REPORT ON ANNUALS. 75 



quilled centres. The colours in, each of these groups were nume- 

 rous and varied. 



Campanula strigosa .... Thompson. 



A good free flowering and distinct border annual, without being 

 very brilliant. It grew about nine inches high, with dense 

 dichotomously-branehed steras» clothed with ovate hairy leaves, 

 and bearing in the axils of the forks of the stem the good-sized 

 recurved violet-purple flowers. The lobes of the calyx were acu- 

 minate, and their sinuses produced at the base into five blunt 

 spurs or horns. 



Celosia argentea. 



Syn : Celosia rosea . . E. G. Henderson & Son. 



Celosia spicala rosea . Parker k Williams. 

 An ornamental tender annual, growing 2 to 3 feet high, erect in 

 habit, branching towards the top, and furnished with narrow 

 lanceolate leaves, the larger of which were 6 or 7 inches long. 

 The flowers come in long cylindrical terminal spikes, 6 to 9 

 inches long, thickly clothed with imbricating lanceolate bracts, 

 which are at first rose-coloured, and gradually change below to a 

 silvery white. Some plants raised from seeds, presented to the 

 Society by Sir Gordon Gumming, proved to be quite like this, 

 except in having the leaves ovate. 



-L 



Celosia coccinea. 



Syn : Celosia crimson feathered . Parker & Williams. 



Scarlet Cochscomh • . Veitch, 

 There was no appreciable difierence in the plants produced from 

 these two sources, both yielding plants varying somewhat in the 

 colour of the leaves and flowers, but forming tall pyramidal 

 branching bushes 4 to 5 feet high, furnished with broadly lanceo- 

 late or ovate-lanceolate leaves, which were sometimes red, some- 

 times green, and repand or wavy at the edge. The inflorescence, 

 terminal on the branches and branchlets, was various, — spicate, 

 paniculately spicate, or more or less dilated and cock's-combed, 

 and the colour varied from a deep magenta to a deep crimson. 

 Some of the plants, in which the inflorescence was most decidedly 

 paniculate-spiked, gave promise of becoming tlie parents of a 

 race of pyramidal red-flowered feathery sorts equal to the yellow 

 variety now again finding its way into cultivation. Those having 

 this peculiarity were much superior to the cock s-combed forms, 

 though they were all very desirable as conservatory plants for the 

 autumnal months. 



