HEDYCHIUM ANGUSTIFOLIUM. 
MONANDRIA MONOGYNIA. 
ee ee ee 
SECT. II. SCITAMINER. 
Gry. Cuar.—Anther double, naked, attached at the back to the apex of the filament; filament grooved, embracing 
the style; stigma a ciliated cup; capsule three-celled. 
Srec. Cuar.—Spike open, regular, flowers in threes, alternating into six rows; bractes biflorous ; lip deeply divided 
into two equal, obtuse segments ; leaves sessile, alternate, distich, linear-lanceolate, ending in a 
filiform point, smooth on both sides. 
Syy.—Hedychium angustifolium, Roxb. Flor. Ind. vy. i. p. 11. Corom. Pl. No. 254, (exclusa figura.) 
DESCRIPTION. 
Root tuberous, running horizontally, perennial; stem herbaceous, erect, 5—G6 feet high ; leaves bifarious, sessile, 
alternate, linear-lanceolate-acute, 15—18 inches long, 1} broad, with a filiform, twisted, slightly hairy point, dark 
green above, glaucous beneath, smooth on both sides, terminating in a short, ligulated, obtuse, rose-coloured stipule, 
or ocrea ; spike terminal, declined, hairy, 6-12 inches long ; flowers in whorls of threes, alternating on the rachis, 
and forming six distinct upright rows ; outer bractes cylindrical, sea-green, smooth, with a few scattered hairs at the 
point; inner bractes membranous, bifid, with a tuft of hair at the points; calyx superior, sheathing the tube of the 
corolla its whole length, three-toothed; outer limb of corolla three linear, equal, reflexed, tortuose segments; inner 
limb of three segments, the two lateral ones equal, ovate, elliptic, the lower one or lip expanding into two deeply- 
divided ovate lobes; filament twice the length of the lip, grooved, flesh-colour ; anther long, naked, bilobate, dark 
orange ; style long, slender, supported by two blunt germinal processes, about a quarter of an inch in length; 
stigma concave, ciliated; germen ovate, hairy. 
OBSERVATIONS. 
Although figures of Hedychium angustifolium are professedly given in the Coromandel Plants, No. 254, 
Bot. Mag. 2078, and Bot. Reg. 157; none of these appear to us to exhibit the true plant, the figure of which is 
now, we believe, for the first time published. It must further be remarked, that in the first of the above-mentioned 
works, the figure does not agree with the description, but is the H. coccineum accurately described by Sir J. E. Smith, 
in Rees’s New Cyclop. sp. 5, and figured also in Bot. Reg. No. 157, as H. angustifolium. That the Editors of the 
last-mentioned work were, however, in some degree aware of the error, is apparent from the following passage in 
Bot Reg. v. ii. p. 157. After adverting to the four new species added to this genus, by Sir J. E. Smith, in Rees’s 
Cyclopzdia, from specimens collected in India by Dr. Buchanan (now Hamilton,) they cbserve, ‘ We can scarcely 
doubt that our plant is the coccineum of these, notwithstanding some slight differences in the detail, scarcely indeed 
exceeding such as might be expected in a description from the dried specimen, when referred to the living; but the 
identity of our plant with the angustifolium of the late Dr. Roxburgh, being beyond a cavil, and the account of it 
having long been written under that title, and now actually printed in the forthcoming fasciculus of the work on the 
Plants of the Coast of Coromandel, we feel ourselves warranted in adopting it, although not the one first published.” To 
this passage Dr. Wallich has referred in a note in Flor. Ind. vol. i. p. 82, where he says, “ Notwithstanding the opinion 
which this distinguished Botanist (the Editor of the Bot. Reg.) has expressed, I am led to suspect that H. coccineum 
of Sir J. E. Smith (Rees’s New Cyclopedia, in loco) is a distinct species, of which I have examined the original 
