EVERGREEN BERBERRIES CULTIVATED IN GREAT BRITAIN. 13 



flowers are pale yellow, in drooping-, narrow racemes, and are 

 succeeded by an abundance of oblong, purplish fruits. 



The species is very pretty, in consequence of its graceful 

 manner of growth. It is best suited for growing among rougli 

 places, such as heaps of rock-work, where its spreading way 

 of branching can best be seen. It is not, however, a good ever- 

 green, the leaves being too thin and pallid. 



19. The DYER'S Berberry. 



Berberis tinctoria. Leschenault de la Tour, in Memoires 

 du Museum, ix. 306. Delessert, Icones, ii. t. 2 ? Wight's 

 Illustrations of Indian Botany, t. 8. 



Found wild in the Neilgherry Mountains, whence it lias been 

 lately introduced by the Honourable Court of Directors of the 

 East India Company. 



The plants in gardens are slender, brown-wooded shrubs, with 

 small slender spines, usually 3-parted. The leaves are thin, not 

 shining, dull green above, glaucous beneath, oblong, blunt, with 

 a spiny point, but scarcely spiny -toothed, except on the seedling 

 plant. The flowers have not hitherto appeared. They are repre- 

 sented by Dr. Wight as standing erect in loose racemes scarcely- 

 longer than the leaves, and succeeded by an abundance of dull 

 red fruit. In the absence of such evidence there would be some 

 doubt as to this ; for botanists have evidently misunderstood the 

 distinctions of some of the Indian Berberries. M. Delessert, for 

 instance, figures a B. tinctoria, declaring at the same time that 

 it is nothing but B. asiatica ; yet B. asiatica has no resemblance 

 to the plant now described, whose leaves are glaucous, not bright 

 green, thin, not coriaceous, almost veinless, not strongly netted. 

 Dr. Wallich, on the other hand, distributed under the name of 

 B. tinctoria specimens which in part at least belong to B. aris- 

 tata. But the specimen from Leschenault in Wallich's Herba- 

 rium, deposited with the Linnean Society, is extremely glaucous 

 beneath, and appears to agree with the garden plant, as it does 

 with Dr. Wight's figure. 



At present little is known of its quality ; it appears to be only 

 a sub-evergreen, and to be tolerably hardy. 



Its name has been given it in consequence of its furnishing, 

 like other species, a fine yellow dye. Vauquelin states that it is 

 inferior to few woods for that purpose. 



