HELLENIA. 
“The name of Hellenia was first proposed by Retzius in honour of Professor Hellenius, of Abo, 
and applied to designate the plant now called Costus speciosus, which had before been named by Keenig 
Banksia speciosa, and which Retzius had before intended to name Swartzia ; but found that two genera 
had already been named, by different persons, after the eminent Botanist to whom that appellation alludes. 
Wildenow being aware that this plant was the Costus speciosus, abolished the name of Hellenia, as applied 
to it, but gave the same name to another tribe of Monandrian Plants, the languas of Koenig; which 
Retzius had before, in his sixth fasiculus, named Heritiera, that appellation having also been pre-occupied.” 
Note in Trans. Linn. Soc. vol. viii. p. 344. 
This group of plants not appearing, from the descriptions of Retzius, to be sufficiently distinguishable 
from Alpinia, we deemed it expedient on the occasion above referred to, to include them in that genus, 
a decision which has been confirmed by Sir J. E. Smith, who has inserted them in his species of Alpinia 
in his dissertation in Rees’s Cyclop. under the names of A. alba, A. chinensis, and A. aquatica. 
The only certain authority that then remained for the genus Hellenia was the Allughas of Linneus, 
(Zeylan. 207.) the genus of which is described by Mr. Brown, “ filamentun lineare, ultra antheram, marginalem 
productum, lobulo brevissimo, retundato, integro vel bilobo.” Prodromus Fl. Holl. 308, and by Sir J. E. Smith as 
distinguished by “a very short, rounded, terminal appendage.” This plant has since produced its flowers in 
the Botanic Garden at Liverpool, and a figure of it is given in this work; from which it will appear, 
that the filament does not catend heyond the anther, but terminates without a crest or other appendage, and 
consequently that it cannot be made the type of a new genus which is proposed to be founded on the 
filament being extended beyond the anther either in a simple lobe, or a bifid form. 
Another plant has however since been figured in the Bot. Reg. (No. 1037) under the name of 
Hellenia cwrulea, with a doubt “whether there be not more species than one in New Holland referable to 
the genus Hellenia.” This plant has also since flowered in the Botanic Garden at Liverpool, and from 
the observations we have been enabled to make upon it, we find it not only entirely different from the 
Hellenia ceerulea of Mr. Brown, but a very distinct and beautiful (though small) species of Alpinia. In this 
examination our attention was chiefly directed to the character of the genus, in which we found that the 
filament does not extend beyond the anther, but terminates, like every other correct species of Alpinia, with 
that organ, for which reason we have described it as “filament short, erect, thick, supporting the anther at 
the upper part and not extending beyond it; anther in two lunate lobes receiving the style between them, 
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the stigma projecting a little beyond them.” It was our intention to have given a figure of this plant in 
the present work under the name of Alpinia pulchella, but circumstances have prevented our accomplishing 
this purpose. Jf then we suspend our opinion until we receive further information respecting the three species 
of the Languas of Retz. at present arranged under Alpinia, and admit the Allughas and the plant figured 
in the Bot. Reg. as Hellenia coerulea to be also of that genus, we shall have no plant on which to found 
the genus Hellenia, as far as my information extends, except that figured in this work, which I conceive to 
be the species described by Mr. Brown in his Prodromus Nov. Holl. 
