silvery down, and I gave him sketches of flower and leaf. He
succeeded in finding it in his books: the species had been known
upwards of thirty years, and the discoverer, who happened to be an
Englishman, had sent seed and roots to the Botanical Societies abroad
he corresponded with; the species had been named after him, and it was
to be found now growing in some of the Botanical Gardens of Europe.
All this information was not enough to satisfy me; there was nothing
about the man in his books. So I went to my father to ask him if he
had ever known or heard of an Englishman of that name in the country.
Yes, he said, he had known him well; he was a merchant in Buenos
Ayres, a nice gentle-mannered man, a bachelor and something of a
recluse in his private house, where he lived alone and spent all his
week-ends and holidays roaming about the plains with his vasculum in
search of rare plants. He had been long dead--oh, quite twenty or
twenty-five years.
I was sorry that he was dead, and was haunted with a desire to find
out his resting-place so as to plant the flower that bore his name on
his grave.
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