ADDISONIA 13 
(Plate 7) 
COLUMNEA GLORIOSA 
Scarlet Columnea 
Native of Costa Rica 
Family GESNERIACEAR GESNERIA Family 
Columnea gloriosa T. A. Sprague, Bot. Mag. pl. 8378. 1911. 
An epiphytic herbaceous perennial, clothed with a copious 
spreading pubescence which is usually colored, giving the plant a 
reddish hue, and with pendent or ne stems and large axillary 
scneiet flowers. The stems are up to two feet long and produce 
branches near the base. The spreading opposite leaves, on petioles 
less than one eighth of an inch long, are fleshy, and measure up to 
one and a quarter inches long and two thirds of an inch wide, rarely 
larger; they are ovate, with unequal sides, usually rounded or some- 
what heart-shaped at the base, acute at the apex, revolute on the 
margins, dark green above, dull purple beneath, with three or four 
nerves on each side. ‘The flowers are single and erect in the axils 
of the leaves, and are borne on stout often curved pedicels up to 
three quarters of an inch long. The five sepals are slightly united 
below, elliptic to ovate, spreading, fleshy, one quarter to one half 
of an inch long, acute, with revolute margins. ‘The corolla, which 
is crimson in i 
S bud, is rather sparingly covered with long hairs on 
the outside; it is two or three inches long, with a Bening ise en- 
largement on the back of the tube near the base. The corolla- 
tube, which is yellow on the under side, is about ‘ives quarters of 
an inch long. The limb of the corolla is two-lipped, the lower 
lip about one inch long, narrow, oblong, obtuse or acutish, 
entire, the upper lip arched, one and a half to two inches long, 
about one and a half inches wide, spreading, joursobed, with the 
lobes obtuse, the lateral ones larger. There are four stamens, 
which are shorter than the upper lip, with the filaments curved at 
th whi 
e 
and has a two-lobed stigma. The “app, which is about 
half an inch in diameter, is depressed-globose and appressed- 
pubescent. 
This is perhaps the handsomest species of Coumnea, with its 
glorious scarlet flowers. Like many other members of this genus 
it grows on trunks of trees in tropical woods, where the humidity 
is great, and for this reason its successful cultivation demands a 
tropical house well shaded from the direct rays of the sun. The 
stems creep over the bark, the branches pendent. It is therefore 
