HORTUS VEITCHI1 



to Mr. Griffin of South Lambeth, from which the Botanical Register largely 

 drew material for those figures and descriptions of such importance to modern 

 cultivators and historians of the genus. 



The labours of this gentleman have been commemorated by the genus Griffinia, 

 proposed by Ker in compliment to him. 



Dean Herbert was the first to cross the different species and to raise seedlings, 

 and in so doing incurred no small amount of reproach from his contemporaries 

 for tampering with Nature. 



The good Dean was likewise the first to notice the difference between the 

 seeds of the Cape Amaryllis Belladonna and those of the South American and 

 Central American species, and to demonstrate by repeated experiments that 

 those from America would not cross with those from South Africa. On these 

 grounds, but technically on the appearance of the seeds, the Dean separated the 

 species Belladonna from the rest of the Amaryllis, leaving it as the sole repre- 

 sentative of the genus, and proposed for the more numerous South American 

 species the generic term Hippeastrum, or the Knight's Star Lily, from the 

 resemblance the radiating segments of the flower bear to the stars of some of the 

 orders of knighthood. The new characters which separated the genus Amaryllis 

 from Hippeastrum were published in 1822, and first adopted in the Botanical 

 Magazine in the same year when H. puverulentum, the Bloom-leaved Knight's 

 Star Lily, was described under t. 2273. In explanation of this change of nomen- 

 clature it states, " The name Amaryllis having been given by Linnaeus originally 

 to Belladonna, with a reason assigned, it has been thought expedient to leave 

 the name Amaryllis to that plant and its congeners, and to detach the occidental 

 group (to which, as more numerous, it has been proposed to preserve the known 

 appellation) under the name Hippeastrum or Knight's Star Lily, following the 

 idea which suggested the name equestre for one of the species." 



The name Hippeastrum thus given was kept until the introduction, in 1867, 

 through our collector Pearce, from Peru, of the beautiful H. pardinum, figured in 

 the Botanical Magazine, t. 5645, and described by Sir Joseph Hooker under the 

 name of Amaryllis pardina. 



In justification Sir Joseph states, " The genus Hippeastrum, of Herbert, which 

 includes many American species of Amaryllis, differs from this latter by such slight 

 and variable characters that it cannot be regarded as of any practical value, and 

 I therefore follow Endlicher in regarding it, together with its allies Zephyranthes 

 Nerine, Vallota, as sections of the great and widely diffused and very natural 

 genus Amaryllis." This arrangement, however, did not last long, for with the 

 publication of the " Genera Plantarum," the standard work of botanical reference, 

 the Dean's genus Hippeastrum was again revived and has remained in use to the 

 present day, though Amaryllis still lingers in gardens as a name for the beautiful 

 flowers botanically Hippeastrum. Besides H. reginse and H. equestre, before 

 alluded to, the ancestry of the present race includes H. vittatum, a native of 

 Central America, the influence of which may be still traced in the long bands of 

 colour on the segments of some of even the latest hybrids (it was named vittata 

 by M. L'Heritier, " from the gaiety of its flowers, which, from their stripes, appear 

 like an object decorated with ribbands ") ; H. reticulatum from Brazil, which 

 imparted the crimson veinings and reticulations to the floral segments, and the 

 variety striatifolium, which gave the white stripes to the leaf. 



Many years later came Hippeastrum psittacinum, also from Brazil, a species 



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