458 Floriculiural and Botanical Notices. 



red streak down the centre. Cultivated for several years 

 at Kew, where it flowers in March and April. 



The many species and varieties of the Cactea, increasing 

 every day by importation from foreign habitats and from 

 multiplication from seeds, hybridizing and the like, render 

 the study of them more and more diflicult, and nothing but 

 good figures can assist the student in unravelling the intri- 

 cacies of such a diverse group, and though diverse, yet 

 passing from one into the other by minute characters. 



A fragrant, rather large white-flowering (turning to rose 

 color on age) herbaceous plant, with pinnatifid leaves, and 

 a stem branched from the root, rather pretty, we should 

 think, is depicted on the 4116 plate as Chabrse^a runcinata, 

 named by De Candolle in compliment to Chabrey of Gene- 

 va, author of " Omniiim Stirpium Sciographia, 1666." 

 Dr. Hooker feels satisfied that it is Leucherz« runcinata of 

 Dr. Gillies, and hardly distinct from that genus, though 

 placed in Chabrae^a by the lamented De Candolle. A native 

 of the Andes, Chili. 



On the 4117 plate is a fine herbaceous plant, tuberous 

 rooted, native of South Africa, whose reddish-purple flow*- 

 ers remind us of Lophospermum erubescens, though to- 

 tally unlike in habit and character. Its root is large, soli- 

 tary and globose, from the top of which, elevated above the 

 ground, is produced a stem, soon dividing into stout, succu- 

 lent branches, bearing opposite leaves; its showy flowers 

 in the leaf- axils. It is Pterodiscus speciosus Hooker: a 

 stove plant, flowering at Knomsley in May, 1844; and cer- 

 tainly, we should think, very desirable. 



New species of Brngsmans/a have been known and dis- 

 persed under the names B. parviflora and B. florii)unda, 

 which in fact have nothing to do with that genus, and be- 

 long, indeed, to a showy shrub, so botanical ly rare, that it 

 was known only to Ruiz and Pavon, who called it, in 

 compliment to Don George Juan and Don Antonio Ulloa, 

 (two distinguished Spaniards, sent in Condamine to South 

 America, to measure a degree of the meridian,) JuanuUoa 

 parasitica Flora Peruviana^ 2. p. 47, tab. 185. It is beau- 

 tifully figured on the 4118 plate of this present number. 

 Notwithstanding it is parasitic, or rather an epiphyte, 

 growing naturally upon the trunks of trees, in woods in 

 Peru, it flourishes freely, planted in earth and kept moist as 

 a stove plant, flowering, at least at Kew, in the summer 



