In the Banksian Herbarium in Mr. Brown's library we 
find a sample of our plant, which has been collated with 
the prototype of the species in the Linnæan Herbarium, and 
are thus enabled to identify it satisfactorily with the Pol - 
GALA oppositifolia of the Mantissa. The branches are quite 
smooth as well as the leaves, which are almost as broad as 
they are long and nearly of the length of the intervals. In 
the plant figured under the title of P. oppositifolia in Curtis's 
Botanical Magazine, and adopted in the last edition of 
Hortus Kewensis, the branches are villous as well as the 
leaves underneath, which last are also nearly twice as long 
as they are broad and considerably longer than the inter- 
vals; characters that prove it to belong rather to the PoLy- 
cata cordifolia of Willdenow. Slighter and less definite 
distinctions prevail throughout the two plants; for in- 
stance, in the colour of the corolla, which is paler in oppo- 
sitifolia, where the outer lobes of the two petals of the 
vexillum are also proportionately much longer and straighter 
than in cordifolia, in which these are nearly obsolete and 
point outwards, and the latent ale (see the next article, 
P. ligularis) much more conspicuous here than in cordifolia. 
In fine, the two plants have altogether a very different ge- 
neral appearance from each other. 
We find no published figure of our plant, which is far 
less common in our collections than cordifolia. 'The drawin 
was taken at the Nursery of Messrs. Colvill, in the King's 
Road, Chelsea. The species is said to have been originally 
imported from the Cape of Good Hope, by the late Mr. 
Masson, in 1790. 
A very smooth upright straddling-branched shrub: 
branches rodded, straight, generally tinged with purple, 
round, loosishly leaved, dichotomous at the end with a 
sessile raceme in the fork of the dichotomy. Leaves decus- 
sately opposite, about the length of the intervals, wide, 
spread, nearly sessile, quite smooth, opaque, broadly ovate 
sharp with a separate point, slightly cordate at the base, 
about half an inch long and nearly as broad. Racemes 
terminal, short, corymbose, decussately several-(5-7 ?)- 
flowered, spreading, with a short smooth axis or rachis; 
pedicles opposite, filiform, wide spread, about equal to the 
flower, surrounded at the base by three small pinkish 
ovately oblong pointed bractes placed in a whorl so as to 
resemble a small calyx. Flowers pale purple, greenish 
+ 
— S 
