CuLrivation.—Kew is indebted to Mr. H. N. Ridley, 
Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, for this hand- 
some plant, which he forwarded in a Wardian case in 1907. 
It was first introduced into cultivation by Mr. Gustav Mann 
in 1863; at any rate, there is a note written by him on a 
sheet in the Kew Herbarium to the effect that living 
plants brought by him from West Africa were in the > 
Garden at that time. But it does not appear to have 
become established then. Nor was it successfully grown in 
England when the late Mr. W. Bull distributed it twenty 
years later. It was included in his Catalogue of New Plants 
in 1888, p. 8, where it was described as “a remarkable 
introduction from the Congo.” Mr. W. Micholitz, collector 
for Messrs. Sander & Sons, of St. Albans and Bruges, 
writes :—“ I found Mussaenda erythrophylla on the banks of 
the Kwilu, Loango, French Congo, in 1886, it being then 
new. The plants that I brought to England in May or 
June of that year were handed over to Mr. W. Bull, the 
Chelsea nurseryman, who distributed them as M. erythro- 
phylla, but I am not aware that any of them flowered. Ii 
is usually of a somewhat creeping or trailing habit, and 
only attains the shrubby character of J. frondosa when 
growing in the open with full exposure to the sun. As I 
found it, growing in partial shade in tall virgin forest on 
the water’s edge, it reached the tops of the trees, and, 
forming as it did long stretches of a high, solid wall of 
dazzling scarlet, was a sight not easily to be forgotten.” 
At Kew the plants received from Singapore have been 
grown in a moist tropical stove, where they have formed 
shapely, well-furnished shrubs about 2 ft. high, and 
were in flower for about two months. This Mussaenda is 
likely to become a popular garden plant, the red calyx- 
leaves being quite as effective as the bracts of Poinsettia, 
and they appear to be quite as persistent.—W. Watson. 
Fig. 1, part of calyx, disk and style; 2, section of corolla; 3, hairs from the 
throat of the corolla; 4 and 5, anthers; 6, upper part of style:—all enlarged, 
