Musa. PENTANDRIA MONOGYNIA, 665 
2. M. coccinea, Andr. Repos, i. 47, 
Spadia and spathes straight, the latter one or inn 
ed, and permanent. | . 
Chin, On-ang-chok-chee. 
This has been brought from China, where it is said to oa 
indigenous. It thrives well in the Company’s Botanic gar- 
den at Calcutta, where I Jong took it for the banana. in a 
dwart state ; a state the Chinese have the art of reducing 
most plants to; but now, after repeated examination for ma- 
ny years, I find it is undoubtedly a permanently distinct 
Species. It resembles the banana and plantain in habit, and 
in its perennial root. 
‘Stem erect, generally three or four feet high, and about as 
thick as a man’s arm. Like the other species they perish 
soon after fructification, and like them, are succeeded by 
shoots from the root, Leaves linear, &e. as in M, Sapien- 
tum. Spadix erect. Spathes linear-oblong, boat-shaped, 
erect, obtuse, both sides smooth, and of a bright scarlet co- 
lour ; all are permanent, and embrace one, or at most) two 
flowers. Flowers, the inferior ones are female-hermaphro- 
dite and fertile. The superior ones male-hermaphrodite and 
abortive. With Geertner I consider the corol as two-petal- 
led in this genus, (and not as a nectary ;) and in this species 
it is particularly so.. In M. Sapientum the two ovate scales 
over the inside of the fissures of the exterior petal may be 
called nectarial. Petals two, as long as the stamens, some- 
what ringent; the exterior one involving the interior like a 
spathe, its apex three-parted; the lateral, divisions thereof 
ending in a slender hornlet; the middle one is broader and 
three-parted ; soon after expansion they become. reflected, 
then revolute. Interior petal nearly as long: as the exterior, 
_ apex sometimes entire, sometimes three-parted. 4’tlamenis 
uniformly five, surrounding three-fourths of the style. An- 
_ thers in the male-hermaphrodite flowers linear, about as long 
as the filaments, with a deep polliniferous groove on each 
margin ; those of the fertile, or female-hermaphrodite flowers 
