HEDYCHIUM COCCINEUM. 
MONANDRIA MON OGYNIA. 
Se ee ee 
SECT. II. SCITAMINER. 
Gey. Cuar.—Anther double, naked, attached at the back to the apex of the filament; filament grooved, embracing 
the style. 
Spec. Cuar.—Spike Open, regular, flowers alternating in six rows; bractes cylindrical, biflorous; lip bilobate ; 
filament twice the length of the lip; leaves short, lanceolate-acute, mid-rib hairy below. 
Syy.—H. Coccineum, Smith in Rees’ New Cyclop. Sp. 5. 
H. Angustifolium, Pl. Corom. No. 251. 
H. Angustifolium, Bot. Reg. No. 157. 
DESCRIPTION. 
Root perennial, tuberous ; stem simple, herbaceous, 5—G feet high ; leaves bifarious, sessile, lanceolate-acute, 
from six to eight inches long, glaucous, with an ovate, smooth, pale rose-coloured stipule sheathing the stem, and 
a few scattered hairs all the length of the mid-rib, on the under side the leaves; spike 6—8 inches long; rachis 
sub-hexagonal, slightly hairy; flowers alternating in six rows; bractes cylindrical, green, biflorous, smooth, with a 
slight tuft of white hairs at the apex; inner bracte to each flower cuneate, membranous; calyx cylindrical, three- 
toothed, sheathing the tube of the corolla half its length, and scattered with white hairs; outer limb of the corolla 
of three long, linear, reflexed, tortuose segments; inner limb in three segments, two of them equal, linear, sub-elliptic 
and undulated ; the third, or lip, standing on a long contracted claw, and expanding at the apex into two equal, 
ovate lobes; filament twice the length of the lip, grooved, embracing and concealing the style; anther double, 
attached on the back, at about one-third its length, to the apex of the filament ; style rising between two short, 
blunt, germinal processes, and terminating a little beyond the anther, in a compressed, ciliated, cup-shaped stigma ; 
germen downy, three-celled. 
OBSERVATIONS. 
The first notice we derive of this fine and very distinct species of Hedychium, is from a specimen gathered by 
Dr. Francis Hamilton, (late Buchanan,) at Suembu, in the year 1802, an account of which is given by Sir J. E. Smith, 
in Rees’s New Cyclopedia, from which it appears, that it is a native of the woods of Upper Napal, where it is 
known by the name of Gunculo-Swa. This is also the plant figured in the Coromandel Plants, No. 251, under the 
name of H. angustifolium, although the description there given does not apply to the plant there figured, being 
the description of the real H. angustifolium, a very different species. The true Coccineum is also figured in the 
Bot. Reg. No. 157; and although the Editor justly observes, that he can scarcely doubt it is the Coccineum of 
Sir J. I. Smith, as described in the Cyclopzedia, yet he has been led, on the authority of the Coromandel Plants, to 
retain the specific name of Angustifolium. From him we learn, that this species was first introduced into this 
country by Sir Abraham Hume, and that the plant from which the drawing there given was taken, and the accurate 
description was made, flowered in the hot-house at Wormleybury. 
The LH. Coceineum may be readily known from all the regularly-spiked plants of the same genus with red flowers, 
by its shorter leaf, tapering directly from nearly its base to a sharp dagger-like point, and the mid-rib hairy below. 
The leaves of all the other species are much longer, and more or less inclined to a linear form. 
In Curtis’s Bot. Mag. No. 2078, a figure is given of an Hedychium under the name of Angustifolium, which 
the Editor suspects to be the variety of Coccineum mentioned by Dr. Buchanan, which Sir J. E. Smith is inclined 
to think may be a distinct species. It is highly satisfactory to find, that both ee opinions are ml founded. The 
species thus referred to has flowered, for several successive years, in the a Garden at Liverpool; and being 
specifically distinct from both Coccineum and Angustifolium, will be found figured in the present work under the name 
of H. aurantiacum. 
N.B. In our Observations on H. longifolium in the present work, (lines 9 and 10,) the references to Bot. Mag. 
2078, and Bot. Reg. fig. 157, should be transposed, our H. aurantiacum having been published under the name of 
angustifolium in the former, and not eral tLOS WOT KS. 
