DK. J. D, HOOKER ON FUCHSIA COCCINEA. 459 



plant had been introduced from Kew j and he further sent me a 

 dried specimen, cut in 1813, from the Kew plant, as being pro- 

 bably the same as that from which Aiton, in 1788, described his 

 F, coccinea. 



Having long been anxious to recover the originally introduced 

 garden Fuchsia, which is now so extremely hybridized that it is 

 difficult to procure it pure, I was much interested in this account, 

 and I determined to follow it up at Kew, when I found, as I 

 expected, that the well-known Fuchsia of our gardens, a native of 

 Chili, and a ratlier robust glabrous plant, with slender petioles, 

 and leaves more or less narrow at the base, is a totally different 

 thing from Aiton' s plant, the latter having very slender pilose 

 twigs, very short petioles, leaves cordate at the base, foliage 

 which turns of a purplish-scarlet in autumn, and whose native 

 country is, strange to say, to this day unknown ! All the speci- 

 mens known of it, whether living or dead, appeared to have been 

 procured from the original Kew plant, published by Aiton in 

 1789, and of which I have seen excellent dried specimens in the 

 Banksian and Smithian Herbaria, gathered in Kew in the year 

 (1788) before the date of the publication of the two volumes of 

 the Hortus Kewensis, and others in the Hookerian and Ben- 

 thamian Herbaria, obtained also from Kew, by Sims, Forsyth, and 

 others. 



It may be as well here to clear up the history of the genus 

 Fuchsia^ in reference to the true F. coccinea and the plant now 

 cultivated under this name, which latter must give way to that of 



F, magellanica. 



The genus Fuchsia was established by Linnaeus in 1737, after 

 Plumler, who had proposed it in 1703, upon a New- Granada plant. 

 Feuillee, the South-American traveller, bad, however, in 1724- 

 1725, published his ' Itinerary,' in the appendix to which, on the 

 Medicinal Plants of Chili, p. 6 and tab. 47, is figured and de- 

 scribed as " Thilco " a species of Fuchsia. What Feuillee'a 

 "Thilco" is I cannot determine; it is described as pubescent 

 (like Alton's F. coccinea), but has the leaves and petioles of 

 F. magellanica, whilst it differs from all the genus in having pen- 

 tamerous flowers ! 



Aiton 



Me 



of Hammersmith, brought, it is said, by Captain Firth, from Ciiili ; 

 but Feuillee's '' Thilco " is cited as a synonym, with no allusion 

 to the diflerent number of parts of the flower. What this F, 



