TROP/EOLUM EDULE. 
(Edible-rooted Indian Cress.) 
Class. 
OCTANDRIA. 
Order. 
MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order. 
BALSAMINACEjE. 
Generic Character. — Calyx five-parted, upper lobe 
furnished with a spur. Petals five, unequal; three 
lower ones smallest, or vanished altogether. Stamens 
eight, free from the base. Carpels three, somewhat 
erose, kidney-shaped, indehiscent, furrowed, roundish. 
Seed large, filling the cell. — Don's Gard. and Botany. 
Specific Character. — Plant an herbaceous climber. 
Root tuberous. Leaves with long tortuous petioles, 
composed of six or seven leaflets ; leaflets slightly 
glaucous, linear-lanceolate, acute, irregularly recurved. 
Peduncles long, glaucous, one-flowered. Calyx with a 
large spur ; segments large, equal, orange-yellow, tinged 
and tipped with green, irregularly veined. Petals 
arising from between the segments of the calyx ; upper 
two obcordate, emarginate, deep and bright orange ; 
lower three smaller, broadly spatulate, also emargi- 
nate. Stamens inclining upwards. 
Tubers of a new Trop&olum were received last year by several cultivators 
from Chili, and imagined to be a blue-flowered species till they blossomed 
in the present spring, which they have done at Mr. Low's and other nurseries, as 
well as in not a few private collections. The species here represented is the result 
of those expectations ; and it was thought to be T. polyphyllum on its first 
developing flowers, while specimens of the same plant, in different states of health, 
were mistaken for the two species T. polyphyllum and T. edule. It is now stated, 
however, in the Gardeners' Chronicle, that the former species is not yet known to 
have been introduced ; while the present plant is the true T. edule, so named from 
the edible purposes to which its roots are applied. 
We procured our drawing, about two months since, from the nursery of Mr. 
Low, Clapton, with whom it had flowered as early as the end of March, and it 
continues to bloom in two or three suburban collections. The finest and best- 
grown specimen that we have seen was reared by Mr. Green, gardener to Sir E. 
Antrobus, Bart., who trains it to a flat trellis, and allows it plenty of pot-room. 
The narrow glaucous segments of its numerously-divided leaves constitute a 
mark of distinction at all times. It is not a strong-growing species, varying in 
this respect, like T. tricolorum, according as its treatment is more or less favourable. 
The flowers (that is, the exteriors of the calyx) have a deep greenish hue while in 
bud. and when opened the petals are of a very showy and bright orange colour, 
