HEDYCHIUM CORONARIUM. 
MONANDRIA MONOGYNIA. 
SECT. II. SCITAMINE. 
Gey. Cuar.— 
en. Cuar.—Anther double, naked, attached at the back to the apex of the filament; filament long, grooved, 
embracing the style. 
Spec. C .—Spi i imbri 
HAR.—Spike capitate, imbricate ; bractes broad-ovate, acute at the apex; tube of the corolla very long; lip 
orbicular, deeply bifid; filament shorter than the lip; leaves lanceolate. 
Syv.—Lutisu Swa, of the Nawars, or Original Natives of Napal. Smith. 
Gooruk-nadtah, also Dulala-champa of the Bengalese. Roxb. Asiat. Res. xi. 325. 
Gandsulium. Rumph. Amb. vol. v. p. 175. ¢. 69. fig. 3. 
Hedychium coronarium. Koenig. in Retz. obs. Fase. iii. 78. 
Hedychium coronarium. Willd. vol. i. p. 10. 
Hedychium coronarium. Curt. Bot. Mag. 708. 
Hedychium coronarium. Smith, Exot. Bot. tab. 107. p. 96. 
Hedychium coronarium. Roxb. Asiat. Res. xi. 325. Flor. Ind. i. 9. 
Hedychium coronarium. Loddiges’ Cab. 51. 
DESCRIPTION. 
Root perennial, tuberous; stem simple, herbaceous, from 4 to 6 feet high, pink or rose colour at the base ; 
leaves in two opposite rows, alternate, lanceolate, smooth on the upper surface and villous beneath, -clasping the 
stem, and terminating with an erect membranous stipula; spike terminal, erect; bractes large, coriaceous, closely 
imbricated, forming an ovate cone — and each containing from 4 to 6 flowers, rising in succession ; calyx tubular, 
bifid, sheathing the corolla about half the-length of the tube; tube of the corolla very long, expanding into a 
large white flower, with a double limb; outer limb in three equal linear-lanceolate segments, declined; inner limb, 
or upper lip, of two elliptical, ovate, equal, undulated, segments, opposite to each other; lower lip broad, divided at 
the apex into two elliptic, ovate lobes; filament shorter than the lip, subulate, grooved, embracing the style 
throughout its whole length; anther attached at the back to the apex of the filament, bilobate; style slender, 
flexile, projecting a little beyond the anther, with two blunt processes at the base; stigma a ciliated cup; capsule 
three-celled, three-valved, oblong-ovate ; seeds many. 
OBSERVATIONS. 
Notwithstanding the numerous species of this genus which have of late years heen discovered, the Coronarium 
still maintains its rank, as well for its beauty as for the fragrance of its large magnificent drooping flowers, which 
induced Dr. Roxburgh, in his Flora Indica, to state that it was the most charming of all the plants of this 
natural order he had yet met with. “It is a native of various parts of Bengal and the neighbouring provinces ; 
flowers during the rains, and the seeds ripen in the early part of the cool season.” Flor. Ind. p. 9. “ It is also 
very generally cultivated for ornament; the Malay women decorate their heads with the flowers, which they use 
also emblematically, according to the oriental manners, sending them to any young man whom they wish to 
reproach with inconstancy in love, perhaps because the duration of such flowers is so very transient.” Sir J. E. Smith, 
in Rees’ Cyclop. The same author observes, that Dr. Buchanan found this plant, or at least a pale yellowish 
variety of it, wild about the borders of fields among the elevated mountains of Upper Nepal. Ibid. It may, 
however, be doubted whether the yellow variety be not a different species, which will be found figured in this 
? 
