Gunner's giant Brazilian rhubarb (Gunnera manicata) is a huge plant in itself. Its leaves at home, in the humid swamps of Brazil, reach a diameter of 1.5 -3 meters. However, this year in the botanical gardens of Dorset (UK), very hefty shoots have grown, reaching a diameter of 11 feet - 3.4 meters
At the same time, a giant rhubarb has been growing there for thirty years, but it reached such gigantic sizes only this year. Garden curator Stephen Griffith believes that the reason for this is the high humidity and incredible heat, which has been in the country since summer and literally until last week. That is, the climate in Great Britain this year is almost equal to the Brazilian one.
Griffith says that visitors to the botanical gardens are amazed at the huge leaves of the Hunners and, apparently, this is the largest plant ever grown in all the British Isles.
Photo: atamy.com
- It's all because it's very warm here, - Griffith continues, - just a couple of miles from here, in Dorchester it can be -10 frost, and at the same time we won't have even -3 degrees Celsius.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Royal Horticultural Society described the Dorset Gunner as monstrous, adding that the usual leaf size for this species in the UK did not exceed 2.2 meters before.