268, PiSTiA Steatiotes. Zimiceus. A hothouse floating plant of no beauty. Native of all 
parts of the Tropics. Flowers green, inconspicuous. Belongs to Lemnacls (Pistiacese) . 
This now common, and, we think, very ugly plant, is thus spol;en of by Sir WiUiam Hooker in the Botanical Maaadne, 
t. 4564. We have only presumed to make a few indispensible corrections in the style : 
« With no floral beauty to recommend it, a more delicate and graceful object cannot well be seen in a tropieal-honse 
than tufts of Pistia Stratlotes, of the tenderest green imaginable, floating on the surface of a vessel of water or a tank. The 
leaves are connected together into a rose-shaped tuft, and these send out runners bearing other plants in all stages of 
growth. Dr. Roxburgh aptly compares them to half-grown lettuce plants. They continue in great beauty aU summer 
and autumn, and in early winter they show sj-mptoms of weakness or decay ; but, with a little care, plenty of young 
plants may be retained for the foUowing spring, when they soon revive and reproduce by offsets. The inflorescence 
is nestled at the base of the leaf, and it may easily be seen there, by some of the young unfolded leaves, that the spathe 
which encloses the flowers is nothing but a modified leaf, the lower sides involute, and bearing the stamens and pistil. 
These flowera possess no beauty. The roots are a very pretty object when a plant is lifted out of the water, for here, as 
in the Duckweed {Lemna) of our own country— and Putia is sometimes called tropical Duckweed,— the roots descend 
loose into the water, with no necessary attachment to soil or mud, and are long and feathery. Like many water plants 
it has a very extended range, perhaps all round the world, in tropical or subtropical regions. In America it extends as 
far north as Louisiana, the Mississippi and North Carolina, From Africa, I possess specimens from Egypt in the north, 
from the Niger country near the middle, and from Port Natal in the south. In the warm parts of India it seems to be 
universal. In Antigua, Patrick Browne tells us, it is most abundant in all the ponds of water preserved for public use ; 
that it keeps always fresh and cool the water, which w^ould be greatly subject to putrefaction and charged with a multitude 
of insects, if it continued exposed to the heat of the sun. The plant, however, is there considered acrid, and when the 
droughts set in and the waters are reduced very low (which freijuently happens in that island), they are overheated and 
BO impregnated with the particles of this vegetable, tliat they occasion bloody fluxes to such as are obliged to use them at 
those seasons- I am aware that some botanists are disposed to consider that there are several distinct species of Plstia and 
Professor Kunth goes so fai- as to constitute two groupes, and of one groupe to make two subgroupes, including alto'rether 
no less than nine species : but the characters are wretchedly defined, and I must confess, that as far as can be collected 
from the dried state of the copious specimens in my herbarium, there is no reason for constituting more than one species 
Others, however, taiust judge for themselves. Om- plant, here figured, is derived from Jamaica, and quite accords with 
RoxburgVs from the East Indies. Yet Sloane's Jamaica species {Hist. t. 2., f. 2.) is referred by Kunth to his 
P. commutatay and Brown's Jamaica plant to P. ohcordata.^ 
Mr, Smith adds that :-« In this country it must be grown under glass, m a cistern or tank of water at a temperature 
rangmg m summer between 70^ and 80^. The depth of the water, whether several feet or only a few inches is 
unimportant ; when it grows in deep water its roots do not reach the bottom. As it mcreases rapidly by producing 
stolons, or runners, in fhp- fnT^n nf T.aire ^o/»k ^f «.u:^k i. ,.,.,. t J J i^iuuu^^iug 
form of rays, each of which 
soon occupy, in one summer 
growing ti'opical 
^naties. It wd also grcnv freely in a small shallow tub or pan; and, although its natural habit 177^4 
t appears to thrive more luxur^atly in water only a few inches deep, so that the roots reach the soil and ftlJhl 
tlt^^r """^ 1- ^ T-?T ;^^" ?'" "^"^'' '^ P'^^'^S a thm layer of rich soU or very rotten Lg in the^ssel 
Soft ^ater IS essential to its healthy cnltivation, and in summer it should be shaded during the 
imh 
middle 
269. Rhododet^bon MYETiFOLiuM. MoU. A liardy evergreen shrub from tlie Alps of 
Soutliern Transylvania. Flowers rod. Cultivated in the Garden of Schonbrunn. 
form of Rhododendron ferrugineum. It is described 
Leaves minute,ovate or obovate elliptical, obtuse, rolled back at the edge and sli^l cSed'^k I'smir . 
the ovary. 
Zeitung, IH51A7, 
270. JossixiA ORBicuLATA. De Candolle. 
, , , , smooth. Style rather shorter than 
peduncles above the leaves, and crnwriPil h^r « c=i.^„^ .*,.!_ « . . , 
■JJotamsche 
orticulata Smme^^ A T,.„,l=„r V , *=, °™'™'»^ J^amarci; alih Myrtus 
Introduced at Kew. 
s 
