Dr Graham's List of Rare Plants. 191 



The particulars regarding the death of the indefatigable botanist and col- 

 lector who greatly enriched our herbaria, and added this and many other 

 plants to our gardens, have not yet (July 1835) reached this country, but 

 the fact is known from letters received by Dr Hooker, and the loss will 

 be extensively felt. Ardent, unwearied, and intelligent, with a singu- 

 larly discriminating eye, and a constitutio*' which seemed to defy cli- 

 mate, fatigue, and privation, no individual was ever better qualified than 

 Drummond for the task which he enthusiastically undertook — the task 

 of investigating and transmitting to Europe the botanical treasures of 

 little known regions. Before he left Scotland he would willingly have 

 braved the dangers of the Orinoco. I entreated that he would not go there, 

 knowing certainly that his ardent mind would immediately lead him to 

 neglect ordinary measures of precaution, and that he would quickly fall 

 a victim to his enthusiasm. Even in a more temperate climate, he was 

 attacked with intermittent fever ; but shaking this off, and recovering 

 from cholera, which was burying all around him, he lived till he passed 

 to the low latitude of Cuba, from which the first account received has 

 conveyed information of his death. 



Epimedium dlphyllum. 



E. diphyllum ; petiolis filiformibus, dichotomis, racemum unilateralem 

 gerentibus, geniculis tumidis pilosis, foliolo solitario in utroque ramo ; 

 petalis planis. 

 Epimedium diphyllum, Lodd. Bot. Cabinet 1858. 

 Description — Petioles all radical, numerous, filiform, dichotomous, sparing- 

 ly covered with spreading hairs, which are more abundant at the swollen 

 joints, each branch supporting one leafet, one of the branches occasion- 

 ally trifid, and supporting three leafets. Leafet (length 1 4 inch, breadth 

 9 lines) about as long as the branch of the petiole, obliquely cordate, 

 above of lively green and glabrous, below glaucous and pubescent, about 

 9-nerved, reticulate, distantly provided with bristle-shaped teeth. Many 

 of the petioles barren, others having towards the top a swollen joint, 

 from which a single raceme springs. The portion of the petiole above 

 this joint is equal in length to the branches of the barren petioles, and 

 its subdivisions half of that length. Peduncle longer than the lesif and 

 the portion of the petiole above its origin, without flowers for about half 

 its length (rarely one or two in its axil) above this having about four 

 straight, slender, glabrous, secund pedicels (about half an inch long) 

 green and slightly swollen under the flower, the lower ones arising in 

 tne axils of small brctcteoBj which are awanting in the upper. Flowers 

 expanding irregularly along the rachis, white, cemuous, with four un- 

 equal caducous slightly coloured and dotted bracteoke at the base. 5'^- 

 pals 4, lanceolato-oblong, spreading. Petals 4, obovate, rather longer 

 than the sepals, flat. Stamens 4, about half as long as the sepals ; anthers 

 nearly sessile, oblong, yellow, opening by a valve rolling upwards on each 

 side ; connective green ; pollen granules minute, oblong, yellow. Pistil 

 green, longer than the stamens ; stigma blunt, terminal; style filiform; 

 germen oblong, gibbous on the lower side, unilocular ; ovules several, 

 obovate, attached to the dorsal suture. 

 The petals (nectaries, Linn.) possess a form extremely unlike that which 

 occurs in Epimedium alpinum, but the variation is precisely similar to that 

 which occurs occasionally in Aquilegia^ and cannot form a generic dis- 

 tinction, where the whole habit of the plant, and the structure of every 

 part of fructification, except the corolla, is precisely as in the common 

 species. I have taken a different view of the petiole, and the origin of 

 the flowers, from that which is commonly received, but it seems to me 

 the simplest, and that which best explains the appearances. This spe- 

 cies is a native of Japan. We received a plant at Edinburgh from Ber- 

 lin in 1834. It flowered pretty freely in the ^eenhouse ot the Botanic 

 Garden early in spring. I do not find the hairiness of the petiole, ex- 



