all tropical American, amongst which, there are great 

 differences in habit, calyx and corolla. 



P. longiflora is an exceedingly handsome stove shrub, 

 ■flowering freely throughout the summer and autumn. It 

 is a native of several of the "West India Islands, as Ja- 

 maica, Dominica, Montserrat, St. Domingo, Martinique, 

 St. Vincent, and St. Lucia. Though an exceedingly well- 

 marked species, very constant in habit and characters, 

 and confined in its distribution to the "West India Islands, 

 it has been subdivided by Decaisne into six species in a 

 monograph of the genus cited above, and where, strange 

 to say, Lindley's specific name (of longiflora) is overlooked, 

 the Swartzian Gesneria ventricosa being replaced by P. 

 Swartzii. 



P. longiflora has long been in cultivation at Kew, where 

 it forms a handsome stove-shrub, about four feet high, 

 flowering profusely in the summer and autumn months. 



Descr. — A small, sparingly branched shrub, with brownish 

 bark and terete green shoots. Leaves three to five inches 

 long, petioled, ovate- or oblong lanceolate, acuminate, serru- 

 late, dark green above, pale beneath, and there finely reticu- 

 lated between the strong arching nerves ; petiole £-f of an 

 inch long. Flowers in long-peduncled axillary or supra- 

 axillary few-fld. cymes ; peduncle half as long as the leaves, 

 horizontally spreading, bearing at the end three to six 

 erect pedicelled flowers ; pedicels ascending, about \ inch 

 long, with a single subulate bract about the middle. Calyx- 

 tube subcampanulate, green, lobes twice or thrice as long, 

 erect, very narrowly linear. Corolla one and a half inch 

 long, bright scarlet, tube slightly curved, and obscurely 

 gibbous, one-third inch in diameter, narrowed at the 

 base ; lobes small, dorsal erect, obcordate, concave, lateral 

 spreading, ovate-oblong, tips rounded. Stamens far ex- 

 serted, red; anthers small, cohering; staminode small, 

 capitate. Style longer than the stamens ; stigma disciform, 

 red.—/. D.H. B 



Fig. 1 Calyx and ovary; 2, base of corolla laid open with stamens and 

 stammodes; 6 and 4, anthers :— All enlarged. 



