12 EVERGREEN BERBERRIES CULTIVATED IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



Nuera Ellia, in Ceylon, and probably grows along the whole of 

 the Neilgherry range. 



By no means uncommon in gardens, where it forms a stout 

 evergreen bash, with dark brownish-red spreading branches, and 

 shining rich green leaves, usually fringed with bristle-pointed, 

 fine, close serratures, whence its specific name. The flowers are 

 large, bright, not dark, yellow, in loose panicled, long-stalked 

 racemes hanging down beyond the leaves. They are succeeded 

 by an abundance of red, bloomless, oblong, acid berries, which 

 hang on the branches till Christmas. 



The fine, close, bristle-pointed serratures of the leaves, the 

 rich reddish-brown branches, and the long, loose, panicled 

 racemes of flowers are quite peculiar to this plant, and separate it 

 clearly from every other. Dr. Royle tells us that its fruit forms 

 a part of the hill raisins of Nepal ; in England they acquire no 

 bloom, and would not readily dry. 



Like B. asiatica, this produces several varieties, one of which 

 I propose to call the entire- leaved Chitra (B. aristata inte- 

 grifolid). It is distinguished by the edges of the leaves being 

 almost wholly destitute of bristles, and is known in some gardens 

 under the false name of B. Wallichiana, to which it bears no 

 resemblance. 



The plant figured in Sir W. Hooker's ' Exotic Flora ' has the 

 leaves of B. petiolaris of Wallich, a species which I have not 

 myself seen alive ; at least their toothed, not serrated, margin 

 would lead to such a conjecture ; at the same time the flowers 

 are exactly those of B. aristata. 



18. The UMBELLED Berberry. 



Berberis umbellata. Wallich, in Boil's Miller's Dictionary, 

 i. 116. Botanical Register, 1844, t. 44 — alias B. angu- 

 losa. Wallich, Catalogue, No. 1475 — alias B. gracilis of 

 German gardens. 



Dr. "Wallich's collectors appear to have first discovered this plant 

 in Kamaon and Gossain Than. For its introduction to our 

 gardens we are indebted to the East India Company. 



It is a hardy bush, about 4 feet high, with a spreading manner 

 of growth, pale brown, angular branches, slender 3-parted spines, 

 and very narrow, bluish-green leaves, strikingly glaucous beneath ; 

 on an average they are If inch long by -f wide ; sometimes they 

 are perfectly entire, in which state they are represented in the 

 i Botanical Register but they are more commonly furnished 

 with a strong, marginal, spiny tooth or two, and sometimes with 

 many. (Can this state be the B. ceratophylla of G. Don ?) The 



