I've been thinking about Gunnera since bumping into some at Sheffield Park on Saturday. (I think it was Gunnera Manicata.) I love it. I always think you know you've really made it in life when you have a garden big enough for Gunnera. Generally people that have gardens big enough for Gunnera don't love it as much as us poorer folk who idolise it from afar (across the electric perimeter fence usually.) It is invasive in warmer climes but then who cares.... If your garden is big enough for one Gunnera then it's surely big enough for ten.
Charles Darwin whilst on a ramble in Chile in 1834 wrote:-
"I one day noticed, growing on the sandstone cliffs, some very fine plants of the panke (Gunnera scabra), which somewhat resembles the rhubarb on a gigantic scale.
The inhabitants eat the stalks, which are subacid, and tan leather with the roots, and prepare a black dye from them. The leaf is nearly circular, but deeply indented on its margin. I measured one which was nearly eight feet in diameter, and therefore no less than twenty-four in circumference! The stalk is rather more than a yard
high, and each plant sends out four or five of these enormous leaves, presenting together a very noble appearance."
Voyage of the Beagle, Chap. XIII
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