392 Dr Graham's Description of Nexv or Rare Plants. 



oblong, bilocular, yellow on their inner side, brown without. Stigmata 

 capitate. Styles 3, stout, equal in length to the stamens, somewhat di- 

 verging. Germen round, superior, covered with loose yellowish-brown 

 tomentum, trilocular, loculaments monospermous, ovulum pendulous 

 from the central column. 

 This climber has been long in the stove of the Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 

 though it is now for the first time in flower ; native country unknown. 

 In this, and in other collections, it has been called Banisteria fulgens^ be- 

 ing probably supposed the plant described under that name by Meyer, 

 considered by Decandolle a variety of B. ferruginea ; it is certainly not 

 the B.fulgens of Linnaeus. It may be Heteropteris nitida^ var. /3 of Bot. 

 Reg. t. 950. {Banisteria of the index). I had referred it to Heteropteris, 

 chiefly from the form of the style ; and I am since confirmed in this, by 

 finding that the fruit, the only sure mark, exists in Dr Hooker's her- 

 barium. The universality of the petiole glands, the more entire leaf, 

 the less dense, differently branched inflorescence, the much smaller num- 

 ber of flowers expanded on panicles twice the size of that figured, and 

 the constant deficiency in the calyx glands, make me doubt whether this 

 is the plant of the Register ; and though it should prove the same, I 

 shall regret less having described it under a different name, as it is there 

 considered only a variety. 



Lobelia racemosa. 



Bot. Mag. t. 2137. 



L. racemosa ; caule sufFruticoso, erecto ; foliis lanceolatis, serrato-spinu* 



losis ; racemo terminal!, pedicellis florem sequantibus, patulis, demum 



inflexis. 

 Description. — Stem erect, half woody, round (2 feet high), branching 

 from the axils of the leaves near the top as the flower fades. Leaves 

 lanceolate, tooth-spinous (9 inches long by 1|^ broad), attenuated at both 

 their extremities, sessile, subdecurrent, scattered, crowded. Rachis con- 

 tinuous with the stem, and resembling it, greatly elongated while flower- 

 ing (at length 2 feet long), tapering slowly. Pedicels scattered, very 

 numerous, crowded and spreading while in flower, afterwards removed 

 to a greater distance from each other by the elongation of the rachis, 

 and curved upwards and inwards, flattened, somewhat winged below the 

 middle, where each supports two opposite bractea, resembling miniature 

 leaves {\ of an inch long), each also springs from the axil of a similar 

 but much larger bractea^ which, at the lower part of the raceme, is longer 

 than the pedicel, but towards the top only half its length. Cali/.v segments 

 awl-shaped, sharply serrated, spreading wide, at last reflected, persisting. 

 Corolla {l\ inch long) somewhat plaited, cleft to its base along the up- 

 per side, divided nearly to its middle into three segments, which are 

 coiled up backwards, the lateral ones entire and pointed, the central 3- 

 toothed. Stamens unconnected only at their base, every where else 

 united by their filaments and anthers into a tube ensheathing the whole 

 of the style ; anthers pale leaden coloured, ciliated at their extremities, 

 bursting on their inner side, and discharging at the extremity of the 

 tube a large quantity of white poUen. Stigma large, capitate, ciliated at 

 the base, at first included and marked by a transverse fissure, after- 

 wards projected just beyond the tube of the anthers, and divided into 

 two short, broad, revolute segments, covered on their upper surface with 

 short, close, glandular pubescence. Style flattened, slightly curved, en- 

 larging a little upwards (about 1 inch long). Germen half inferior, co- 

 nical in its upper part, broad and furrowed in its lower, bilocular ; re- 

 ceptacle of the seeds large, attached to the sides of the dissepiment, the 

 transverse section cordate. Seeds very numerous. 

 Ciliae of the anthers and stigma, and upper surface of the revolute stigma, 

 white ; every other part of the plant, except the anthers, green. The 

 whole smooth, except the upper surface of the stigma after the segments 

 ])ecome revolute, also the pedicels and upper part of the rachis, which are 

 sliglitly pubescent. The whole yields a milky, fetid juice, when broken. 



