34 Hibiscus speciosus. 



Root perennial. Whole plant invested with a fine glaucous cover- 

 ing, easily ruhbed off. Stem herbaceous, erect, from six to nine feet 

 high, branched, perfectly cylindrical and smooth, purplish on one 

 side, yellow on the other, and when the glaucous cohering is rubbed 

 off, conspicuously maculated with longitudinal yellow spots. Branch- 

 es numerous, from twenty to thirty, each proceeding from the axill 

 of a large cauline leaf, very round, purplish, alternate, two and a 

 half feet long, gradually becoming shorter towards the top, giving a 

 pyramidal appearance in the outline. Each branch terminates in 

 three (rarely four) separately pedunculated flowers. Peduncles terete, 

 smooth, purplish, the younger ones yellow. Leaves smooth, deeply 

 palmate, or five-parted; the divisions unequal, the two exterior ones 

 being shortest. Each segmentlanceolate, deeply serrated in the mid- 

 dle, and entire towards the apex, which is a prolonged acuminatum. 

 Flowers large, petals spathulate, plicated, clawed, and of a rich shi- 

 ning carmine-red; claws three-fourths of an inch long, very shining, 

 carmine-red above, invested on either margin and under side with 

 white pubescence. Stamens numerous, with short filaments, stigmas 

 five, all deep carmine red. Anthers yellow, or appearing so from the 

 colour of the pollen. Calix smooth, the exterior segments curled 

 inwards, tinged with purple, ten in number, rarely more A native 

 of South Carolina and Florida, inhabiting the banks of rivers and 

 flowering in August and September. 



The generic term Hibiscus is from </S/«,«, a Greek word of un- 

 known derivation, for the •x$*i*, of Theophrastus, which is conjee- 



