FUCHSIA MACRANTHA. 



455 



THE LARGE FLOWERED lUCHSIA— FUCHSIA MACRANTHA. 



FROM THE LONDON HORTICULTURAL MAGAZINE. 



The Fuchsia is a very popular family of 

 plants, and though not a very extensive one, 

 as compared with others we are are ac- 

 quainted with, yet it comprehends very con- 

 siderable variety, both in the flowers, and 

 in the habit of growth of the species which 

 it contains. We are now looking at the ge- 

 nus, botanically — as a family group of dis- 

 tinct individual forms, called species. Flo- 

 rists have intermixed these species, until 

 they have given rise to an almost endless 

 number of varieties, some of which are in- 

 deed very distinct and very handsome, but 

 the great majority are considered by many 

 persons to be very inferior in beauty to the 

 original kinds from which they were pro- 

 duced. The great and prevailing faults of 

 these varieties are their sameness and lame- 

 ness of coloring, and their coarseness of tex- 

 ture, which points — and they are blemishes 

 — are much more observable in very many 

 of the hybrids than in their parents. 



The wild species are variously distribu- 



ted, but with hardly an exception are found 

 in the New World. Some of them are 

 small spreading shrubs, with small flowers, 

 of which class one now much neglected, 

 called microphylla, is a floral gem. Others 

 are of much larger size, Avith much larger 

 flowers hanging on long stalks like " ear- 

 drops," from the base of every leaf, and 

 furnishing the old-fashioned idea of a Fuch- 

 sia. Subsequently to the introduciion of 

 these, some kinds, with tube-shaped flow- 

 ers several inches long, and hanging in 

 dense bunches from the end of the branch- 

 es, have made their appearance in our gar- 

 dens; and others, again, have been import- 

 ed, which, we are told by travellers, cling 

 to the forest vegetation of South America, 

 something in the way that the ivy embra- 

 ces our native sylvan forms. Many species 

 known to botanists, and which are regarded 

 by them as the most remarkable native 

 forms, remain to be introduced. Florists 

 have attempted to bring the Fuchsia under 



