111. (kwotii us I'.w'irxosus. Torn v/ t 1 Gray. A hardy Californian bush, with bright blue 
flowery belonging to the order of Rhamnads. Flowers in June and July. (Fig. 50.) 
An evergreen bush, covered with coarse hair and resinous 
of branches, 
tubercles, in a wild state forming a compact 
in cultivation growing longer and weaker. Leaves small, deep 
green, narrow-oblong, obtuse, with a single mid-rib, and numer- 
ous lateral veins, covered with down on the under side. Flowers 
in small roundish terminal stalked heads, bright blue as in 
C. azureus. — Journ. Hort. Soc. 
This has now been ascertained to be capable of bearing our 
London winters without protection. But in places exposed to 
the sun it suffers from frost much more than under a north 
wall or at the back of rock-work. Very pretty. 
112. CexVXothxjs rigidus. Nuttall. A hardy 
evergreen purple-flowered Californian bush, belonging 
to the Natural Order of Rhamnads, Introduced by 
the Horticultural Society. (Fig. 51.) 
A stiff branching dark green evergreen bush ; said to grow 
4 feet high when wild. Young branches downy. Leaves 
small, truncate, spiny-toothed, subsessile, very shining and 
smooth on the upper side ; on the under pale and netted. This 
network is produced by numerous short branching 5 veins, in 
the interspaces between which are deep pits, reaching half 
through the parenchym, and each closed up by a dense ring 
of white converging hairs. Such pits are placed pretty gene- 
rally in a double row between each of the principal lateral veins. 
The flowers appear in small clusters or umbels at the end of 
very short spurs. They are deep purplish violet, not blue, 
and less showy than those of C. dentatus or C. papillosus. 
The species seems to be even more hardy than the two last- 
named sorts, for it has borne the winter uninjured and unpro- 
tected both in sunny and in northern aspects ; and, in fact, the 
specimens left unprotected are quite as healthy as those left 
under glass ail the winter. The only blossoms that have yet 
appeared were in a greenhouse. It seems as if, in the open 
air, the shrub would prove an autumnal flowerer. — Jaum. 
Hort. Soc, vol. v. 
113. DlPTER^CANTHXJS SPECTABILIS. Hooker. A 
very fine herbaceous Acanthad from Peru, with deep 
purple blue flowers of large size. It requires a warm 
green-house, or stove. Mowers in August. Intro- 
duced by Messrs. Veitch and Son. (Fig. 52.) 
Sir W. Hooker states this to be unquestionably the largest 
flowered plant of the genus, if not of the order. It grows 2 
feet or more high, much branched, and erect. Leaves nearly 
sessile, ovate, acuminate, ciliated, slightly pubescent on the 
surface, rather strongly veined and reticulated. Flowers sessile 
or very nearly so, two together from the axils of the upper 
leaves, large, very showy ; more than two inches across. Calyx 
quite without bracts, deeply cut into 5 erect, subulate lobes, 
much shorter than the funnel-shaped curved tube of the corolla. 
The limb of the latter very large, purple-blue, veined, the fi 
lobes rounded, spreading, crenate, and somewhat waved at 
the margins. This is found to succeed in a temperature inter- 
