ACHIMENES LONGIFLORA. 
(Long-flowered Achimenes.) 
Class. 
DIDYNAMIA. 
Order. 
ANGIOSPERMIA. 
Natural Order. 
GESNERACEjE. 
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 glandulose 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.— Plant anherbaceous perennial. 
Root tuberous. Stems inclining to a square figure, 
nearly simple, hairy. Leaves opposite, nearly sessile, 
ovate, acute, serrated at the margins, hairy, deep green 
above, light brownish green beneath. Flowers solitary, 
axillary, pedunculate. Corolla with a long tube, curv- 
ing downwards, a little swollen near the top, and ex- 
panding into a large, five-lobed, purple limb. 
Cultivators having been greatly perplexed by the changes that have been 
effected in the name of this genus, we copy the following, by Dr. Lindley, from 
the Botanical Register. " The name now applied to such plants as these was 
originally given by Dr. Patrick Browne, in his History of Jamaica, to two species, 
one of which has long been common in our gardens. At a later period, L'Heritier 
called the latter Cyrilla, and under the name of C. pulchella it is familiar to all 
lovers of beautiful plants ; but as it was very different from the Cyrilla of Linnaeus, 
that name was subsequently cancelled. Then it was that Willdenow proposed the 
name of Trevirana, in which he has been followed by others ; and we think it 
would have been far better if that name had been retained. Nov. 7 , however, 
M. De Candolle, following Persoon and Nees von Esenbeck, has restored the 
name of Achimenes, and it would be more inconvenient to resist the innovation 
than adopt it, since it has taken place in a work so universally employed by 
systematists as the Prodromus of M. De Candolle. Therefore it is that we agree 
to the old Cyrilla pulchella, otherwise Trevirana coccinea, being styled Achimenes 
coccinea, and that we name the present species Achimenes longiflora." 
This very superb plant was introduced in 1841 by Mr. Hartweg to the gardens 
of the Horticultural Society. That active collector had met with it in Guatemala. 
It flowered, as is now well known, for three or four months of last autumn in a 
