130 GLEANINGS AND ORIGINAL MEMORANDA. 
height of fifteen or twenty feet (M‘Fadyen ; Sloane says forty feet), yet, cultivated in a pot, in a warm stove, it 
maintains a shrubby character for a very great number of years, wit th pretty, evergreen, box-like foliage, bearing copious 
° bright orange pea-shaped flowers in the month of May, yielding a delicious perfume. It abounds in the sa 
of Jamaica, where, Dr. M‘Fadyen says, with its long twiggy branches, it reminds the traveller of the Broom of 
The wood is hard and ponderous, of a fine greenish brown colour, susceptible of a good polish, and used 
work. “ The slender branches," says Patrick Browne, “are very tough and flexile, frequently used for riding-switches, 
and in his days (days happily now gone by) generally kept at all the wharfs about Kingston to scourge the refractory 
slaves.” A shrub or small tree, from eight or ten to forty feet high, with long twiggy branches, armed with short, 
sharp, subulate, stipulary spines, Leaves solitary or in clusters, box-like, evergreen, obovato-cuneate, sessile. Flowers 
axillary, solitary, or two or three together. Peduncle short, with a pair of minute, opposite, small bracts above or near 
the middle. Calyx bell-shaped, pubescent, obscurely two-lipped ; upper lip bipartite, lower tripartite ; segments ovate, 
acute, the lowest one spreading, the rest erect. Corolla bright orange-yellow. Vexillum subrotund, with deep purple 
streaks in the centre. Als and carina p. somewhat Pres obtuse : all the petals with short claws. Stamens ten, 
mere point. a mar not an inch in 
len the valves char- 
o, hirsute with ty capitate hairs, biar- 
ticulate ; lower joint with the upper suture nearly 
straight, and the under convex; upper joint small, 
abortive.” M‘Fadyen.—Bot. Mag., t. 4670. 
605. OPHIOXYLON masus. Hasskari. 
(alias O. album Siedold.) A neat hothouse 
shrub, native of the East Indies. Belongs 
to Dogbanes. Flowers white in April. 
(Fig. 295). 
There has been a difference of opinion among 
botanists whether there are one or two species of 
Ophioxylon ; but the question would seem to be set 
at rest by Mr. Hasskarl, who describes this plant as 
being altogether stronger in growth, with a smooth 
shrubby stem four feet high, leaves green beneath, 
white flowers, and olive-shaped fruit, while in 
0. num this plant does not grow above a foot high, is not a shrub, has 
leaves red underneath, larger reddish flowers, and globose fruit. The large 
white-flowered plant, O. majus, thought by Hasskarl to be possibly the Ophioxylon 
album of Geertner, forms in the stove a small light green shrub with oblong- 
lanceolate membranous leaves placed in threes or fours, and loose cymes of white 
flowers. The corolla is nearly three quarters of an inch long, with the lobes 
of the limb half circular. It grows freely in a mixture of sandy loam and peat ; 
but requires to be kept in rather a moist atmosphere. It is increased by cuttings 
put in sand under a bell-glass, and plunged in the bark bed. The plant is of 
little value in a horticultural view, the white flowers being too small to produce 
a striking effect. It is however of some medical interest, being one of the plants 
whose roots are believed by Indian practitioners to be a cure for the bite of 
venomous serpents.— Journ. of Hort. Soc., vol. vii. 
606. SALVIA Rameriana. Scheele. (Linnea, xxii. 586.) A 
pretty sub-shrubby half-hardy plant, with spikes of crimson flowers, 
produced all the summer. Native of Texas, “ in woods near Neubraunfels.” Belongs to Labiates. 
Flowered in the Chelsea Botanic Garden. 
Stems two feet high, branched, villous, quadrangular. Leaves on longish hairy petioles, which are dilated and some- 
what connate at the base, and slightly furrowed above ; rugose with coarse sunken reticulated veins which are prominent 
beneath, pilose on both surfaces, with numerous senile glands, (which are flame-coloured when dry); dark dull green 
