Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



EMBOTHRIUM COCCINEUM. -And chief among the 

 toolittle-known shrubs is the truly magnificent Chilian 

 " Fire-Bush," Embothrium coccineum, which in early 

 May days breaks all along its stems into clusters of 

 flame-like blossoms. At its best twenty to thirty feet 

 high, and then tree rather than shrub, it is a sight never 

 to be forgotten, so brilliant is the orange-scarlet of the 

 long thin flowers, each on a scarlet stalk. Forty or more 

 of these blossoms are gathered into clusters that in form 

 are reminiscent of a bottle brush, and at the outset of 

 brilliancy the buds are just narrow, scarlet closed tubes, 

 swollen at the tip and about an inch and a half in length. 

 As they mature the four petals split from the tip down 

 half their length, and coil sharply backwards, and the 

 scarlet column from an orange ovary protrudes far 

 beyond them. The stamens are very short and curiously 

 placed, for they are sunk in little hollows at the tips of 

 the petals (hence the swollen end of the bud), and hence, 

 too, the shrub's name em, in, and bothrion, a little 

 pit. The coiling back of the upper p. rt of the petals, of 

 course, exposes them and allows for he dispersal of the 

 pollen. 



For a month or more it is indeed . ' Fire-Bush," the 

 dark shining green leaves, each a long narrow oval with 

 plain margins, forming a fitting b\ckground for the 

 floral brilliance. Set alone in the centre of a green lawn 



or set, as it was once observed, ringed round with fruit 



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