352 THE PITCHEK-PLANT FAMILY. 



is strikingly beautiful, consisting of large, light, loose, and pendulous 

 corymbs, with the flowers hanging like beads at the ends of the 

 slender and repeatedly-divided peduncles. The male flowers are 

 composed of four sepals, two of them smaller than the others, with a 

 dense tuft of club-shaped yellow stamens in the centre ; the females 

 consist of five or more, enclosing three large, two-lobed and sessile 

 stigmas, of a rich gold colour, and surmounting a large triangular 

 ovary of the same satiny lustre as the blossoms, and with its edges 

 extended into wings. The fruit is a three-celled and many-seeded 

 capsule, the wings at the angles persistent and enlarged. These 

 particulars shew the affinity of the Begonias to be chiefly with the 

 Cucurbitacese, which family they also agree with in their splendid 

 illustrations of unisexual flowers. In their native countries, the 

 affinity is further illustrated by certain species which scramble up 

 the trees. 



The finest kinds met with in hothouses are the Begonia argyrostigma, 

 the leaves of which appear strewn with seed-pearl, like those of the 

 Sonerila ; the Begonia ciliaris, which has them adorned on the under 

 surface with red fringes, that extend even to the petioles ; and the 

 Begonia Rex, in which the leaves are spanned by broad and shining 

 silvery arches. Besides these, there are the parrifolia, zebrina, picta, 

 and splendida, the yellowish-flowered xanthina and argentea^ and the 

 palmate-leaved ricinifolia. 



ex.— THE PITCHER-PLANT FAMILY. NepenthdcecB. 



There are a few plants in the world of such extraordinary confor- 

 mation that they cannot be associated with any others, and stand as 

 little families by themselves. Such is the case with the ten or twenty 

 species of Nepenthes, or pitcher-plant, inhabitants of the swamps of 

 China and the East Indies, and represented in our hothouses by the 

 Nepenthes distillatoria. The stems of this wonderful plant are long, 

 slender, branched, scrambling by the aid of the branches of trees or 

 other props to the height of three or four yards above the ground, 

 and provided with abundance of green leaves, every one of which 

 bears a little pitcher at the extremity. The leaf, pitcher included, is, 

 in its entire length, something over a foot. It commences as a round 

 and cord-like stalk, three to four inches long, and generally twisted 

 and curled like a tendril. Then, for four or five inches, it is broad 



