189 



0)e Crea£un) of 23ritan». 



[beta 



little creeninarhot -house plant -with spotted f continues a long time in blossom. The 

 leaves, purple beneath. [J. T. S.] I species are natives of Mexico. [T. M.] 



! BERTYA. A genus of the Spurgewort 

 family (Euphorbiacea:) composed of a 

 number of small resinous shrubs much 

 like the rosemary in appearance and habit. 

 Their leaves are alternate, crowded on the 



1 branches, and linear in fonn, their mar- 

 gins entire and curved backwards. Their 

 flowers are solitary in the axils of the 

 leaves, those on the lower part of the 

 stem male, the upper ones female ; they 

 are small, have no corollas, and without 

 beinsr looked for would be easily passed by. 

 The leaves of most of them are covered 



| with minute starry hairs of a white colour. 

 Five species are known, all natives of 

 Eastern Australia and Tasmania. The 



t genus is named in honour of Count L. de 

 LamVertye, a patron of horticulture in 

 France, and the name is shortened to 

 Bertya because of an already existing 



I genus called Lambertia. [A. A. BJ 



BERET A Ender this name is included a 



i small section of the Linnasan genus Sunn. 



: B. angustifolia, particularly known as the 

 harrow-leaved ^Vater-parsnip, is a native 

 of the whole of Europe and a great part of 



' Asia, growing in ditches and rivulets. The 

 roots are fibrous, and send out stolons from 



! the crown ; the leaves are smooth, pinnate, 

 and unequally lobed and serrated; the 

 flowers, which are small and white, are 

 either terminal or grow in umbels opposite 

 the leaves, and are all stalked. [C. A. J.] 



BESCHORXERIA. A genus of agave- 



like aniaryllidaceous plants,related toi f'ffrea 



rcroya, from which they differ in 



■ rubulose flowers, the former also 

 differing in its exserted stamens, and the 

 latter in its habit. The flowers consist of a 

 deeply six-parted perianth, the segments 

 of which are linear-spathulate, tubulosely 

 ;it, sometimes slightly spreading at 

 the point. There are six stamens which 

 are about as long as the perianth ; and an 



r md somewhat club-shaped ovary, 

 terminated by a long slender style and 



stigma. B. tuMflora is a stemless 

 plant with a tuft of linear sword-shaped 

 acuminate leaves, and an erect scape 

 supporting a many-flowered raceme of 

 purplish-oreen flowers. B. yuccoides, an- 

 other species of considerable beauty, has 

 also a radical tuft of thickish lanceolate 

 pointed leaves, a foot and a half long, and 

 a tall slender coral-red scape three to four 

 : -\i, the upper half of which forms a 



drooping p.-micle of slender branches of 

 • rich coral-red, springing from 

 deep rose-coloured bracts, and supporting 

 me of bright green 

 It is indeed a most striking 

 plant, the coral-red scape and panicle, the 

 graceful slender drooping branches, and 

 the racemr-s of large pendent green flowers, 

 which in shape are not much unlike those 

 5-flowered Fuchsia, but of a 



ellow green tinged with red, render- 

 ing it very ornamental, the more so as it 



1 BESEXXA. The Abyssinian name of 

 Albizzia anthelmlutica, and at one time 

 adopted as the scientific name of the 

 plant, which was then imperfectly known. 



1 BESHAN T . The Balm of Mecca, Balsa- 

 I modendron Opobalsamum. 



| BESLERLA A genus of erect branch- 

 ing undershrubs, abundant in the forests 

 of tropical America, and belonging to the 



1 section of Gesneracece, which have albu- 

 minous seeds. They have opposite petiolate 

 and fleshy leaves, with prominent nerves 

 and veins, and axillary peduncles, with 



; one or many flowers. The calyx is free, 

 five-cleft, and reddish coloured ; the corolla 

 is carnpamilate, and sub-equally five-cleft. 

 The four didynamous stamens, along with 

 the rudiment of the fifth, are inserted in 

 the tube of the corolla ; the anthers are 

 two-celled. The one-celled ovary is free, 

 surrounded at its base by a fleshy ring 

 without glands, and has two two-lobed 

 parietal placenta?, to which are attached 



I numerous anatropal ovules ; the style is 

 simple and bifid ; the fruit is a berry filled 



i with the fleshy placenta?, and numerous 



I small obovate seeds, with very short coty- 

 ledons. [W. OJ 



! BESSERA A genus of liliaceous 

 i bulbs, found in Mexico, the species of 

 . which have narrow Linear leaves, and 

 umbel-bearing flower scapes. The perianth 

 is bell-shaped, six-parted, furnished with 

 six stamens, which are connate below into 

 a cylindrical coronet, and having a sessile 

 ovary, containing numerous ovules, lying 

 in two rows in the cells, the style being 

 terminated by a capitate-depressed ob- 

 scurely three-lobed fringed stigma. B. 

 elegans, one of the best known of the few 

 species, produces a pair of radical leaves, 

 which are erect for two-thirds of their 

 length, and then become pendulous ; they 

 are one to two feet long, semicylindrical, 

 smooth and hollow. The scape, also smooth 

 and fistular,is solitary, erect, taller than the 

 leaves, and bears a terminal umbel of from 

 three to sixteen drooping flowers of an 

 orange-red colour, and having a turbinately 

 laped tube, a moderately spreading 

 limb of six nearly equal oblong-obtuse 

 segments, and a cluster of six green 

 stamens on long red filaments projected 

 the limb, and united 

 at the base for half their length into a six- 

 ribbed tube. [T.M.] 



BETA. A genus belonging to the natural 

 order Chenopodiacece, a group comprising 

 various genera of coarse weedy-looking 

 plants, among which Beta is one of the 

 most remarkable, on account of its roots 

 and leaves being valuable both for culi- 

 nary and agricultural purposes. It is a 

 genus with hermaphrodite flowers, in 

 which the five-parted urceolate perigone 

 becomes hardened at the base, the seg- 

 ments merely shrivelling up. There are 

 five stamens inserted in a fleshy ringoppo- 



