380 
GLEANINGS AND ORIGINAL MEMORANDA. 
Centrosolenia glabra. Bentham. A hothouse plant from La Guayra, with pale yellow 
frmged (lowers. 
Belongs to Gesnerads. Introduced at Kew. Flowers in autumn. 
A plant imported through Mr. Wagoner, a German collector. It forms a stove plant, and keeps up a succession of 
flowers with us through the autumnal and early winter months. We submitted the figure to Mr. Bentham for 
I. is opinion, as he had paid much attention to the family to which it belongs, and has published the result of his 
observation! in the 5th volume of the < London Journal of Botany,' p. 357, &c. That gentleman considers the plant as 
clearly constituting a second species of his new genus Centrosolenia (1. c, p. 362). Decaisne's Trichanthe, since published, 
probably in the * Revue Horticole,' for 1848, he believes to be identical with Centrosolenia. If so, it must give place to the 
latter name, which appeared in 1846, and consequently lias the right of priority. An erect plant, with a succulent reddish- 
brown, terete stem, a foot or more high. Leaves succulent, smooth, the lower ones six to eight inches long, opposite ; each 
pair singularly unequal in size, one being small, lanceolate, and acuminate ; the other large, ovate, tapering at the base into a 
stout petiole, and acuminate at the apex ; the margin serrated. Corolla tubular, enlarged upwards, projected below into a 
short obtuse spur, the whole tube about an inch and a half long, clothed outside with a short thin down, the limb divided 
into five broad short lobes, of which the three lower are fringed with Ion; thread-like lacinise ; inside of the corolla 
smooth. Annular disc nearly obsolete, with a large posterior gland. (Mr. Fitch represents two glands, — one anterior, 
the other posterior, and of nearly equal size.) Ovary wholly superior, with two lamelliform, bipartite, parietal placentae. 
Style smooth, thick, somewhat clavate, with the stigmatic extremity rarely emarginate. — Botanical Magazine, t. 4552. 
241. Geranium Thunbergii. Siebolrf. A prostrate annual, with small purple flowers. Native 
of Japan, (Fig. 115.) 
An annual, with hairy prostrate stems ; leaves long-stalked, with long spreading hairs, rather fleshy, 5-lobed, flat, 
the lower lobes much the smallest, the others 3-lobed, and slightly serrate. Peduncles 2 -flowered, longer than the leaves. 
Petals deep purple, undivided, obovate, larger than the mucronate sepals. Probably the G. pal ust re of Thunberg. A 
mere weed. 
242. EcjunocacttjsVisnaga. Hooker, 
(alius? E. ingens Zuccarini.) A noble 
plant 
from Mexico, belonging 
to the 
Natural Order of Indian Tigs (Cactaceee). 
Flowers bright yellow, produced at Kew. 
Of this singular species, Sir William Hooker 
gives the following account : — u One of the most 
remarkable plants in the Cactus-house of the 
Royal Gardens of Kew, and that which chiefly 
attracts the attention of strangers, is the subject 
of the present plate. It bears the name of Vis- 
naga with us ( Visnaga means a tooth-pick among 
the Mexican settlers, and the plant is so called 
because that little instrument is commonly made 
of its spines), and under that name, believing it 
to be a new species, we had described it, and it 
was figured in the Illustrated News for 1846. I 
had, at one time, been disposed to refer the species 
to the Echinocacius ingens, of which a brief and 
most unsatisfactory character is drawn up by 
Pfeiffer (for Zuccarini does not appear to have 
noticed it) from some c dried flowers,' and a living 
specimen * six inches high ; f but it can scarcely 
be that, for the angles of the plant are said to 
be eight, the aculei nine in a cluster, and the 
petals obtuse. Our plate represents a very 
diminished figure of a specimen, unfortunately 
no longer existing, but which, in 1846, was an 
inmate of our Cactus-house, and apparently in 
high health and vigour. 
Its height was nine feet, and it measured nine feet and a half in circumference, its weight a ton. 
After a year of apparent health and vigour, it exhibited symptoms of internal injury. The inside became a putrid mass, 
