HOVEA LINEARIS, 
(Linear-leaved Hovea.) 
Class. 
DIADELPHIA. 
Older. 
BECANDRIA. 
Natural Order. 
LEGUMXNOSiE. 
Generic Character. — Calyx bilabiate ; upper lip 
semi-bifid, broad and retuse; lower one three-parted. 
Keel obtuse. Stamens all connected, tenth or upper 
one only more or less free. Legume sessile, roundish, 
ventricose, two-seeded. Seeds strophiolate. — Bon's 
Gardening and Botany. 
Specific Character. — Plant an evergreen shrub, 
with slender, slightly fiexuose branches. Leaves 
lanceolately-linear, minutely wrinkled, depressed at 
the margins, mucronate, rather pilose beneath. 
Petiole very short, and furnished on each side with a 
small stipule. Peduncles axillary, racemose on the 
branches. Flowers purplish violet. Legumes smooth. 
Synonyme Poirctia linearis. Smith. 
Perhaps amongst all the fine things that have been wrested from that fertile 
source of Leguminosss — New Holland, there are few families that surpass the 
genus Hovea in plants of a really ornamental character. Instead of the orange- 
yellow blossoms, so very numerous amongst papilionaceous plants, they display 
flowers with more popular hues, being in all the species of a blue or violaceous 
tint ; and they appear, moreover, in copious quantities. 
The species which forms the subject of the present embellishment, inhabits 
the district bordering on the eastern shores of New Holland, whence seeds were 
first imported about fifty years since. 
Cultivation effects so considerable a variation in its appearance, that the weak 
growths, small leaves, and paucity of blossom exhibited by neglected specimens, 
would scarcely be identified as the same species with those that have received a 
more genial treatment. When rightly treated it forms a handsome bush, and is 
rather lavish of its blossoms. 
It is an excellent plan to place all the young plants, and indeed the older 
specimens also wherever practicable, in a pit or frame where they may be kept 
rather closer and warmer in spring than in an ordinary greenhouse. A sickly 
condition is not uncommonly engendered by too low a temperature, or the play of 
keen winds, whilst the shoots are young and tender. 
Among the errors in its management, one of the most prevalent is the too 
hasty endeavour to obtain tall flowering specimens, and the consequent neglect of 
shortening back the shoots to encourage lateral development. A bushy compact- 
