FLORICULTURAL NOTICES. 
45 
floating in the water, speedily produce broad masses of leaves, cut up into myriads of irritable 
leaflets." It is common in tropical America, and has been received from "Guinea, Mexico, 
Brazil, and various West India islands." Various names have been given to it, in consequence of 
the different appearances to which it is subject. 
" It seems to be a perennial, and in cultivating it, water of a temperature of 80° will be required." 
Bot. Reg., 3. 
Oxa v lis sensitiVa. " This curious little sensitive plant often comes up among mould received 
from the East Indies, and, being an annual, will sometimes take possession of the soil in the garden- 
pots of hothouses, so as to become troublesome. It is found wild over all the tropics of Asia ; 
or at least, if there are several species confounded under the same name, some one or other is 
there found." It was raised in the gardens of the Horticultural Society, from seeds sent from 
China by Mr. Fortune. Rumphius states, that in Amboyna the leaves are so extremely irritable 
they cannot bear the least breath of air upon them, which, if they experience, they close up. No 
such sensibility is exhibited in the plants grown in the hothouse. Bot. Reg., 68. 
Peristoma Ba'rkeri. « The only figure yet given of this fine Orchideous plant is in 
Mr. Bateman's splendid work ; but admirable as is his representation, even an imperial folio page 
does not suffice to render justice to this species of Peristeria. Its leaves are two feet long, and are 
erect, or nearly so, from the summit of a pseudo-bulb, which is from five to seven inches long, 
The scape emerges from the base of the pseudo-bulb, and is pendent, thus adding a foot or a foot 
and a half to the space required to include a whole-length figure. It justly bears the name of 
Mr. Barker, of Birmingham, whose collector, Mr. Ross, detected and introduced it to this country, 
from the dark ravines with which the neighbourhood of Xalapa, in Mexico, abounds. Like the 
other species of the genus, it flowers rather freely, and, as Mr. Bateman remarks, loves a powerful 
heat, plenty of water, and abundance of pot-room. Our plant flowered in November, 1843, in the 
Royal Gardens of Kew." Bot. Mag., 4203. 
From some peculiarity in the structure of their flowers, Dr. Lindley separates P. Barheri and 
P. Rumboldti from Peristeria, and makes of them the genus Acineta. 
P.eo\\ia Witman'niana. Dr. Lindley writes, " A more remarkable acquisition than a yellow 
P<zony, not a pale straw-coloured species, which is only a spoiled white, but a true yellow-flowered 
plant, does not often occur." It was sent to the garden of the Horticultural Society, in October^ 
1842, from Mr. N. de Hartwiss, who received it from Abcharia, and who is director of the Nikita 
Garden in the Crimea. 
" The species has much the appearance of Pceonia cretica ; it is quite as hardy, grows where 
any other Pceonia will grow, and flowers in May. At present we believe that the plant in the 
garden of the Horticultural Society is unique in this country." 
Dr. Lindley states, " We understand that twenty-five guineas was demanded for a single plant 
in one of the great continental nurseries." Bot. Reg., 9. 
Rhynchoglos'sum zeyla'ntcum. " A lovely little plant, sent from Ceylon by Mr. Gardner, 
with flowers of a bright blue, arranged in long, one-sided racemes, and leaves with singularly 
unequal sides, like those of many Begonice, and of a peculiarly tender green colour. The genus is 
Loxotis of Mr. Brown, in Horsfield's f Plants of Java,' Fasc. 1, p. 102, t. 24, and the species there 
admirably figured and described, so much resemble the present one that at first I was unwilling to 
consider them distinct ; but in all the many flowers I have examined there is uniformly in our 
plant such a difference in the lower lip, short and broadly ovate, not twice the length of the upper 
lip, and much shorter than the tube ; in Mr. Brown's Loxotis obliqua, oblong or strap-shaped, 
longer even than the tube of the corolla, obscurely tridentate, that I cannot but describe the 
present as new. Mr. Brown was doubtful if his genus was the same with the Rliynchoglossum of 
Blume, but De Candolle having apparently decided that point in favour of Blume's name, I follow 
De Candolle in adopting it." Bot. Mag., 4198. 
ReeVesia thyrsoi'dea. Sir W. J. Hooker writes, " The interesting plant here represented, 
drawn from the stove of the Royal Gardens of Kew, in July, 1845, is a native of China, and was 
first made known to botanists through John Reeves, Esq., a gentleman long resident in Canton, 
distinguished for the many services he rendered to Natural History, and Botany in particular, and 
in honour of whom this plant is named by Dr. Lindley. Its affinity with Helicteres is very 
striking. Entllicher forms of it, with Ungeria, a little group which he calls Reevesics, chiefly 
distinguished from Helicteres by the anthers being sessile. It loves a warm greenhouse, and 
