Dr Graham's List of Rare Plants. 413 



Brilish collections from Mr Buist's garden. It flowered twice with us 

 last year, but too imperfectly to allow of its being figured. It subse- 

 quently flowered with Dr Neill at Canonmills, and again with us this 

 month (February 1836). Nothing can be more ornamental in the stove. 

 The rose- like whorls of bracteae which terminate the branches, have been 

 seen on the large plants cultivated at Philadelphia, as much as twenty 

 inches across, and equal in colour to the finest tints of IJilnsctu Rosa- 

 sinensis. There can be no doubt that it forms a new generic type, though 

 in several species of Euphorbia^ especially E. splendensy there are the ru- 

 diments of the remarkable septa found in the involucre here. 1 have 

 dedicated it, if not to its original discoverer, at least to one who has first 

 brought it into cultivation and into general notice among botanists, and 

 from whose exertions many additi(.ns to our collections of plants from 

 Mexico are expected. At Philadelphia the plant is exposed in the open 

 air during summer, but is placed in the stove during winter, at which 

 season, or early in spring, there, as here, it seems to have its period of 

 flowering. 



Sceptranthes. 



Tubus clavatus erectus; limbus suberectus. Filamenta tubo adhaeren- 

 tia, altematim breviora ; antherse lineares, erectse, prope faucem tubi 

 subsessile. Stigma trifidum erectum. Germen stipitatum. 

 Sceptranthes Drummondii. 

 Zephyranthes Drummondii, Don! in Sweet's Brit. Fl. Gard. 328. 



Description. — Btilb about the size of a walnut, spheroidal, covered with 

 a brown unbroken skin, terminated with erect oblong segments in se- 

 veral layers at the top of the elongated cylindrical transversely wrinkled 

 neck of the bulb. Leaves six in the specimen described, two in one 

 and four in another bulb in ''the Botanic Garden, neither of which 

 have flowered, of unequal length (the longest two, the shortest one foot 

 long, 4-5 lines broad) linear, broadly channelled above, blunt, pruinose. 

 Scape (to the base of the spathe 7 inches long) lateral, erect, hollow, red- 

 dish-yellow at the base, becoming gradually greener upwards. Spathe (I i 

 inch long) membranous, ribbed, perforated, and abruptly marcescent near 

 the apex. Perianth erect (2 inches long, 1 4 inch across) tube cylindri- 

 cal, greenish -yellow ; limb white, 6-parted, segments obovate, attenu- 

 ated and parallel, and in contact in their lower half, subspreading above, 

 ribbed, the three outer rather the largest, and, more distinctly than the 

 inner, terminated by a greenish mucro. Stamens G ; filaments incorpo- 

 rated with the tube of the perianth ; anthers linear, situated near the 

 mouth of the tube, three alternate ones a little lower down ; pollen yel- 

 low, granules oblong, and somewhat angled. Germen stipitate, footstalk 

 as long as the more persisting part of the spathe. St^le little more than 

 half the length of the tube, filiform, pale green. Stigma 3-fid, the seg- 

 ments short, nearly erect. 



Bulbs of this very pretty plant were sent from Texas by Mr Drummond, 

 and distributed to various botanical establishments in Scotland in the 

 beginning of 1835; but I am not aware of their having flowered any 

 where excepting in the collection of Dr Neill last autumn, and in the 

 nursery garden of Messrs J. Dickson and Sons, where, in the stove, the 

 specimen described expanded a handsome flower in the beginning of 

 March 1836. 



The length of tube, and especially the adhering filaments, seem to me to 

 remove the plant from the genus Zephyranthes ,• the greater shortness of 

 the tube, the less flattened limb, and the stipitate germen, prevent me 

 from uniting it to the genus Cooperia. 



All the discoveries of one admirable collector — whose untimely deatli we 

 shall never cease to regret — have not yet been made known, when we 

 have received accounts, I fear in too authentic a shape to be doubted, that 

 another has fallen a sacrifice to his exertions in behalf of Botany. The 



