American authors, and undoubtedly, as cultivated in our 
gardens and our shrubberies, to much variation: so that I 
entirely agree with the view Sir James Smrrv has taken of 
this subject, and gladly unite the amenum, dimorphum, 
virgatum, (at least of Warson,) and fuscatum with the 
present species, to which I have added the V. Marianum of 
Mr. Watson. All the kinds, however, are well worthy a 
place in the garden ; being quite hardy, and bearing copi- 
ous blossoms during the month of May. The beauty of 
the flowers is best seen by lifting up the branches; for in 
consequence of their drooping position, they are in a mea- 
sure concealed from the spectator by the pedicels, calyces, 
and bracteas. 
Descr. A spreading shrub, about four feet high, with 
rounded, glabrous branches of a purplish-green colour. 
Leaves deciduous, elliptical-lanceolate, nearly entire, of a 
tender green tinged with brown, glabrous or with only the 
midrib and a few of the nerves (principally beneath) clothed 
with short, appressed hairs. Flowers arranged in subco- 
rymbose, sessile racemes, upon rather long, leafless branches, 
with many deciduous bracteas. Pedicels all curved down- 
wards and secund. Calyx-segments nearly erect, often 
tinged with purple, almost half-inferior. Corolla ovato- 
cylindrical, in bud having five conspicuous angles, which in 
the full flower are obsolete, white tinged with rose colour. 
Stamens ten: Filaments broad, incurved, hairy on the out- 
side and at the margins, glabrous within: Anthers with two 
cells, much elongated upwards, destitute of horns. Germen 
with nearly the upper half free, convex : Style rather thick, 
shorter than the corolla, but longer than the stamens. 
Fig. 1. Flower, with its pedicel and bracteas. 2, Calyx and Pistil. 3. 
The same, with a portion of the Calyx cut away, to show the half-superior 
Germen. 4. Back and front view of a Stamen: magnified. 
