** Sir Joseph Banks is said to have sent it to Kew about 

 the year 1764. It is cultivated in China, as a favourite 

 bower plant, though of what precise country a native is not 

 known. We have been told it is wild in Sumatra. The late 

 Lady Amelia Hume received a fine plant of this species in 

 1789, which covered the stern of the ship with its fragrant 

 green blossoms, during a great part of the voyage, and has 

 since been widely propagated in this country. It thrives 

 either in a stove or warm conservatory, flowering through- 

 out the summer and autumn, and exhaling, in an evening, 

 that peculiar, light, lemon-like, but luscious fragrance, of 

 which the Chinese are so fond, and which belongs to vari- 

 ous greenish night-scented flowers, as the Chloiunthus in- 

 conspicuus, and some Orchidew. The root is branched, 

 widely spreading. Stem shrubby, round, branched, twin- 

 ing and climbing to a great extent; downy when young; 

 the bark spongy and cracked when old. Leaves opposite, 

 stalked, deflexed, heart-shaped, rather taper-pointed, en- 

 tire, opaque, veiny, downy at the veins and margin, paler 

 beneath, each 2-3 inches long. Stipulas none, but the 

 footstalks much shorter than the leaves, are glandular at 

 their summit, as well as on each side at the base. Panicles 

 axillary, solitary, drooping, forked, many-flowered, downy. 

 Bracteas lanceolate, at each division of the panicle. Floivers 

 the size of a primrose, pale yellowish-green, bearded within, 

 their segments linear-oblong, oblique, the length of the 

 tube, fringed." 



" Linnaeus had in his Herbarium a Chinese specimen of 

 this plant, marked tomentosa, with a note at the back sig- 

 nifying that the Catholic clergy at Macao prepare, from its 

 milky juice, a medicine for the dysentery. He cultivated 

 the same in his stove, and described it in his Mantissa. 53. 

 The name and specific character however do not apply to 

 this, but to a very different plant, Forskael's Asclepias 

 eordata. Flos siamicus, Rum ph. amh. auctuar. 7. 58. t 26. 

 f. 1 ;, seems to be intended for our present species ; though 

 Cynanchum odorathsimum, of Loureiro, by the description 

 of the yellow flowers, probably belongs rather to minor.** 



The drawing was taken at Mr, Pamplin's nursery in the 

 Kinar's Road, Chelsea. 



