680 PENTANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Celosia. 
4. C. cernua. R. 
Annual, erect, ramous. Leaves lanceolate, acute. Racemes 
terminal, cylindric, with long sterile, ramous, pendulous 
tails. Capsules operculed, many-seeded. 
A native of the tops of the Rajmwhal hills, where Mr. W. 
Roxburgh first found it in great abundance wild amongst 
fragments of a rich iron ore, and from thence sent the seeds 
to the Botanic garden at Caleutta, where it grows well, and 
continues in gaudy blossom, during the whole of the cold 
season, 
Root annual: Stem erect, with numerous, ascending, ra- 
mous branches, slightly striated, colour from green toa deep 
liver colour, Leaves alternate, lancevlate, acute, smooth, 
entire, from one to six inches long, and broad in proportion. 
Stipules, or rather the lower opposite pair of leaves of the 
branches and brancliets often present, and then falcate, as in 
C, argentea, &c. but I do not think their presence or absence 
can, in any of the species found in India, be taken into the 
specific character; for in some plants they are tolerably 
constant, whereas in others of the same species reared from 
the same seed no sign of them can be traced. Racemes ter- 
‘minal; the fertile flower-bearing part simple, cylindric, but 
curved from the weight of the long, pendulous, lovely crim- 
son, sterile panicle into which they divide, and which gives 
to this charming species its great beauty. Flowers numer- 
ous, short-peduncled, before and during expansion of a 
right, vivid purple colour, but as the seed advances to ma- 
turity the margins of the scales become pure white, more or 
less broad. Bractes tapering, acute, one larger under the 
base of the pedicel, and two on its apex, pressing the calyx 
laterally, and about half its length. Calyx ; leaflets dagger- 
pointed, rather longer than the stamina, Nectary ten-part- 
ed, the “five long, subulate, alternate ones are antheriferous, 
the other five short and incurved over the germ. Stigma 
slightly three-lobed, Capsules ; the lid is a little scabrous 
