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4433. 
BEJARIA coarctTaATa. 
Close-flowered Bejaria. 
Nat. Ord. Errcacr®.—Potyanpria Monoe@ynia. 
Gen. Char. Calyx profunde et acute 7-fidus aut 7-dentatus. Petala 7 patula 
oblonga. Stamina petalorum duplo, a petalis libera, filamentis subulatis basi 
hirsutis, aw¢h. muticis oscillatoriis apice biporosis. Ovarium subrotundum 
7-sulcatum. Stylus elongatus. Stigma depresso-capitatum q-sulcatum. Cap- 
sula depresso-globosa calyce persistente cincta stylo terminata 7-locul. 7-valvis, 
loculis polyspermis.—Frutices Americani. Folia sparsa sepius conferta integer- 
rima coriacea, Flores racemosi aut corymbosi, bracteati, sepissime purpurei. DC. 
Besarta coarctata ; ramis junioribus pedicellis calycibus petiolis costaque subtus 
fuscescenti-lanosis, foliis elliptico-oblongis acutiusculis planis subtus glaucis, 
racemis densis, pedicellis florem styli stamina eequantibus. 
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t length we have the pleasure of exhibiting what has been 
so long a desideratum in European Horticulture, a species of . 
Bejaria, which has, for the first time, blossomed in this country. 
With the exception of the North American B. racemosa, all the 
other species are natives of South America; and the genus seems 
to hold the same place in the Andes of Peru, Columbia, and 
Mexico, that its affinity, Rhododendron, does in the Himalaya 
of the Old World, and to be scarcely less ornamental. The 
species now represented is from the collection of Messrs. Lucombe, 
Pince, and Co., in whose Exeter Nursery it flowered in a cool 
green-house in Jannary, 1849, with no more care than is devoted 
to Indian Azaleas. Indeed, seeing that it is a native of very 
cold situations in Peru (“in regni Peruviani frigidissimis prope 
urbem Cascamarcan”’), according to Humboldt, at an elevation 
of from 9,000 to 10,000 feet, it seems more than probable it 
will bear the open border with us. A plant one foot high is : 
_ covered with blossoms. Other species we know are in cultivation, 
though they have not yet blossomed. : i 
The genus was named by Mutis in compliment to one Bear, 
a Spanish Botanist, and erroneously written Befaria by Linneus. 
Descr. A low shrub with more graceful ramification than most 
of the species of the genus, flowering copiously when less than a 
MARCH Ist, 1849. 
