CUMMINGIA TRIMACULATA. 
(Three-spotted Cummingia.) 
Class. 
HEXANDRIA. 
Older. 
MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order. 
LILIACEJE. 
Generic Character — Perianth half-superior, cam- 
panulate, six-cleft, deciduous. Anthers emarginate at 
the base ; filaments very short, wide at the insertion, 
conniving. Ovary three-celled. Ovules indefinite. 
Stigma covered with frosted points. Capsule three- 
celled, dehiscing through the back of the cells ; cells 
few-seeded.— DomV Gard. and Botany. 
Specific Character.— PZan« a bulbous perennial. 
Stem erect, rigid. Leaves linear, channelled, glabrous, 
recurved, spreading. Flowers in loose panicles. Pe- 
dicels thread-shaped, very smooth. Perianth mono- 
petalous, ten-nerved ; limb spreading, longer than the 
tube, three-spotted. Filaments obcuneate. Anthers 
yellow. Style awl-shaped, white. 
The eagerness so universally manifested to possess blue-flowering plants will 
create for the present little species, when brought more generally into cultivation, 
and its qualifications as a becoming and ornamental plant more widely known, a 
greater degree of solicitude than has hitherto been extended towards it. The 
apathy and indifference with which but too many of the most lovely of Flora's 
kingdom are regarded, when the first feelings which their novelty excited have sub- 
sided, is a matter continually exhibited, and our greenhouses and flower-gardens 
are thus prevented from being the gaily decorated places they might be with a 
judicious selection of the plants already in the country. Indeed, the introduction 
of new species, is in some degree at least, an evil, when mere novelty can usurp the 
place of positive merit, and really deserving and engaging plants are disregarded 
with the sole view of making room for a new candidate of inferior pretensions. 
The subject of our embellishment is a Chilian species, and was first known in 
this country through plants collected by the daughter of the British Consul at 
Valparaiso, and forwarded to a friend in England, who presented them to the 
Chelsea Botanic Garden in 1829. The specimen from which our figure was taken 
in the month of June 1842, at Mr« Knight's nursery, was received by that gentle- 
man in 1840, from a friend at Valparaiso, where it is known amongst the natives 
by the name of Pa^vejv, or Paterita. 
The flower-stalk grows about a foot high, and is crowned with a loose and 
spreading panicle of pretty, pendulous, bell-shaped blossoms, attached to short and 
