Scotsman's Fancy

One of Britain's most excited citizens last week was amateur botanist and practical farmer Richard Mansion Mortimer, 65, a Scotsman who has a place at Great Wigborough, Essex. Around three-year-old bomb craters in his fields strange plants had sprouted to a height of seven feet.* Canny Richard Mortimer examined the flora, reported: "The plant can be grown as easily as a common weed, and raw rubber will drip from it when it is cut. Samples of the plant were sent to a chemist. The report came back: 'pure latex.' Each plant yields between one and two ounces of latex; an acre would yield over two tons. The possibilities are stupendous. The center of the rubber-producing world will be right here in England, and the cost of rubber will be only a fraction of the present price."

Richard Mortimer's excitement was dampened by professional botanists, pend ing further inquiry. Many a weed contains latex: for example, swamp milkweed yields 45 Ib. per acre, goldenrod 75 Ib. But 4,000 Ib. per acre is ten times as much as the average output of Malaya's richest rubber plantations.

* Londoners have counted nearly 100 plant varieties growing in their city's bomb cavities. Most common is the rosebay willow herb. Some like to believe the plants spring from forgotten, centuries-old seed churned up by Nazi high explosive.

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