HEDYCHIUM VILLOSUM. 
MONANDRIA MONOGYNIA. 
SH Pep fi coral ah 10 dice 
SECT. IT. SCITAMINER; 
GEN. Cuar.—Anther double, naked, attached at the back to the apex of the filament; filament long, grooved, 
embracing the style. 
SprEc. Cuar.—Spike erect; flowers irregular; bractes involute, tubular, villous; filament twice the length of 
the lip; anther small, heart-shaped, embracing the style. 
Syy.—Hedychium villosum. Roxb. Flor. Ind. vol. i. p- 12. 
Hedychium villosum, spica cylindrica, villosa, elongata, dense obsita fasciculis valde approximatis, trifloris, 
nunc conjugatis; bracteis ovalibus deciduis ; calyce tubi longi corolle dimidium superante ; labello 
subsellili profunde bifido, laciniis linearibus ;_ filamento longissimo, anthera minuta, sagittata ; 
foliis oblongis, valde acuminatis, Wallich, in MS. 
DESCRIPTION. 
Root perennial, fleshy, stoloniferous, running horizontally near the surface of the earth, and sending down 
long cordate fibres; stem herbaceous, erect, from 6 to 8 feet high, invested in the sheathing of the leaves, 
and of a ferruginous red at the base; leaves broad-lanceolate, downy on the mid-rib and margin, ending in 
a filiform twisted point, alternate, short-petioled, with a ligulated stipule or ocrea of about an inch in length, 
embracing the stem, and, as well as the margins of the sheathing, of a dusky red, slightly covered with 
a tawny down; spike terminal, erect, loose, spreading from the rachis, from 6 to 10 inches long; rachis 
angular and villous; flowers in irregular fascicles, but alternating in upright rows ; flowering bractes ovate, 
involute, apparently tubular, villous, 2—3 florous; inner bractes one to each flower, ovate, membranaceous ; 
calyx cylindrical, obliquely trifid, villous; tube of the corolla long, slender, slightly villous; outer limb in 
' three equal, linear, twisted pendulous segments of a yellowish green colour; inner limb of three segments, 
the two lateral ones standing at right angles with the tube of the corolla, long, narrow, linear, broader 
and bifid at the apex, pure white; lip standing on a short concave claw, divided nearly to the base into 
two oblong-ovate spreading lobes, undulate and declined or twisted at the apex; filament twice the length 
of the lip, bright scarlet; anther cordate, compressed, with a ligature running across the two lobes as if to 
bind them together; style filiform, pellucid, white, supported at the base by two subulate processes ; stigma 
concave, green, slightly ciliated. 
OBSERVATIONS. 
A native of the mountains north-east of Bengal, from whence it was sent in 1815, by Mr. Matthew 
Robert Smith, Collector for the Botanic Garden at Calcutta, to Dr. Wallich, to whom we are indebted, at 
the Botanic Garden at Liverpool, for the plant from which the present drawing was made, together with 
a characteristically engraved figure of it, although on a diminished scale. 
Dr. Wallich has also communicated another species under the name of Hedychium tenuiflorum, which resembles 
the present, as well in the deep-lobed, undulated lip, as in the small sagittate anther, but which he thinks 
d isti from Villosum; to which, as far as our observations have extended, 
very doubtful, and perhaps not distinct 5 ' 
the small cordate or sagittate anther is peculiar. 
