It was introduced into England in about 1845, I believe, 
through the late Dr. Royle’s collectors, who were attached 
to the Saharumpore Gardens. 
Desor. Quite glabrous. Rootstock woody, tufted, pros- 
trate, branched, tip covered with the brown withered sti- 
pular sheaths, sending up several erect flowering stems and 
occasional prostrate leafy shoots. Leaves chiefly radical, 
two to four inches long, oblanceolate or elliptic-oblong, 
acute or obtuse, narrowed into a long or short and slender 
petiole; margins recurved and minutely wrinkled, almost 
crenulate; nerves reticulate; stipules elongate, entire or 
sparingly split; cauline leaves much smaller, sessile, elliptic. 
Flowering stems six to eight inches high, stout or slender. 
Flowers in solitary terminal cylindric obtuse spiciform 
racemes, two to three inches long, by half to two-thirds of 
an inch in diameter, crowded; bright rose-red, concealing 
the membranous obtuse sheathing stipuliform bracts; pedi- 
cels fascicled often in fours, filiform, curved, rigid. Perianth 
one-sixth to one-fourth of an inch broad ; tube very shortly 
obconical; segments broadly elliptic or obovate. Stamens 
eight, filaments filiform, equalling the perianth. Ovary 
cL styles three, filiform; stigma punctiform.— 
Fig. 1, vertical section of flower; 2, stamen; 3, ovary; 4, ovule :—all enlarged. 
