FLORICULTURAL NOTICES. 
93 
our Verbascum Thapsus, and ends in a very large pyramidal raceme densely set with rosy 
purple-coloured flowers. Bot. Mag. 4150. 
Myo'porum serra v tum. A very close-growing bush, attaining, in its own country, from six 
to eight feet in height, and clothed with light green broadly lanceolate leaves, serrated at the 
edges. " In cultivation in Tasmania it becomes a very pretty round-headed shrub, whose flowers 
are succeeded by blue fruit. In our gardens it forms a neat bush, loaded with a profusion of white 
flowers, as lax'ge as those of hawthorn, and spotted with purple." It bloomed in one of the green- 
houses of the Horticultural Society's Gardens last May, and is there grown in a sandy peat soil, 
and copiously watered whilst developing new shoots. " Mr. Gunn says that the plant is called in 
the colony 4 Mangrove,' and is very common in the sand close to the sea, where it grows in com- 
pany with Acacia Sophora&nd Leucopogon Richei.^ Bot. Reg. 15. 
Onci'dium bicali^o'sum. Introduced by Mr. Skinner from Guatemala, to the collections at 
Woburn Abbey and at Knypersley. It has been described by Dr. Lindley as a species distinct 
from, but bearing a close relationship to O. Cavendishianum. Sir W. Hooker considers " the 
two as forms of one and the same kind, and that the species is liable to considerable variation; the 
more especially as our O. pachyphyllum, Bot. Mag., 307, is considered by Dr. Lindley a state of 
O. Cavendishianum. To me," he adds, "our present plant seems to correspond better with Mr. 
Bateraan's original figure of O. Cavendishianum, than our O. pachyphyllum does." (There 
hardly appears more difference in the three, than may be seen in many other species of Orchi- 
dacese, In an ornamental view, one of them is quite sufficient in an ordinary collection ; the 
present, however, is the best.) Bot. Mag., 4148. 
Ornitko'galum marginatum. Approaching O. refractum and ewscapum, but both those 
species have a white stripe in the middle of their leaves, which do not appear to be white-edged 
as in this. It was given to the Horticultural Society by the Dean of Manchester, who had the 
bulb from a correspondent. It was gathered on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. In a dry 
situation it will probably be hardy. The flowers appear in March and April, and the plant 
scarcely reaches a foot high. Bot. Reg. 21. 
Pentstf/mon gentiano'ides var. dia'phanum. From the original P. genttanoides the present 
variety differs in bearing flowers of a rather larger size, " and almost colourless on the under 
side of the tube, which is moreover so thin as to be semi-transparent, and to allow the filaments 
to be perceived through it. The calyx, too, is much more covered with glands than in the true 
genttanoides. The latter has by some dealers been called stiff ruticosum, a preposterous name, 
and calculated to mislead ; for it is not more suffruticose than half the common herbaceous 
plants in cultivation." It is also found under the name of P. grandiflorum, which is quite a different 
species. " This is a very handsome and nearly hardy perennial, growing two or three feet high 
in any good rich garden soil, and becoming rather woody next the ground. It flowers freely from 
J uly to September, and, like most of the Mexican species, is easily increased, either by seeds, or 
cuttings of the half-ripened shoots. It is no garden variety, but was raised from seeds received 
from G. F. Dickson, marked from the Tierra Fria of Mexico." (In the notice from which the 
above is abstracted, the variety is also called transparens, perhaps inadvertently.) Bot. Reg. 16. 
Ph^edranassa chloracra. 44 One of the curious bulbs met with by Mr. Hartweg in Peru. It 
occurred on rocks at the village of Saragura, near Loxa, at an elevation of about 9000 feet above 
the sea, and was supposed to be the long-sought Hcemanthus dubius of Humboldt and Kunth. It 
was removed from Hcemanthus and stationed in Phycellaf by the Dean of Manchester. The 
examination of fresh flowers has, however, showed that it constitutes a peculiar genus, to which 
Dr. Herbert has given the name of Phaidranassa (it is to be presumed from phaidros gay, and 
anassa queen). He regards it as an approach to Stenomesson and Pentlandia." The Phycella 
obtusa is another species of Phcedranassa, also discovered by Mr. Hartweg, 44 on the arid banks 
of the river Guallabamba, in the valley of San Antonio, in the province of Quito, at an elevation 
of about 7000 feet above the level of the sea. As this was the place where Humboldt and Bon- 
pland found their Hcemanthus dubius, it is not improbable that it is of P. obtusa rather than of 
chloracra that this plant is a synonym." Both species are greenhouse bulbs, flowering in winter 
and spring before the leaves appear. The flowers are between two and three inches long, of a 
reddish hue tipped with green, and have a drooping direction : they form an umbel at the top of 
a tolerably stout scape. Bot. Reg., 17. 
