HEDYCHIUM GLAUCUM. 
MONANDRIA MONOGYNIA. 
SECT. II. SCITAMINIE. 
Gey. Cuar.—Anther double, embracing the style, naked; filament long, slender, attached to the back of the 
anther ; capsule three-celled; seeds numerous. 
Srxc. Cuar.—Filament twice the length of the lip; spike slender; flowers alternating by threes; bractes one- 
flowered; lip deeply bifid, segments acute ; leaves lanceolate-acute, equilateral. 
DESCRIPTION. 
Roots perennial, tuberous, horizontal, jointed; stems erect, smooth, 3—4 feet high ; leaves alternate, 
lanceolate-acute, equilateral, intire, smooth on both sides, glaucous below ; petioles short, extending upwards in a 
red stipule or ochrea; flowers alternating; spike slightly declined at the base; Rachis slender; outer bractes 
cylindrical, slender, smooth, except a small tuft of hairs at the apex, embracing the tube of the corolla; inner bracte 
pellucid; corolla with a double limb; outer limb in three equal long linear segments, reflexed; inner limb in three 
segments ; the two lateral ones lanceolate-obtuse; equal, intire, expanding; the lower one, or lip, on a short 
claw, ovate, but deeply divided at the apex; segments acute; filament twice the length of the lip, the upper 
part and anther red; style slender, supported at the base by two projecting processes, and embraced by the groove 
of the filament and anther; stigma funnel-shaped, compressed, ciliated ; flowers white. 
OBSERVATIONS. 
If the Hedychium gracile of Roxburgh, (Flora Indica, vol. I. p. 12.) be the Hedychium gracile of the 
plants of the Coast of Coromandel, fig. 251, it is a very different plant from that which is now figured, and 
to which we have therefore given the name of glaucum.—In the gracile, the filament is not longer than the inner 
limb of the corolla; in the glaucum, it is twice the length. In the former, the leaf is lanceolate-obtuse, or broader 
towards the point; in the latter, it is lanceolate-acute, or broader towards the base; in the former, it is 
represented as inzequilateral ; in the latter, it is equilateral ; diversities too striking to permit us to consider them as 
the same species. 
Iam indebted to Dr. Wallich, for a dried specimen of a plant agreeing both in the shortness of its filament 
and the form of the leaf, as well as in the lip of the corolla, with the outline in Coromandel Plants, and which 
I conceive to be the gracile figured in that work. 
The present small but elegant species flowered in Lord Milton’s Conservatory, in October, 1822; and was 
sent by Mr. Cooper, his Lordship’s Botanical Gardener, to the Botanic Garden in Liverpool. 
