The drawing was taken in the hothouse of Mr. Colvills 
Nursery at Chelsea; where the plant grows in company 
with many others of the tribe from tropical countries, in a 
column formed of the rinds of cocoa-nuts, intended by Mr. 
Sweet, who superintends that extensive establishment, as a 
substitute for the decaying trunks of the forest, on which 
they are usually found in their native places. 
Leaves radical, of a rather firm consistence, but not 
thick; several or many, alternately and imbricately two- 
ranked, equidistant (or alternately and mutually interclasp- 
ing), recurvedly spreading, oblong, pointed, sharply and 
deeply keeled, 4-5 inches long by about one broad, appa- 
rently without veins or nerves, with a fine cartilaginous 
margin of a dull glaucous and opaque green, with the epi- 
dermis finely shagreened like the coat of a spider, loosely 
spotted on the upper side with darker shapeless marks that 
remind us of the letters of some oriental alphabet, freckled 
at the paler under side with deep purple dots, sometimes 
confluent and sometimes linearly catenated. Stem a little 
taller than the leaves, marbled with purple stains, rigid, 
upright, round, and somewhat roughly furred. Germen 
oblong, rather more than half an inch in length, furred, 
six-furrowed, the ridges alternately larger. We could not 
obtain the fresh perfect corolla for inspection; but, judging 
from the figures, we think it must differ, in several material 
points, from the insigne subsequently introduced from the 
same country. 
The genus is the only one of its natural order that 
comes into the Order DiaNDRIA, of the Class GYNANDRIA, 
which comprizes all the rest in the Order MoNaNpRra. . It 
is also remarkable as the only group of the natural order 
where it belongs, that has a middle sterile filament with 
two fertile side ones. In all others the middle filament 
bears the only anther present ; while those at the sides are 
obliterated in the view of certain Botanists, and their ex- 
istence questionable. 
