38 NEW CAFFRAKIAN PLANTS. 



VIII. — A Note upon some new Caffrarian Plants, and the 

 Cape Gooseberry. By Thomas Moore, F.H.S., Curator 

 of the Apothecaries' Garden, Chelsea. 



I have the permission of the Rev. Thomas Rooper, of Wick 

 Hill, Brighton, to transmit the accompanying extract from a letter 

 received from him, on a subject which may be interesting to some 

 of the Fellows of the Horticultural Society. The plants cultivated 

 in Mr. Rooper's garden are, I understand, the produce of seeds 

 transmitted from the Cape of Good Hope, by Captain E. Rooper, 

 who has been successful in inti'oduciug some interesting novelties 

 to the gardens of this country. Of one or two of these latter which 

 have come under my notice, I have appended a brief account : — 



Tritonia Hooperii.* — This is an extremely handsome green- 

 house or half-hardy herbaceous plant, in many respects resembling 

 the old, but not common, T. Burchellii, from which it differs, 

 however, in its dense spike of flowers, its conspicuous bracts, and 

 its included stamens. Captain Rooper found it in Caffrarin, 

 growing in marshy places ; and at Brighton, it has been found to 

 be almost hardy, having survived the last winter with the slight 

 protection afforded by a broken hand-light. It flowers in the 

 winter and spring months. The dense heads of tubular flowers 

 are yellow on the lower side, and of the richest orange-scarlet on the 

 upper side, shining as if varnished. The plant has a fleshy root- 

 stock, from which springs a crown of recurved carinate leaves, 

 which are upwards of four feet long, two inches broad at the base, 

 and tapering to a long point. The scape is a foot high, with a few 

 large bracts below the spike, and terminating above the flowers in 

 a crown of crowded smaller bracts, subtending abortive flowers. 

 The flowers are densely arranged into a roundish ovate spike, 

 and have very short stalks, at the base of each of which is an 

 oblong-ovate obtuse scarious three-to-five-nerved bract, which 

 gradually becomes smaller upwards ; those of the crown being 

 oblong-acute, or acuminate, one-to-three-nerved, and glandular 

 serrate. The perianth is tubular, slightly curved, narrowed above 

 the base, an inch and three-quarters long, with six greenish nerves; 



* Tritonia Rooperii; leaves very long, recurved, carinate, taper-pointed, 

 minutely cartilagineo-serrate above ; spike roundish-ovate, flowers subsessile, 

 densely crowded in the axils of oblong-obovate scarious bracts, which ave 

 obtuse, with 3 — 5 fuscous nerves, the upper ones acute or acuminate, 1 — 3- 

 nerved, glandular-serrate, forming a coma above the developed flowers ; 

 stamens included. — T. M., in Gard. Comp., i. 113 (with figure). 



