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XXXVI. Note upon a newly introduced Half-hardy species of 

 Salvia, called Salvia patens. By George Bentham, Esq. 

 Secretary. 



1 ii e richness and variety of colouring observable in the numerous 

 species of Salvia, which adorn the mountains of South America and 

 Mexico, have long been known to botanists, but it has happened 

 that few of them have hitherto found their way into our gardens. 

 The S. splendens, fulgens, Grahami, and mexicana, occupy, it is 

 true, the place in our collections they so well deserve, and some 

 few others of considerable beauty, such as S. leucantha, leonuroides, 

 angustifolia, &c. are to be met with occasionally in botanical gar- 

 dens ; but a single glance at the accompanying plate, in which it has 

 been found scarcely possible to do full justice to the colouring of 

 the original, will show how much superior this new importation is 

 to its older congeners. It will, therefore, excite some surprise, that 

 tli is plant, growing plentifully in the same districts from whence 

 we have received the S. fulgens, should never till now have been 

 transmitted to this country, and it will be readily believed that 

 there are yet many which would amply reward the exertions of 

 future collectors. We know for instance of a Salvia longiflora 

 among the Peruvian mountains, with a corolla above five inches 

 long, a S. speciosa in the same country with long dense spikes of 

 a rich purple, a white flowered S. leucocephala, said far to exceed 

 the beauty of S. leucantha, and in the Mexican mining districts the 

 S. Rcgla, Sessei, and pubescens, with their inflated scarlet calyxes, 

 S. phcenicea, covered with a profusion of flowers of the same 

 colour, are stated to be fully equal to the S. fulgens in their 

 general appearance, and even in South Brazil it is probable that 



