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XXV. On the Heliamphora nutans^ a new Pitcher-plant from British Guiana. 



By George Bentham, Esq., F.L.S. 



Read February 4, 1840. 



Amongst a number of new and handsome plants collected by Mr. Schom- 

 burgk on the mountain of Roraima, on the borders of British Guiana, one of 

 the most curious is a species of Pitcher-plant, which he found growing in a 

 marshy savannah, at an elevation of about six thousand feet above the level 

 of the sea. As this plant is a new form in a very distinct natural Order, the 

 Sarraceniacece, hitherto consisting of but one genus, and only six species, I 

 have thought that the following short account of it might not be uninterest- 

 ing to the Linnean Society. 



Like the true Sarracenice, this is an herbaceous plant, with fibrous roots and 

 radical leaves, of which the petiole forms a long hollow tube or pitcher, open 

 at the top, and the lamina a small concave lid, which does not, however, as in 

 Nepenthes, close over the pitcher. The parallel veins of the pitcher, with 

 transverse reticulations, and the thick texture and reticulate venation of the 

 lid, are the same in Heliamphora as in Sarracenia. 



A curious disparity in the texture of the reflexed hairs of the inner surface 

 of the pitcher has been pointed out to me by Dr. Lindiey, and I observe pre- 

 cisely the same structure in Sarracenia purpurea. The hairs which densely 

 close the mouth of the pitcher are thick, conical, and striated, without any of 

 the ordinary appearances of secreting hairs, although this part of the leaf is 

 said, in Sarracenia at least, to be generally covered with a saccharine exuda- 

 tion. At the bottom of the pitcher, and below the smooth shining part (the 

 same in Heliamphora as in Sarracenia), the scattered hairs, smaller than those 

 of the throat, but still reflexed, have all the appearance of ordinary secreting 

 hairs. They arise from a small tubercle, and appear to be composed of a single 



