Addisonia 43 



(Plate 246) 

 TRICHOSPORUM PULCHRUM 



Beautiful Trichosporum 



Native of Java 



Family GesneRiaceae Gesneria Family 



Trichosporum pulchrum Blume, Bijdr. 764. 1826. 

 Aeschynanthus pulchra G. Don, Gen. Hist. 4: 656. 1838. 



While the family Gesneriaceae is noted for the number of hand- 

 some species which it contains, few of them can vie with the beauti- 

 ful trichosporum in brilliancy. It belongs to a genus of over fifty 

 species, natives of the Malayan region and India, several of which 

 have been introduced into cultivation. The one under discussion 

 was introduced into English horticulture twenty years after its 

 discovery, and has long been known as an attractive plant for warm- 

 house cultivation. 



In the New York Botanical Garden it succeeds best when culti- 

 vated in hanging baskets, suspended close to the glass in a temper- 

 ature not lower than 65 degrees by night and reaching 80 degrees 

 or more by day. It flourishes in a small quantity of soil, composed 

 of a mixture of sand, leaf mold, and loam, and orchid peat is also a 

 good substratum. The soil should be surrounded by a mass of 

 sphagnum, to which the plants cling and into which they push their 

 roots. Under these conditions the plants produce stems two feet 

 long, or sometimes more, and flower irregularly throughout the year. 

 Propagation is effected by soft-wood cuttings, which root easily 

 in sand. 



The beautiful trichosporum is an epiphyte. Its stems are smooth, 

 deep green, or suffused with brown, rather wiry in texture, and 

 trailing or drooping in habit. Its leaves are deep green, stiff, thick, 

 fleshy in texture, with short petioles. The leaf -blades are broadly 

 ovate in outline, about an inch long and almost as wide, acute at 

 the apex, inconspicuously toothed at the margin, broadly rounded 

 at the base, and smooth on both sides. The flowers are produced 

 in small clusters at the end of the branches, and are about two and 

 a half inches long. The calyx is cylindric, usually green below and 

 reddish toward the tip, and terminates in five short, broadly 

 triangular sepals. The corolla is tubular and gently curved. Just 

 above its base and within the calyx it is greatly constricted for a 

 short portion of its length. The remainder of the tube widens 

 gradually and then expands into the funnel-form limb. It is scarlet 

 externally but variegated with yellow markings within. The 

 stamens are four, more or less approximate in two pairs of unequal 



