to be one of the most beautiful fruit-bearing shrubs of 

 recent introduction. The species was originally dis- 

 covered by Mr. A. Henry in Hupeh in 1887, and was 

 met with again by Pere Giraldi in Shensi in 1897, but 

 was first recognised as distinct in 1912 when Mr. H. A. 

 Hesse of Weener, East Friesland, who had received seeds 

 from Giraldi through Mr. L. Beissner of Poppelsdorf, 

 published photographic reproductions of a flowering and 

 a fruiting branch, with a note in which the plant w r as 

 named after the Italian missionary to w r hom we owe so 

 much of our knowledge of the vegetation of Shensi. 

 Two years later Mr. A. Render published a brief diagnosis 

 in Professor Bailey's Cyclopaedia, and the same author 

 has since then, on 31st August, 1916, given a full account 

 of the species in the Plantae Wilsonianae, after having 

 himself seen the shrub in Mr. Hesse's nursery and 

 compared specimens taken therefrom with material 

 collected by Henry, Giraldi and Wilson, including the 

 field-material issued by Mr. Wilson as his n. 439, which 

 corresponds with seeds from which the Kew plant now 

 figured was raised. Dr. Stapf finds, however, that some 

 of the specimens enumerated by Render under C. Giral- 

 diana belong to other species. When the extraneous 

 elements are excluded it is found that the southern limit 

 of C. Giraldiana, so far as is at present known, does not 

 overpass the Yang-tse-Kiang basin, and its area extends 

 from Western Szechuan through Hupeh to Shensi. In 

 the wild state the inflorescences are frequently more 

 scanty than in the cultivated example now figured. 



Description.— Shrub, 5-6 ft. high ; young twigs rather 

 closely tawny-grey pubescent, soon becoming glabrous ; 

 bark ultimately leaden-grey, smooth or in places rough 

 with persistent hair-bases. Leaves wide-lanceolate, or 

 elliptic-lanceolate, acute or acuminate, rarely some of 

 them blunt and then at times obovate, base acute, 

 margin closely toothed, teeth more than 30 on each side, 

 3-5 in. long, 1-2| in. wide, when young with a covering 

 of tawny-grey stellate hairs, soon becoming glabrous, 

 when full grown nearly to quite glabrous above, beneath 

 with a few scattered hairs on the midrib and nerves and 

 minutely yellow-glandular ; lateral nervep 6-10 on each 



