ACHIMENES PICTA. 
(The Painted Achimenes.) 
Class. 
DID YN AMI A. 
Natural Order. 
GESNERACEiE. 
Order. 
ANGIOSPERMIA, 
Generic Character — Calyx with its tube adnate to 
the ovary ; limb five-parted ; lobes lanceolate. Corolla 
tubularly funnel-shaped, often swollen at the base ; 
limb five-cleft ; lobes sub-equal, sub-rotund. Stamens 
four, didynamous ; anthers not cohering. Rudiments 
of the fifth stamen situated below the base of the 
corolla. Nectary glandular, in a small ring. Style 
slightly thickened towards the stigma, oblique, or with 
two separate lobes. Capsule nearly two-celled, two- 
valved : placentas parietal, sub-sessile. 
Specific Character — Roots consisting of numerous 
elongated scaly tubers. Stems erect, not much branched, 
covered, as also is every part of the plant, with rather 
long hairs, herbaceous, succulent. Leaves opposite, 
and ternately verticillate ; petioles ovate-cordate, ser- 
rate, rich velvetty green, mottled and reticulated with 
white. Flowers on peduncles longer than the leaves, 
drooping, moderately large. Calyx almost entirely 
free : tube obconical, or turbinate : segments oblong- 
ovate, spreading. Corolla full yellow, with red above, 
within streaked and dotted with red; tube funnel- 
shaped above : limb spreading, two upper lobes tbe 
smallest. Ovary ovate, hairy, with five oblong, fleshy 
glands at the base. 
Nothing can be more appropriate than the specific title of this truly charming 
plant. The rich velvetty green foliage traversed with its reticulations and 
mottlings of pale greenish white, or the beautifully streaked and spotted flowers, 
would each be a sufficient ground for naming it " the painted Achimenes." It is 
certainly one of the finest of this magnificent family. 
Mexico is its native country, and it is one amongst the many superb things 
introduced from that country by the Horticultural Society, through their active 
and zealous collector, Mr. Hartweg. That gentleman discovered it in his rambles 
on the wooded heights to the east of Guaduas, and gives the following account of 
it in the " Horticultural Transactions : — " In its native habitat this Achimenes 
prefers dry rocky ground, in places not much shaded, where it scarcely attains 
more than five inches in height, seldom producing above two or three of its finely 
mottled bright orange flowers upon a stem." 
From this account it appears that our garden specimens far exceed the wild 
ones both in vigour and abundance of flowers. It is no uncommon thing to see 
handsome plants two or three feet high, which, instead of merely a solitary blossom, 
have frequently from five to seven or eight from the axil of each leaf. In such 
cases a short peduncle usually springs from the axil, and after reaching to half an 
inch or an inch in length, branches off at the top into several pedicels, which are 
nearly erect, each carrying a single blossom. Last spring we measured a stem 
from which several vigorous branches had issued at a short distance from the foot, 
which extended upwards of four feet and a half from the surface of the soil to the 
