ADDISONIA 4 
(Plate 44) 
DIRCAEA MAGNIFICA 
Magnificent Gesneria 
Native of Brazil 
Family GESNERIACEAE GESNERIA Family 
Gesneria magnifica Otto & Dietr. Allg. Gartenz. 1: 265. 1833. 
Gesneria bulbosa Hook. Bot. Mag. pl. 3886. 1842. 
Dircaea magnifica Decaisne, Rev. Hort. III. 2: 466. 1848. 
A perennial herb, finely puberulent throughout, with a simple 
leafy stem a foot or more in height, growing from a globoid or oval 
slightly annulate tuber, and bearing its flowers two to seven together 
in simple short- peduncled axillary cymes which in well- -developed 
plants form together a loose interrupted thyrse. The stem is 
mostly stout but weak, its internodes less than half the length of 
the leaves, which are opposite, those of each pair being eters’ 
and short-petioled; the blades are two to five inches long and a half 
to two thirds as broad, ovate, acutish, cordate, irregularly APD 
with both teeth and sinuses either acutish or obtusish, the margins 
densely and shortly ciliate with white hairs, thin, green and grayish- 
hairy on aces, veiny, the veins slender, reddish the sec- 
ondaries alternate or subopposite, the branches somewhat anasto- 
mosing. The peduncles are subtended by reduced sessile or clasp- 
ing leaves, the upper by mere bracts. The pedicels are mostly 
longer than the peduncles, but sce 6 girenged the flowers, slender, 
slightly recurved. The calyx-tube is twice as broad as long, or 
eer the five subequal teeth itiedrved over the gibbosity of the 
a, lance-linear, four or five times as long as broad, acute. The 
with an extreme breadth of an inch when flattened out, lightly 
recurved ; the tube is infundibular, witha basal swelling that is circular 
— greater posteriorly, and an abrupt short constriction, gradually 
expanding upward into the tube proper, which comprises half the 
total Pes dew the lower lip is er ah a the lobes very short and 
broad, the anterior depressed, purplish on the inner surface, the 
lateral subauriculate, mostly reflexed in age; the upper lip, compris- 
ing a third of the corolla-length, is subauriculate at the base, broad- 
mere upward, nearly straight, the summit rounded and slightly 
tched. e stamens are adnate to the base of the corolla, only 
rs eee vestige of the fifth ee present; ~ pubescent filaments 
almost equal the corolla, and are incurved at the tip, the anthers 
forming an eight-rayed circular body under ri hooded summit of 
the upper lip. The pistil is hairy, the ovary conic, the style equal- 
ing or slightly exceeding the upper lip, and the stigma capitate, two- 
