221 
THUNBERGIA GRANDIFLORA. 
(large-flowered thunbergia.) 
CLASS. ORDER. 
DID YN AM I A. ANGIOSPERMIA. 
NATURAL ORDER. 
ACANTIIACE/E, 
Generic Character. — Vide vol. iii. p. 28. 
Specific Character. — Plant sub-shrubby, climbing, perennial. Stems woody, with the young shoots 
a little hairy, and slightly quadrangular. Leaves opposite, petiolate, spreading, angularly cordate, 
with five or seven nerves, somewhat roughened on both sides by small, white hairs. Petioles erect, 
nearly as long as the leaves, smaller towards the base. Peduncles axillary, one-flowered. Calyx 
two-valved, about as long as the throat of the corolla, with no interior segments. Corolla cam- 
panulate, very large, pale blue ; limb five-parted, lobes nearly round, two upper ones erect, three 
lower spreading. 
Like the fine species of Blandfordia depicted in a previous page of this 
Number, the noble Thunbergia, to which attention is now more immediately 
invited, has had to sustain for a time the contumely of the fanciful, to make room 
for numbers of the far less worthy acquisitions of modern collectors. But whether 
it be because the favourite of one day, though discarded the next, is, if possessing any 
decided claims to regard, almost certain to be reinstalled at some subsequent period, 
or whether, as we would fain believe, the public taste is becoming less fickle, and 
more in accordance with staid principles ; we are pleased to see the subject of these 
strictures again making its way to popular esteem, and attaining that place in a 
collection of stove plants which it so well deserves. 
Within the last five years we can remember observing this plant, with a most 
miserable aspect, in nursery and other establishments, cramped into a small pot, 
almost smothered by larger specimens, and exclaimed against as a species which 
hardly ever blossomed ; the truth of the matter being that it never had any 
opportunity of making other than the most slender shoots, which, not being able 
to arrive at maturity from the circumstances amidst which they were formed, did 
not, of course, develop any flowers. Such, indeed, is very generally the case with 
stove-plants that are called shy bloomers ; the cultivator's bad treatment and not 
