It is a desirable plant for the conservatory, as it usually 
commences flowering, which it does very copiously, in the 
early spring, and continues in blossom the greater part of 
the summer ; but it should be placed in a situation fully 
open to the light, for then its flowers, which often extend 
along the last year’s branches, thus forming a kind of ra- 
ceme, are all, more or less tinged with a rose-colour ; 
whereas, if crowded among other and taller plants in the 
greenhouse, the petals expand and continue of a pure white. 
In its native swamps in the neighbourhood of Botany Bay, 
beneath an almost ever-sunny sky and amidst a consider- 
able glare of light, the flowers are uniformly of a deep 
rose-colour. It may be propagated by cuttings as well as 
by seeds, which appear to ripen plentifully, 
Descr. A bushy shrub, five feet high, much branched, 
clothed with a pale-brown bark: branches rather slender, 
spreading or dependent, subdivided ; branchlets attenuated, 
silky, with appressed hairs. Leaves alternate, more or less 
crowded on the branchlets, ovate, ovate-lanceolate, acumi- 
nate, mucronate, short-petioled, patent, rigid, concave, 
smooth on the upper side, obsoletely three-nerved and silky 
beneath, with numerous small dots, margins membranace- 
ous and rather scabrous. Flowers large and white when 
influenced by shade, but when exposed to the light, rose- 
coloured, solitary, lateral or axillary, on short footstalks. 
Adherent tube of the calyx smooth, minutely dotted, limb 
of five obtuse, oval, membranaceous coloured lobes, deci- 
duous. Petals five, white, or tinged with a rose-colour, 
large, orbicular, with a short claw, inserted in the calyx 
between its lobes, spreading, smooth, obsoletely nerved, 
dotted, margins slightly repand. Stamens between thirty 
and forty, inserted in the calyx, and scarcely one-third of 
the length of the petals. Filaments erect, white, curved 
inwards. Anthers pale-brown, bilocular, several apparently 
abortive. Ovarium inferior, summit five-lobed, glandulous, 
bearing a thick, fleshy style in the centre, which is nearly 
the length of the stamens. Stigma capitate, flattened. 
Capsule smooth, glossy, pale-brown, hemispherical, five- 
celled, each cell containing numerous slender seeds. 
+2 b gi it 
