ACHIMENES AND OTHER GESNEEACEOUS PLANTS. 7 



from Sania Martha. It is a perennial herbaceous plant, and has 

 bloomed beautifully in the greenhouse. The stems are erect, simple 

 or branched, two feet high. The flowers are produced in lowj; ter- 

 minal racemes. Each blossom is an inch long, tube formed with a 

 large capped end. They are of a rich deep scarlet, very bright and 

 showy. No doubt it will make a beautiful plant for the flower 

 parden during summer, forming highly ornamental masses in beds. 

 Figured in Bot. Mag., p. 4271. 



SwAiNsoNXA Greyana — Captain Grey's Swainsonia. 



Fabacece. DiadeJphia Decandria . 



From New Holland, and is a very showy half herbaceous plant, 

 sent to the Horticultural Society, in whose garden at Chiswick it has 

 bloomed. The flowers are produced in long racemes very profusely, 

 they are of a rosy-purple colour, with a white eye. It blooms during 

 the summer and autumn in the greenhouse. Fig. in Bot. Reg., p. 66. 



ACHIMENES AND OTHER GESNERACEOUS PLANTS. 



GENERAL TREATMENT. 

 BY WILLIAM CHITTY, STAMFORD-HILL. 



During the past summer I was visited by a Yorkshire reader of your 

 Miigazine, who was so much pleased with the appearance of some of 

 my Achimenes and other Gesneraceous plants as to suggest it might 

 be useful if I would transmit to you, for insertion in the Cabinet, an 

 account of the mode of culture adopted, and although much excellent 

 information has already been communicated in your own and other 

 publications on this subject, especially, I may mention, some very 

 valuable remarks by a neighbour of mine in the early part of the 

 present year (vol. xiv., p. 118), yet as my mode of treatment of these 

 plants is somewhat difterent, and as I flatter myself I am tolerably 

 successful in their management, T readily assent to the suggestion, 

 and beg you to permit me to contribute my mite of information to the 

 general fund. 



There is no tribe of plants with which I am acquainted so well 

 calculated for permanent decoration in the greenhouse throughout the 

 summer months, as the different species and varieties of Sinningia, 

 Gloxinia, Achimenes, and the summer-flowering kinds of Gesneria. 

 I say, permanent decoration, because if previously to their introduc- 

 tion into the greenhouse (say about the last week in May or early in 

 June) they have received proper treatment, each individual plant will 

 invariably continue to flower from the time of such introduction until 

 the end of September or beginning of October. To Gloxinias parti- 

 cularly this remark applies ; and no plants can make a more charm- 

 ing display than they do when well furnished with their rich pubes- 

 cent foliage, and a good proportion of beautiful flowers ; these inter- 

 mixed with the shining-leaved Sinningia, ornamented with its 

 curiously spotted or self-coloured flowers, and the very distinct and 



