Mr. Annerson’s Monograph of the Genus Paonia. — 953 
liqua, supra glabra, saturate viridia, venis atropurpureis: subtus cæsio-glauca, pi- 
losiuscula. Foliolum intermedium sepius inciso-lobatum, subinde obtuse trifidum ; $ 
lateralia integriora, minora, subsessilia. Bractece foliaceæ calyci approximate. Ca- 
lycis foliola numeri incerti, glabra, mucronata. Petala 8—13 palmaria, expansa, 
obcordata, eroso-crenata. Membrana perigyna tenuis, glabra, rubicunda, primum 
ovata, apice stigmata effundens, dein germinibus tumentibus rupta. Germina circi- 
ter 5 parum tomentosa, demum patentia, Stigmata lineari-compressa, recurvata, 
purpurea. Floret ad finem Maii. 
A minute account of this species is given in the Mémoires des 
Chinois by the Missionaries, Paris 1778: from whom we learn 
that it is the pride and glory of the Chinese, who have cultivated 
it by their own accounts for upwards of 1400 years ; and its vari- 
cties, from two to three hundred in number, are cherished with 
no less consideration than the Dutch florists do their tulips; and 
that it is a theme for their poets and painters, and prized even 
by their emperors, not only on account of the beauty but of the 
sweet perfume of its flowers. ‘The colour of these is represented 
to consist of difierent shades of purple, crimson, violet, rose, yel- 
low, white, black! and blue. Their tradition of its first origin is 
of its being discovered by a traveller on the mountains of Ho-nan : 
no notice is taken of its being now found there, or any where else 
in a state of nature; and Loureiro and Thunberg only describe 
it as being every where cultivated in the gardens of ua and 
Cc ot 
The Chinese take credit for rendering it a shrub i means of 
their superior art in gardening, for which they plume themselves 
greatly. Iris possible that they might mistake P. albiflora, which 
is found in China, for the original state of this plant. At this we 
Eoo not wonder, when two European botanists mistook it for 
P. officinalis. We cannot for a moment doubt of the shrubby. 
stem being natural, although it bears a strict analogy to the sub- 
terraneous 
