ultimate fresh shoots are either distant, feeble, small, or altogether 
wanting. 
Whole plant smooth, except parts of the flower. Leaves palmate, 
deciduous; but the trees are scarcely or for a very short time quite bare, 
when the flower-buds appear simultaneously with the young leaves, 
which are of a beautiful, delicate, light green, often tinged with cinna- 
mon-red. This happens in November or December at Madeira. Sit- 
pules narrow, small, linear-acuminate, patent or reflexed, deciduous. 
Petioles two to four inches long, often purplish or red; upwards round, 
not channelled; swollen at the base. Leaflets from five to seven, 
generally seven, oblongo-lanceolate, with a fine, withered, acuminate 
point ; very smooth and shining above; opaque and paler, with a faint 
bluish tinge beneath, and a yellow, prominent midrib ; a little inclined to 
coriaceous: the middle one largest, two to three inches long and one 
broad. Petiolules short, reddish, channelled above. Flowers for the most 
part axillary towards the ends of the branches ; either solitary or two or 
even three together in a short kind of panicle, about the size of those of 
the Tulip-Tree, (Lirtopenpron tulipifera, L.,) conspicuous, hand- 
some, and with a delightful but very evanescent fragrance of primroses 
(Primvuta acaulis, L.); abounding with honey. Pedicel thick, firm, 
erect, round, often reddish. Bracteole beneath the calyx deciduous. 
Calyx turbinato-cylindrick, splitting down a little way irregularly into 
five short, ovate, unequal segments: the outside perfectly smooth 
and shining green; inside whitish and beautifully sattiny. Before ex- 
pansion the calyx resembles a young green fruit rather than a flower- 
bud. Petals five, remarkably flaccid, reflexed very soon after expan- 
sion, and drooping over the calyx as if withered, oblongo-clavate, two 
inches long ; of a delicate pale primrose or cream colour, with the part 
a little above their base or claw of a deep purplish-red, spreading in 
Streaks more or less, chiefly on one side towards their middle: the 
outside densely clothed with a loose, shaggy coat of soft shining, silky, 
fleecy hairs; inside quite smooth, and shining as if varnished. Fila- 
ments five, united half-way up round the germen and style into a tube 
or erect hollow column, which forms a swelling kind of knot covered 
with reddish, short, woolly hairs, apparently closing the throat of the 
flower: above as well as below this knot, the column is perfectly 
smooth, separating about half-way up into five erect or erecto-patent, 
antheriferous branches, or distinct filaments ; each of which is channelled 
on the outside or beneath, and bears at its end a pair of erect, simple, 
parallel, linear, subsinuate anthers, forming apparently a single, large, 
ovate-oblong one. Column and filaments pale primrose or cream colour. 
Pollen and Anthers the same. Style round, long, slender, white, smooth, 
about the length of the stamens, tipped at the end by the small, five- 
lobed, crimson, subcapitate stigma. Germen enclosed. in the base of 
the tube or column formed by the filaments, white or pale green, smooth, 
shining, sessile, half-ovate, five-celled, each cell containing many ovules. 
The cup-like base of the flower is half filled with honey, bathing the. 
base of the column and petals. 
Miss Young, to whose admirable pencil I am indebted for a most 
beautiful delineation of this plant in all its parts, except the fruit, has. 
observed that the purple stain prevails in greater intensity and extent 
_ on the same side of every petal in the same flower; but in different 
_ flowers does not uniformly keep to the same side; though still by far 
most commonly to that here figured. Rev. R. 7. Lowe, > 
