Big Leaf by photosynthesis

Photography • Flowers/Plants • posted on Jul 10, 2013

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Description

Saw a group of these plants at the UCB Botanical Garden. I asked my wife to place her hand on the middle of a leaf to provide a size reference. She does not have freakishly small hands & this is not a trick of perspective - these leaves were probably close to 4 feet wide. I believe they were a kind of gunnera, about which Wikipedia has this to say: "Gunnera is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants, some of them gigantic. The genus is the only member of the family Gunneraceae. The 40-50 species vary enormously in leaf size. Gunnera manicata, native to the Serra do Mar mountains of southeastern Brazil, is perhaps the largest species, with leaves typically 1.5–2 m (5–6 ft) wide, but exceptionally long, up to 3.4 m (11 ft), borne on thick, succulent leaf stalks (petioles) up to 2.5 m (8 ft) long. This genus was named after the Norwegian botanist Johann Ernst Gunnerus." Please zoom (they look even bigger that way)...