COLLINSONIA CANADENSIS. 



COLLINSON'S FLOWER. 



NATURAL ORDER, LABIAT^E. (LAMIACE/E OF LIXDLEY.) 



CoLLiNsoNiA Canadensis, Linnaeus. — Leaves ovate, acuminate, coarsely serrate, petiolate, 

 thin and smoothish; racemes elongated, many-flowered; flowers pedicellate, axillary, and 

 opposite ; stem two to three feet high, somewhat branched, smoothish below, pubescent 

 above ; leaves four or five to eight or ten inches long, and three to five inches wide, 

 resinous dotted beneath ; petioles one to three or four inches long, the leaves at the base 

 of the panicle smaller and subsessile; flowers loosely racemose; pedicels one third to one 

 inch long, with minute, lance-ovate, acuminate bracts at the base; corolla greenish-yellow, 

 the lower lip fringed. (Darlington's Flora CistrUa. See also Gray's Manual of the 

 Bolaiiv of the Northern United States, Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States, and 

 Wood's Class-Book of Botany.) 



HE genus Collinsonia is truly American, and commemo- 

 rates the name of one of the earliest friends of American 

 botany, Peter CoUinson, of London. Collinson, who died in 

 176S, in his seventy-fifth year, was a wealthy Quaker and a dealer 

 in woollen goods. He had a fine garden, and introduced a large 

 number of rare plants, especially from North America. John 

 Bartram, our early botanist, was in active correspondence with 

 him, and seems to have sent him, among his earliest collections, 

 seeds of the plant named at the head of this page, for in a q 



letter from Collinson to Bartram, dated Sept. 2, 1 739, and pub- O 



lished in Darlington's " Memorials," the English amateur botanist 

 writes as follows : " At the bottom of the box is a specimen of 

 what our botanists have dubbed Collinsonia, but I think it 

 should rather be Bartraviia, for I had it in the very first seeds 

 thee sent me. Miller is mistaken in making it 'come from 

 Maryland. Pray, fail not next year to send me some more seed 

 of it." Collinson very likely took care to correct Miller's mis- 



