304 Dr. Smith's Characters of Poiretia. 



Easily distinguished by its little, roundish, wedge-shaped, 

 more or less obcordate, leaves, and the spinous terminations of 

 its branches. The flowers in all the 4 species are orange beauti- 

 fully variegated with crimson ; the keel in this last is purple. 



3. Poiretia. 



Calyx bilabiatus ; labio snperiore bifido, retuso. Legutnen ses- 

 sile, sphaericum, inflatum, uniloculare, dispermum. 



1. P. linearis, foliis linearibus revolutis. 



This shrub, seeds and specimens of which have been sent from 

 New South Wales, flowered in Mr. George Flibbert's rich col- 

 lection at Clapham in 1798 ; but I am not aware that any figure 

 or description of it has been published. It constitutes a very 

 distinct new genus, allied to Platylobium and Bossicea, but suffi- 

 ciently different in habit, and essentially distinguished from 

 them, as they are from each other, by the fruit. I wish to de- 

 dicate this genus to M. Poiret, the able continuator of the bo- 

 tanical part of the French Encyclopedic since it was given up by 

 M. Lamarck. I have the more pleasure in "doing this justice to 

 M. Poiret's merits, because the plant which the late Abbe Ca- 

 vanilles named Poiretia in 1797, had, unknown to either of these 

 gentlemen, been published by me in the Stockholm Transac- 

 tions, three years before, as Sprengelia, and 1 was therefore the 

 innocent cause of a disappointment to both. 



This species of Poiretia, on which I have founded the genus, 

 is a rather slender shrub, with alternate, round, leafy branches, 

 clothed in their younger and upper parts with short dense silky 

 hairs. Leaves alternate, on short, thick, hairy footstalks ; spread- 

 ing, 2 or 3 inches long, linear, narrow, obtuse with a small point, 

 somewhat revolute, obsoletely crenatej smooth above; paler, 



often 



