[Plate 35.] 



THE SHOWY SENECIO. 



(SENECIO SPECIOSUS.) 



A Half-hardy Perennial Herbaceous Plant, from South Africa, belonging to the Natural Order 



AsTERACE^E. 



Specific Character. 



Rootstock thick and fleshy, with several radical and a few cauline, pinnatifidly lobed, oblong-oblanceolate obtuse 

 leaves, which are thick and fleshy, and covered with viscid hairs, as are also the stem, bracts, and involucres : 

 sometimes the hairs on the branches of the stem and involucre are very long and shaggy. The stem branches 

 in a corymbose manner, and bears from three to ten radiate flower-heads one and a half inches in diameter. 

 Both ray and disk are of a beautiful bright purple. 



Gardener's Chronicle, N.S., vol. xii., p. 615. 



THIS plant belongs to an extremely numerous family, of which the well-known Cineraria 

 of our greenhouses,, and the still more familiar garden weed groundsel, are members. 

 It seems to be somewhat variable in its character, especially in the shade of colour it 

 assumes, which in some individual examples is deeper than it is in others, as also in the 

 length attained by the viscid hairs with which the stem, leaves, bracts, and involucres are 

 thickly covered. It is of a somewhat close tufted habit, the leaves spreading and laying 

 moderately close to the ground, as shown in our illustration of the plant, much reduced in 

 size. The flower-stems, each bearing as many as a dozen flowers, one and a half inches in 

 diameter, rise from the base of the central leaves and assume an erect position ; the flowers 

 are of a rosy-purple colour, very bright and showy. This is the plant distributed by Mr. 

 Bull some time back, and supposed to be S. concolor, with which species it seems through a 

 mistake to have been confounded. The subject of our plate is half-hardy, and remarkably 

 free in its habit of flowering, blooming in succession through a considerable portion of the 



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