6 EVERGREEN BERBERRIES CULTIVATED IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



the species requires to be reintroduced. There is not a more 

 ornamental hardy shrub in any of our foreign possessions. 



8. DARWIN'S Berberry. 



Berberis Darwinii, Hooker s Icones Plantarum, t. 672. 



Chiloe and Patagonia furnished this to Mr. T. Lobb, whose 

 seeds have enabled Messrs. Veitch and Co. to raise it. Mr. 

 Darwin also found it in Chiloe ; Bridges in Valdivia and 

 Osorno. 



It forms an evergreen shrub 3 to 5 feet high, of extraordinary 

 beauty, and conspicuous for its ferruginous shoots, by which it 

 is at once recognised. The leaves are of the deepest green, 

 shining as if polished, not more than f inch long, pale green, 

 with the principal veins conspicuous on the under side, with three 

 large spiny teeth at the end, and about one (or two) more on 

 each side near the middle. Although small, the leaves are 

 placed so near together that the branches themselves are con- 

 cealed. The flowers, which have not been yet formed in England, 

 are in erect racemes, and of the same deep orange yellow as in 

 the Box-leaved species. 



Mr. Veitch informs me that this plant appears to be de- 

 cidedly hardy : as is probable, considering that it grows naturally 

 near the summer limits of snow upon its native mountains. It 

 is now 3 feet high, and Mr. Lobb says it is, when a large plant, 

 the finest he ever saw of the genus, in which I have no doubt that 

 he is right. 



9. The SMALL-FLOWERED Berberry. 



Berberis parviflora, Lindley, in Journal of the Horticultural 

 Society, vol ii. p. 243, with a figure — alias B. virgata of 

 the Gardens. 



Presented to the Garden of the Horticultural Society by Messrs. 

 Lee of Hammersmith ; supposed to be a native of South 

 America. 



It is a pale-wooded evergreen bush, with slender branches, 

 small, rather fine spines, and bright-green leaves, without a 

 trace of glaucousness. The leaves are about 1^ inch long by 

 J an inch wide, and have pretty exactly the form of a lengthened 

 wedge whose upper end is almost always divided into three nearly 

 equal coarse spiny teeth : other teeth, however, occasionally 

 appear at the sides. The flowers are unusually small, and grow 

 five or six together in nodding clusters, whose stalks are nearly 

 as long as the leaves. 



Among all the evergreen species this is known at first sight 

 by the form of its leaves. Perhaps its nearest relation is 



