impossible to trace the introduction of P. nigra into — 
England to any definite collector. In 1835, a specimen of — 
it was growing in the garden of the London Horti- © 
cultural Society, and as it had stood several winters 
unprotected, Lindley suggested that it might be acclima- _ 
tized in the south-west of England, and on the west 
coast of Ireland; nevertheless, it remained all but un- 
noticed in this country for a long time afterwards. 
Although P. nigra has been in cultivation in France for 
about sixty years, and the flowering of other bamboos has 
_ generally been recorded in horticultural journals and the 
publications of the Société d’Acclimation of Paris, I have 
not been able to find a single reference to the flowering — 
of P. nigra until quite recently, when it was recorded 
(Gardener’s Chronicle, August, 1901, p. 154), as being in 
flower in the garden of the Hon. Charles Ellis, Frensham 
Hall, Shottermill, Haslemere. Kew had, however, received 
flowering specimens from the Royal Botanic Gardens, 
Glasnevin, in 1900, In 1902 it flowered with Lord Ventry — 
at Burnham House, Dingle, Co. Cork, and the accompanying 
plate was drawn from specimens communicated by him. 
Descr.—A stoloniferous shrub forming dense bushes of 
numerous culms. Culms under favourable conditions 
over twenty feet high; internodes as much as ten inches / 
long, rarely more than one inch in diameter, terete apart 
from the flattened or shallowly grooved side facing the 
branches, rarely more or less angular, olive-green when 
young, turning purple in the second year, ultimatel 
purple-black, covered with a white bloom below the 
lower node, fistulous or solid in part; branchlets ver 
slender, graceful, much divided, thickened at the nodes. 
Cataphylis early deciduous, pale purple or violet, oblong, 
the lowest hairy, the upper glabrous, fimbriate at the 
mouth or the uppermost efimbriate, ligules short, rounded : 
blades linear-subulate. Leaves with tight glabrous sheaths, 
bearing more or less deciduous, fimbrize, as much as four ~ « 
lines long, at the mouth, with short, truncate ligules ; 
blades green, lanceolate, acutely acuminate, shortly at- 
tenuated from the rounded base into the short petiole, 
two to five inches long, five to seven lines wide, rough 
along both edges, pubescent near the base on the lower 
surface, Panicle copiously divided, usually large, leafy 
