PAXTON'S FLOWER GARDEN. 



191 



Centrosolenia glabra. Bentham. A hothouse plant from La Guayra, with pale yellow 

 fringed flowers. Belongs to Gesnerads. Introduced at Kew. Mowers in autumn. 



A plant imported through Mr. Wagoner, a German collector. It forms a stove plant, and keeps up a succession of 

 flowers with us through the autumnal and early winter months. We submitted the figure to Mr. Bentham for 

 his opinion, as he had paid much attention to the family to which it belongs, and has published the result of his 

 observations in the 5th volume of the 'London Journal of Botany,' p. 357, &c. That gentleman considers the plant as 

 clearly constituting a second species of his new genus Centrosolenia (1. c, p. 362). Decaisne's Trichanthe, since published, 

 probably in the ' Revue Horticole,' for 1848, he believes to be identical with Centrosolcnia. If so, it must give place to the 

 latter name, which appeared in 1846, and consequently has the right of priority. An erect plant, with a succulent reddish- 

 brown, terete stem, a foot or morehigh. Leaves succulent, smooth, the lower ones six to eight inches long, opposite ; each 

 pair singularly unequal in size, one being small, lanceolate, and acuminate ; the other large, ovate, tapering at the base into a 

 stout petiole, and acuminate at the apex ; the margin serrated. Corolla tubular, enlarged upwards, projected below into a 

 short obtuse spur, the whole tube about an inch and a half long, clothed outside with a short thin down, the limb divided 

 into five broad short lobes, of which the three lower are fringed with long thread-like lacinite ; inside of the corolla 

 smooth. Annular disc nearly obsolete, with a large posterior gland. (Mr. Fitch represents two glands, — one anterior, 

 the other posterior, and of nearly equal size.) Ovary wholly superior, with two lamelliform, bipartite, parietal placentae. 

 Style smooth, thick, somewhat clavate, with the stigmatic extremity rarely emargiuate. — Botanical Magazine, t. 4552. 



Geranium Thunbercii. Sielold. A prostrate annual; with small purple flowers. Native 

 of Japan. (Kg. 111.) 



An annual, with hairy prostrate stems ; leaves long-stalked, with long spreading hairs, rather fleshy, 5-lobed, flat, 

 the lower lobes much the smallest, the others 3-lobed, and slightly serrate. Peduncles 2-flowered, longer than the leaves. 

 Petals deep purple, undivided, obovate, larger than the mucronate sepals. Probably the O. palmtre of Thunberg. 



Echlnocactus Visnaga. Hooker, 

 {alias? E. ingens Zuccarini.) A noble 

 plant from Mexico, belonging to the 

 Natural Order of Indian Eigs (CactaceEe). 

 Elowers bright yellow, produced at Kew. 



Of this singular species, Sir William Hooker 

 gives the following account : — " One of the most 

 remarkable plants in the Cactus-house of the 

 Royal Gardens of Kew, and that which chiefly 

 attracts the attention of strangers, is the subject 

 of the present plate. It bears the name of Vis- 

 naga with us ( Visnaga means a tooth-pick among 

 the Mexican settlers, and the plant is so called 

 because that little instrument is commonly made 

 of its spines), and under that name, believing it 

 to be a new species, we had described it, and it 

 was figured in the Illustrated News for 1846. I 

 had, at one time, been disposed to refer the species 

 to the Echinocaclus ingens, of which a brief and 

 most unsatisfactory character is drawn up by 

 Pfeiffer (for Zuccarini does not appear to have 

 noticed it) from some { dried flowers,' and a living 

 specimen < six inches high ; ' but it can scarcely 

 be that, for the angles of the plant are said to 

 be eight, the aculei nine in a cluster, and the 

 petals obtuse. Our plate represents a very 

 diminished figure of a specimen, unfortunately 

 no longer existing, but which, in 1846, was an 

 inmate of our Cactus-house, and apparently in 



high health and vigour. Its height was nine feet, and it measured nine feet and a half in circumference, its weight a ton. 

 After a year of apparent health and vigour, it exhibited symptoms of internal injury. The inside became a putrid mass 



