This charming plant, whicli recommends itself no less by 
the size and beauty of its snow-white blossoms, than by their 
fragrance, which resembles that of the Common Jessamine, 
flowered in the stove of our Botanic Garden in the month of 
October 1822, from roots that we had received from Dr Wal- 
LICH. 
We have, at various times, been favoured with flowering 
specimens of this plant, from Messrs Shepherd of Liverpool, 
who named it Hedychium spicatum, under which appellation 
it is described by Sir J. E. Smith in Rees' Cyclopaedia. 
Although properly a stove plant, this species has endured 
the winter, and flowered in the open air, in the garden of Mr 
Kent, at Clapton; but from the specimen which thus blossom- 
ed, as figured in the Botanical Magazine, it will be seen how 
much inferior it is to our plant, the produce of the hot-house. 
It was discovered in Upper Nepaul by my kind and valued 
friend Dr Francis Buchanan Hamilton of Leny House, 
and is called Wohutty Iwa in its native country, where it is 
much admired for its beauty and fragrance. It differs, in 
many respects, from the five species of Hedychium described 
in the Flora Indica (and the genus appears confined to the 
East Indies), approaching perhaps, indeed, to the H. elatum of 
Mr Broavn, in the Botanical Register, in the form of its 
flowers. The disposition of the blossoms in the spike, and the 
structure of the spike itself, are totally different ; and from 
every described individual, this may be known by its long slen- 
der tube, and its filament, so much shorter than the labellum. 
Fig. 1. Extremity of a plant, nalural size. Fig. 2. Entire flower, with its 
two inner bracteas (calyx of some authors), at the base, natural size. 
Fig. 3. Summit of a stamen, with the style passing through its groove. 
Fig. 4. Germen and portion of the corolla and style. Fig. 5. Germen, 
with the corolla removed, to shew the base of the style and the 2 glands, 
or abortive stamens. Fig. 6. Germen cut through, to shew the ovules. 
Fig. 7- Upper portion of a stamen, with the style forced from out of the 
groove. — All more or less magnified. 
