Addisonia 35 



(Plate 242) 



LOPEZIA HIRSUTA 

 Hairy Lopezia 



Native of central and southern Mexico 



Family Onagraceae Evening-primrose Family 



Lopezia hirsuta Jacq. Coll. Suppl. 5. 1796. 



Numerous plants of this attractive species have recently been 

 grown at the New York Botanical Garden for use in the annual 

 winter floral display at Conservatory 2, where they have drawn the 

 interest and admiration of all observers. Cultivated in six-inch 

 pots, they were trained into tree form, with a leafless slender trunk 

 two to three feet high, surmounted by a spherical crown one to two 

 feet in diameter. With their bright green leaves and numerous 

 small but conspicuous flowers, they formed an unusually attractive 

 background for the lower primulas and bulbous plants set in front 

 of them. 



Lopezia is a small genus of some twenty shrubby or half-shrubby 

 plants of small size, all natives of Mexico and Central America. 

 Five others have been introduced into American horticulture, 

 according to the Standard Cyclopedia, but are seldom seen in 

 cultivation, although our experience shows that they are well worthy 

 of wider recognition. Our species is easily propagated by soft- 

 wood cuttings taken in midsummer. 



Our illustration was prepared from material cultivated in the 



conservatories of the New York Botanical Garden. 



The young stems of the hairy lopezia are soft and herbaceous, 

 reddish, softly and conspicuously hairy with white hairs, and some- 

 what angled. The older stems are woody, round, smooth, and 

 red-brown in color, the angles persisting as soft, thin, narrow ridges 

 of paper-like bark. The leaves are ovate-oblong, about an inch 

 long by half as wide, finely and remotely toothed, sharp at the apex, 

 narrowed to an obtuse base, and borne on petioles one fourth of an 

 inch long. They are prominently pinnately veined, deep green 

 above, somewhat paler beneath, marked with a narrow line of 

 purple at the very margin, and thinly and softly hairy on both 

 sides, but especially so beneath. The flowers are borne in short 

 «3< racemes terminating the stem and branches, and appear for several 

 months during the winter. The four sepals are narrowly oblong, 

 and red-brown in color. The petals are four, of which two are 

 normal, red in color, almost round, and set on stalks about equaling 

 the body in length ; the other two are oblong, somewhat shorter and 



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