101 
HOVE A PUNGENS. 
(pointed-leaved hovea.) 
CLASS. ' 
MONADELPIIIA. 
NATURAL ORDER. 
LEGUMINOSvE. 
Generic Character.— Vide vol.iii. p. 241. 
Specific Character. — Plant shrubby, growing from eighteen inches to two feet high. Stem roundish, 
erect, branching, covered with long brown hairs. Leaves linear, pungent, sessile, convolute at the 
margins, indistinctly reticulated, smooth. Flowers solitary, axillary. Corolla papilionaceous ; wings 
bright blue, keel purple. 
Among the vegetable tribes, the instances are by no means common in which 
such a striking uniformity of colour exists in the species of a genus as in Hovea; 
and still more rarely is that colour an agreeable one. Blue flowers, of various 
shades, sometimes containing a combination of red, and thus forming purple, and 
again occasionally approaching to grey, characterize the whole of the species of 
Hovea that have yet been introduced to British collections. 
It need scarcely be added to the above statement, that this genus is accounted 
a peculiarly interesting one. Some of the species (for example, H. Celsii, a figure 
of which appeared in vol. hi. p. 241) having flowers of a much brighter blue than 
others, are universally esteemed and cultivated. With this class may be ranked 
H. pungens, the blossoms of which are of even a deeper hue than that just men- 
tioned, while its slender and graceful habit contributes greatly to exhibit them to 
advantage. 
The remarkable similarity in the colours of the flowers, renders it necessary to 
refer to the leaves for specific marks of distinction, and the greater number of 
species are consequently named in accordance with the form of these organs. In 
the species now under consideration, the foliage is particularly short and narrow, 
but its prominent feature is the stout, pointed prickle by which it is terminated. 
In other respects it resembles some of the rest of this family, but is dwarfer, more 
compact, exhibits a greater tendency to branch, and has somewhat smaller flowers. 
ORDER. 
DECANDRIA. 
