PLEROMA KUNTHIANUM. 
(M. Kuuth's Pleroma.) 
Class. Order. 
DECANDRIA. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order. 
MELASTOMACEJE. 
Generic Character Calyx with an ovate tube; 
when young, involved in two deciduous bracts ; lobes 
five, deciduous. Petals obcordate. Stamens ten. 
Filaments pilose or glabrous. Anthers elongated, 
arched at the base. Ovary adhering to the calyx, 
apex bristly. Capsule baccate, rather dry, five-celled. 
Seeds cochleate. 
Specific Character.— Plant an evergreen shrub. 
Branches tetragonal, and are, as well as the petioles, 
clothed with adpressed hairs. Leaves petiolate, oblong, 
acute, five-nerved, quite entire, scabrous above from 
little bristles, but white from adpressed silky hairs be- 
neath. Pedicels hispid, axillary, one flowered, and ter- 
minal. Tube of calyx campanulate, beset with stiff 
bristles, but with the lobes deciduous. Petals very blunt. 
Filaments and style hispid. Ovarium bristly at the 
apex, rather longer than the tube of the calyx. 
Bracteas large, deciduous, 
Synonymes.— Pleroma Benthamianum Lasiandra 
Kunthiana. 
Like the P. petiolatum, figured at the close of last years volume, this magni- 
ficent plant belongs to the sub-genus Lasiandra, having hairy genitals, and a dry 
capsular fruit; whilst the true Pleromas have a berry- like fruit, and the genitals 
perfectly smooth. We find it has been enumerated and described by De Candolle 
as L. Kunthiana ; and more recently, accompanied by a figure, in the " Botanical 
Magazine," as P. Benthamianum. The latter specific name was applied to it by 
Mr. Gardner ; but the present having the claim of priority, we have accordingly 
adopted it. 
It is a Brazilian production, for the possession of which cultivators are 
indebted to the exertions of Mr. Gardner. It was discovered by that gentleman 
in situations partaking of a boggy character on the Organ Mountains, at an alti- 
tude of more than 3000 feet above the level of the ocean, and by him transferred 
to the Botanic Gardens at Glasgow, where it first produced flowers in the latter 
part of 1842. Our illustration was taken in the garden of R. G. Loraine, Esq., at 
Wellington Lodge, where a vigorous specimen flowered in one of the stoves in 
October, ]844. 
With the rest of the genus, it is a shrubby plant, having robust four- sided 
branches, bearing ample foliage of a neat outline, remarkable for its velvety 
softness, and the beautiful arrangement and prominency of the veins on the under 
surface. The flowers are disposed in large thyrsoid panicles at the top of the 
shpots, and possess a richness of tint unequalled by those of any of its congeners. 
