Tas. 4520. 
HOYA PURPUREO-FUSCA. 
Brown purpleflowered Hoya. 
Nat. Ord. AscLEPIADEZ.—PENTANDRIA MoNoGYNIA. 
Gen. Char. (Vide supra, Tas. 4347.) 4 
Hoya purpureo-fusca ; glaberrimai volubilis, caulibus ramisque teretibus radi- 
cantibus, foliis carnoso-coriaceis crassis ovatis acutis utrinque 5-nerviis ad 
petiolum crassum calloso-glandulosis, pedunculis folio brevioribus, umbellis 
hemispheericis compactis multifloris, corolla supra pubescenti-hirsuta cinereo- — 
fusca, corone staminez foliolis ovatis acutis purpureo-fuscis superne planis. 
A native of Java, where it was detected and whence it was 
. sent to Messrs. Veitch of the Nursery, Exeter, by his collector, 
Thomas Lobb, who describes it, as it really is, as a handsome 
climber, common in the woods at Panarang. Its nearest affinity 
is with H. cinnamomifolia, having the same kind of foliage, that 
is, with parallel nerves (not penninerved) and flowers of nearly 
the same size and shape, but the colour is extremely different in 
the two, and in this the corolla is pubescenti-hirsute ; in which 
particular, and in the parallel nerves of the leaf, it approaches 
the Hoya macrophylla, Bl. Rumpbia, t. 185; but in the latter 
the leaf is reticulated between the nerves, the staminal crown 
has the leaflets much more acuminated, and the colour of the 
flowers is quite different. It flowered copiously in Mr. Veitch’s 
stove in September, 1849, when our drawing was made. ‘The 
flowers are of a rich purplish-brown. ) 
Descr. A glabrous twining and branching shrub, everywhere 
(except the corolla) glabrous: dranches terete, often throwing out 
short fibrous roofs. Leaves opposite, on very thick, brownish — 
petioles, four to five inches long, exactly ovate, acute, or shortly 
acuminate, thick, fleshy, five-nerved, the nerves all diverging 
from the base, and having a gland at the base where set on to” 
the petiole. Peduncles axillary, shorter than the leaf, occa- 
sionally rooting, and bearing a dense many-flowered wmbel. 
Pedicels slender. Calyz of five deep, almost subulate, segments. ‘ 
JUNE lst, 1850. 
