[519] 



LXIII. Note upon a handsome and hardy Plant, called Cliantiius 

 puniceus. By John Llndley, Ph. D. F. R. S. fyc. Assistant 

 Secretary. 



Read December % 1 834. 



That there exists in New Holland, a race of plants of extraordi- 

 nary beauty, having very large papilionaceous flowers, of a deep and 

 rich crimson, has been known for much more than a century, in 

 consequence of a figure of one of them having been published in 

 the third volume of the Voyage of Dampier, during whose visit to 

 New Holland it had been discovered, on one of the islands of the 

 Archipelago, bearing the name of that early navigator. Specimens, 

 at that time collected, and which I examined not more than six 

 months ago, exist in excellent condition in the Sherardian Her- 

 barium, at Oxford. Subsequently, during Cook's first voyage, a 

 plant extremely like the first, but quite destitute of the hairiness of 

 that species, was found by Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander in 

 1769, on some part of the eastern coast of the northern island of 

 New Zealand, or in Cook's Strait,* and was named by Dr. Solander, 

 Clianthus puniceus. It was not, however, noticed in any systematic 

 work until lately, when Mr. George Don, first published an account 

 of the genus in the second volume of his edition of Miller's Gardener's 

 Dictionary; changing, however, Solander's name Clianthus puniceus, 

 for that of Donia punicea. 



* Mr. Cunningham considers that as this plant does not occur among a collection lately 

 fonncd by his brother in New Zealand, and was not seen by himself in his visit to the 

 Northern island in 1826, it is, probably, a rare plant, and that its particular localities are 

 to the southward of the Bay of Islands : probably the shores of the River Thames, or at 

 Mm in \ -bay, where Cook afforded the naturalists who aceoinpank-d that \o\age, oppor- 

 tunities of landing in 1769, and near which, viz. at Tauranga, in the Bay of Plenty, the 

 missionaries at this time, have stations, whence the seeds were, doubtless, transmitted. 



