[Plate 60.] 



THE BOX-LEAVED CANTUA. 



(CANT U A BUXIFOLIA.) 



A Beautiful Half-hardy Shrub, from Peru, belonging to the Natural Order of Polejioniads. 



Specific Character. 



THE BOX-LEAVED CANTUA. Leaves oval, acute, smooth or downy, hardened at the base; sometimes three-lobed 

 or otherwise lobed. Panicles loose, downy, corymbose. Calyx downy, blunt at the base, more than thrice as short 

 as the corolla. Corolla a long tube with a concave limb and obcordate segments. Style projecting. 



Cantua buxifolia : Lamarck Diet., 1. 603. Bentham in De Oand. Prodr., 9, 321. Bot. Mug., t. 4582 ; alias Periphragmos 



dependens, Ruiz and Pavon, Fl. Chilensis, II. 18, t. 133. 



»or*;o-o 



SINCE the introduction of the Fuchsia and the China Rose, our gardens have received 

 nothing so remarkable as this plant. Long since made known to botairsts, and 

 sought for by every collector that visited the temperate -parts of South America, it was 

 at last obtained by Mr. W. Lobb, from the mountains of Peru, for Messrs. Veiteh 

 of Exeter, who flowered what is now represented. The blossoms appear in profusion 

 in the month of May, and are fully four inches long, with a crimson and yellow tube, 

 vivid sanguine in the bud, and rich rose eclour when expanded, with a lighter tint in 

 the inside. 



In his enumeration of Polemoniads, in De Candolle's Prodromus, Mr. Bentham has 

 reduced to this species the Cantua tomeiilosa of -Cavanilles; and Sir W. Hooker has 

 gone farther, in the Botanical Magazine, \>y adding as sjnonymes the Cantua ovata 

 of Cavanilles, and v.nifora of Persoon. We, however, believe that these are so mauy 

 distinct species. 



It is doubtless true that Cantua buxifolia is a variable plant, more or less downy, 

 and having flowers either crimson and vellow as this is, or white and yellow, or perhaps 

 merely yellow. All these forms may be expected to appear from the same batch of: 

 seeds. In fact, among Mr. W. Lobb's dried specimens, no fewer than six different 

 numbers are occupied by the forms of the same species, this C. buxifolia. But the materials 

 before us lead to the inference that other forms of the genus exist in temperate South 

 America, which are specifically distinct from C. buxifolia, and from each other. 



