LOBELIA FEAYANA. 

 DR. FEAY'S LOBELIA. 



NATURAL ORDER, LOBELIACE/E. 



Lobelia Feayana, Gray.— Slender, a span high, diffusely branched from the base, glabrous 

 throughout: leaves small (a quarter to half an inch long), repand-detinculate, roundish 

 or obovate, or the small uppermost spatulate or lanceolate and sessile ; raceme loosely four 

 to ten flowered ; pedicels as long as the flower, twice or thrice the length of the subulate 

 bract: calyx tube and capsule broadly obconical ; the latter two-thirds inferior, its free 

 apex about the length of its subulate calyx lobes ; these only half the length of the tube of 

 the bright blue corolla : anthers glabrous (except the bearded tips of the shorter ones) : 

 seeds oblong, with a rough cellular coat. (Grafs Synoptical Flora of N'orth America.) 



HEN the lover of flowers who is not a botanist in the 

 strict sense of the term, hears a botanical name men- 

 tioned for the first time, he is very likely to ask what is its Eng- 

 lish or common one ? It is not that botanical names are really 

 more difficult to remember than others, but that a sound is not 

 easily retained while unfamiliar. When once a botanical name 

 enters into common language, no one ever thinks of it as diffi- 

 cult. Thus in the present case there is, stricdy speaking, no 

 English name, but the botanical name Lobelia has become so 

 familiar to all, that it has been received into every-day languao-e, 

 and no one now thinks it a name hard to remember. The little 

 dwarf Lobelia of our gardens — the Lobelia erintis from the Cape 

 of Good Hope — has made the genus well known to most of us. 

 The name itself is rather an old one, having been established by 

 Plumier, who, as Milne tells us, was "an ingenious Frenchman, 

 noted for his discoveries among American plants." These works 

 on American plants were published in Paris, at various times 

 between 1693 and 171 3. Lobel, after whom he named the 

 genus, flourished nearly a century before, and was an author of 



(•37) 



