very long time ; in the case of the specimen here figured they 

 were in beauty in the beginning of May, and are so still in 

 this the last week of July, in the border of the rock-work 

 of Kew. Mr. Thompson, of Ipswich, who sent the plant to 

 Kew, observes that it seems easy to raise and to rear, that 

 it was grown under glass, and that the colour of the bracts 

 would deepen out of doors (which has been the case). It is a 

 native of Texas, and described by A. Gray as a winter 

 annual, flowering in spring without the survival of the 

 radical leaves. 



Descr. An erect nearly simple pubescent and viscid annual or 

 biennial, six to twelve inches high. Leaves one to two inches 

 long, suberect, clothing the stem, sessile, oblong or linear-ob- 

 long, obtuse or subacute, undulate, with a few irregular teeth, 

 green, the upper with red margins towards the tip. Spike 

 dense-flowered, at length elongating ; bracts spreading, three 

 fourths to one inch long, green at the base, then orange with a 

 rounded spreading scarlet limb which becomes deep carmine 

 later on, quite entire or rarely toothed or lobed. Flowers 

 an inch long, sessile. Calyx with a slender curved tube, 

 dilated above and slit half way down behind and rather 

 less before ; divisions 2-lobed, lobes truncate retuse. Corolla 

 not much exserted from the calyx, pale straw-coloured ; tube 

 long, slender, curved at the base ; upper lip shortly ovate, 

 truncate, pubescent above ; lower lip of three minute green 

 obcordate lobes. Anthers yellow, a little exserted. — J. D. H. 



Fig. 1, Flower; 2, mouth of corolla ; longitudinal section of corolla showing the 

 stamen and pistil :— all enlarged. 



