Musa. PENTANDRIA MONOGYNIA. 605 



2. M. coccinea. Andr. Repos. i. 47. 



Spadix and spathes straight, the latter one or two-flower- 

 ed, and permanent. 



Chin. On-ang-chok-chee. 



This has been brought from China, where it is said to be 

 indigenous. It thrives well in the Company's Botanic gar- 

 den at Calcutta, where I long took it for the banana in a 

 dwarf state ; a state the Chinese have the art of reducing 

 most plants to; but now, after repeated examination for ma- 

 ny years, I find it is undoubtedly a permanently distinct 

 species. It resembles the banana, and plantain in habit, and 

 in its perennial root. 



Stem erect, generally three or four feet high, and about as 

 thick as a man's arm. Like the other species they perish 

 soon after fructification, and like them, are succeeded by 

 shoots from the root. Leaves linear, &c. as in M. Sapien- 

 tum. Spadix erect. Spathes linear-oblong, boat-shaped, 

 erect, obtuse, both sides smooth, and of a bright scarlet co- 

 lour; all are permanent, and embrace one, or at most two 

 flowers. Flowers, the inferior ones are female-hermaphro- 

 dite and fertile. The superior ones male-hermaphrodite and 

 abortive. With Gartner I consider the corol as two-petal- 

 led in this genus, (and not as a nectary ;) and in this species 

 it is particularly so. In M. Sapientian the two ovate scales 

 over the inside of the fissures of the exterior petal may be 

 called neclarial. Petals two, as long as the stamens, some- 

 what ringent; the exterior one involving the interior like a 

 spathe, its apex three-parted; the lateral divisions thereof 

 ending in a slender hornlet; the middle one is broader and 

 three-parted ; soon after expansion they become reflected, 

 then re volute. Interior petal nearly as long as the exterior, 

 apex sometimes entire, sometimes three-parted. Filaments 

 uniformly five, surrounding three-fourths of the style. An- 

 thers in the male-hermaphrodite flowers linear, about as long 

 as the filaments, with a deep polliniferous groove on each 

 margin; those of the fertile, or female-hermaphrodite flowers 



