TECOMA RADICANS. 

 TRUMPET-FLOWER. 



NATURAL ORDER, BIGNONIACE.^. 



Tecoma RADICANS, Jussieu. — Climbing by stem rootlets, leaves unequally pinnate, leaflets 

 four or five pairs, ovate, acuminate, dentate-serrate, puberulent beneath along the veins ; 

 corymbs terminal ; corolla tube thrice longer than the calyx ; stamens included. (Wood's 

 Class-Book of Botany. See also Grav's Ma^tual of the Botany of the N'orthci-n United 

 States, and Chapman's Floj-a of the Scuthern United States.) 



HE Trumpet-flower, Trumpet-vine, or Trumpet-creeper, 

 as it is variously called, is among the best known of our 

 wild flowers. There are but few who have not seen it, and yet 

 how very little is known of the many points of interest it 

 possesses. 



In the times just preceding Touk fort, when botany as a 

 system was in a transition state, it was regarded as a sort of 

 Jasmine. Tournefort uses the name of Bignonia, and this 

 was adopted by Linnaeus, in his " Genera Flantarum," from 

 which modern botany dates. A. L. De Jussieu, who, in 1 789, 

 issued a Genera Plantarum "according to natural orders," and is 

 regarded as one of the great fathers of the modern natural 

 system, as distinguished from the sexual system of Linnzeus, 

 was the first to separate it from Bignonia, giving it the name of 

 Tecoma; abbreviating, as he tells us, the Mexican name of "Teco- 

 maxoehid," which according to the Spanish writer, Hernandez, is 

 the name given there to some species of the genus. This hard 

 word io really two in the Mexican language, and means " Pitcher- 

 flower," the pitcher being of a peculiar shape, the commentators 

 tell us, and "used in war." But it is now believed that the Aztec 

 " Tecomaxochitl" referred to by Hernandez, is a plant of the 



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