MECONOPSIS. 
having smaller flowers of duller colour, carried as in the last, but one 
to a central scape, and with a few more on shorter lateral ones of some 
4or 5inches. There is nothing primuline, as might have been hoped, 
in the colour of the diminished nodding flowers, which are of dim violet- 
purple. The essential quality of the plant, however, is that its stigma 
is bi-lobed, with two epaulette-like warts suggesting the rudiments 
of a disk. But between M. Henrici and M. lancifolia the habit 
(central-stemmed or with many solitary scapes from the base) 
fluctuates exactly as in M. racemosa. 
iM. napaulensis, D.C., 1824, cannot definitely be separated from 
M. Wailichit, except by the colour of its flowers, which are of sad and 
dusky purple. But, as every gardener knows to his cost, it is pre- 
cisely to such dim and dusky purples that M. Wallichii itself too 
frequently varies, so that the conclusion must be that I. napaulensis 
is not a species that can definitely and soundly be separated, but had 
better return to the former status awarded it by Hooker in the Bot. 
Mag., T. 6760, as MW. Wallichii fusco-purpurea—a plant we need have 
no place for, then, in the garden: though all this group has its value 
in that their magnificent rosette of foliage lasts immortal through the 
winter. All other forms of this name are later and invalid, applying 
to M. paniculata, q.v., while this M. napaulensis of the Pflanzenreich 
is now to be transferred to M. robusta. 
M. Oliviert can only be distinguished by its capsule from M. cheli- 
denifolia. For in the present species the stigma sits tight on the 
ripened pod, whereas in M. chelidonifolia the pod is more high-shoul- 
dered, and the stigma, after the usual fashion of the race, retains 
its position on a little column atop. Both species present a close 
resemblance to some glorified magnified version of the Great Celan- 
dine, though it is possible that the flowers of M. Olivieri may prove 
purple. 
M. paniculata is also 1M. “ nepalensis,’”’ as well as itself, in gardens 
and catalogues, besides often covering the true WM. robusta, q.v. The 
confusion arose originally through the reduction, by Don, of some 
extreme forms of this plant, to the wholly different IM. napaulensis, 
DC., ¢.v. It is a species of bitterly poisonous nature, and has the 
stature, needs and splendour of M. Wallichit, lacking, however, the 
long russet fur, and with the leaves not feathered into such pictur- 
esque deep lobes, but merely, as a rule, rownded inio a few bays. 
As soon as it has sent up its towerimg spire of pendent yellow 
flowers in August (to match with the blue ones of M. Wallichii), the 
- whole plant dies, and the seeding stem develops into a sere rocket- 
stick, wrapped about in the wisps of dead leaves. It inhabits Sikkim, 
478 
