io8 
PLORA AND SYLVA 
Elderberry wine. The seeds however should 
be carefully rejected, causing convulsions and 
death if eaten by misadventure. Syn. C. sar- 
mentosa. 
C. sinica. — A plant from China, coming very 
near C. japonica and flowering at the same 
season, but in which the berries are smaller 
and composed of three carpels in place of five 
in the Japanese species. 
C. terminalis. — A plant first collected by 
Hooker in the mountains of Sikkim and for 
many years accepted as a variety of C. nepal- 
erisis^ till fresh specimens from the Thibetan 
frontier of China (where it grows at a height 
of 9,000 to 13,000 feet) proved it to be per- 
fectly distinct. It is quite hardy in the southern 
parts of the country at least, making shrubby 
rootstock and herbaceous stems of 2 to 3 feet, 
which die back each winter to start again in 
spring. Their bark is rough and warty, redden- 
ing in the sun, and the shoots thickly set with 
pairs of rounded, dull green leaves, upon very 
short stalks. They are i to 2 inches long, 
prominently netted with transparent veins (five 
to nine in number, but mostly seven) , the upper 
surface shaded with purplish-brown in patches 
towards the autumn. The fiowers of yellow 
and chocolate colour appear in long crowded 
racemes from the tips of the shoots, diff^ering 
in this particular from all the other kinds, in 
which they burst from the leaf-axils. The 
flowers are inconspicuous but give place to 
glossy, berry-like fruits of great beauty, their 
rich orange-yellow prettily contrasted with 
the deep red of the downy stem and the dark 
core of brown seeds, while the long tapering 
spike is graceful and unlike that of any other 
hardy shrub. These fruits are in beauty during 
September and October, lasting well upon the 
plant, but of no value for cutting because of 
the way in which the leaves shrivel and fall. 
The sprays of fruit shown in our plate hardly 
dojustice to the beauty of this handsome shrub, 
some that I measured last autumn upon main 
shoots being fully 9 inches long and crowded 
with berries throughout their length, smaller 
racemes, such as those shown, coming at the 
tips of the side-shoots. The plant does best 
in a moist and sunny place, but as the fruits 
are poisonous, this should be borne in mind 
when planting, so as to keep the showy, 
glistening clusters out of the way of children. 
Received an award of merit when exhibited 
before the R.H.S, by Messrs. Veitch of Exeter, 
in October of last year. 
With the exception of C. rusci- 
Other Species, folia., the species found in South 
America and New Zealand are 
but imperfectly known. In New Zealand the 
Coriaria is common under such a variety of 
forms running one into the other, that so far 
botanists have found it impossible to reduce 
them to order. With the colonists they bear 
one common name of " Tutu," and vary in 
size from forest trees, with a trunk of nearly 
2 feet in diameter, to slender mountain herbs 
with annual stems of a few inches only. The 
kinds considered to be the most distinct are as 
follows: — C. arborea, or the Tree Tutu, grow- 
ing to a large size in forests of the western 
coast, its wood soft but finely marked, and in 
some demand for hght cabinet-work. The 
second plant known as the Square-stemmed 
Tutu has been described under its botanical 
name of C. ruscifolia. Two smaller forms are 
also distinct ; C. mkrophylla or thymifolia, a 
dwarf alpine plant of only a foot or so high, 
with tiny leaves and stems that often die away 
in winter, though this character varies with 
the altitude at which it is found ; the flowers 
are as in ruscifolia., but smaller. It has been 
grown in cool houses in this country, but is 
of purely botanical interest, and its only use 
the making of an ink which resists sea-water. 
The fourth kind, C. angustissima, is a rather 
pretty little shrub, 6 to 18 inches high, grow- 
ing in broad patches of feathery efi^sct upon the 
mountain side, more especially beside water. 
The stems are thickly covered with very 
narrow, drooping leaves, while the fruits are 
large in proportion, black and glossy, and so 
freely borne on the plume-like shoots as to be 
graceful and effective. These plants are all 
j more or less poisonous, and each form merges 
into intermediate varieties by insensible stages, 
until it seems impossible to fix certain data, 
the more so as the genus continues through a 
further series of forms more or less similar in 
appearance, extending over the mountains of 
South America from Chili to Mexico, includ- 
ing vast tracts of which the vegetation is little 
known, B. 
