This has been long cultivated in the Royal Botanic Gar- 

 dens of Kew, but had never flowered there, nor was its 

 native country known to any one, till, in August, 1843, 

 my friend, J. Gray, Esq., of Greenock, sent me the splendid 

 specimen here represented, taken from a plant he had re- 

 ceived from Trinidad ; thus, at the same time, establish- 

 ing its native country, and giving the opportunity of 

 making so fine a blossom known to the Botanical world 

 by a good figure. How needful such figures are, is but too 

 apparent from the confusion of synonyms, in cases where 

 we have only recourse left to descriptions. Professor De 

 Candolle, who takes up this species from the Prince De 

 Salm Dyck's letter, doubts if it be not a variety of his 

 previous species, " C. coccineus (Salm Dyck in lilt.):" 

 but the r, C. coccineus De Cand," strange to say, is never- 

 theless by Pfeiffer made a var. of the setaceus (Salm 

 Dyck) ; while the C. coccineus (Salm Dyck) is placed in a 

 different division, and retained as a quite distinct species by 

 Pfeiffer. This seems to be a very shy flowering species ; 

 and if we consider the size and colour of the blossoms, one 

 of the handsomest of this remarkable Genus. 



Descr. A repent, and, probably, a climbing species, 

 branched, with very long joints, slender in proportion 

 to their length, about three -fourths of an inch wide, 

 triangular, rooting, with the angles obtuse repando-sinuate, 

 the sides plane, the areola on the obtuse angles small, 

 woolly, and often setose ; but the wool and setae are 

 deciduous. Two to three, and, occasionally, four, very 

 short and stout dark-brown aculei are implanted in the 

 areolae, scarcely more than two-thirds of a line long. 

 Flowers very large, handsome. Tube green, moderately 

 long, cylindrical, swollen below, beset with rather distant 

 scales, which are large, triangular or ovate, greenish-yellow, 

 tipped, and margined with red, then gradually become 

 larger upwards and longer, insensibly passing into the 

 sepals, aud then again almost as insensibly become the 

 oblongo-obovate, acute, rose-coloured petals. Stamens very 

 numerous, the lowermost ones the longest. Anthers sul- 

 phur-yellow. Style very thick, columnar, longer than the 

 stamens. Stigma with about fourteen subulate, spirally- 

 twisted, papillose rays. 



