COLEUS BARBATUS. 
(bearded-flowered coleus.) 
CLASS. 
DIDYNAMIA. 
ORDER. 
GYMNOSPERMIA. 
NATURAL ORDER. 
LABIATE. 
Generic Character. — Calyx ovate-campanulate, erect, or often declinate or reflexed in the fructiferous 
state ; throat naked or hispid, five-toothed, upper tooth membranous, with the margins rarely 
decurrent ; lower teeth narrowed, all acute, or the lateral ones ovate- truncate ; the two lowermost 
ones often combined. Corolla with an exserted defracted tube, an inflated or equal throat, and a 
bilabiate limb ; upper lip short, bluntly three to four-cleft ; lower one entire, elongated, concave, 
usually boat-shaped. Stamens four, declinate, lower ones the longest ; filaments toothless, con- 
nected at the base into a tube, which sheaths the style ; anthers ovate, reniform, with confluent cells. 
Style subulate at the apex, equally bifid ; stigmas subterminal. Achenia roundish, compressed, 
smooth. 
Specific Character. — Stem suffruticose, ascending, tomentosely hispid. Leaves petiolate, ovate, 
crenated, narrowed at the base, clothed with soft down when young, hispid ; floral leaves membra- 
nous, broadly ovate, acuminate, comose at the tops of the racemes, deciduous. Racemes simple ; 
whorls six-flowered, distant. Calyx hispid ; upper tooth ovate, subdecurrent ; lower tooth lan- 
ceolate, acute, nearly equal. Lower lip of corolla large, stipitate, boat-shaped. 
Synonyms. — Plectranthus barbatus. 
Haying met with this pretty plant in the autumn of last year in a condition 
which gave us a high opinion of its ornamental character, we were led to figure it 
from this circumstance as well as from its apparent rarity. The collection in which 
we saw it so favourably developed, and to which we owe our present drawing, is 
that of Mrs. Lawrence, Ealing Park, where it is cultivated to great perfection in 
a stove. 
The plant grows to a foot or eighteen inches in height, producing many stems 
or principal branches, which have an inclination to recumbency, curving upwards, 
again, at their extremities. The flowers are borne in whorls of six, on a long 
spike, and a considerable quantity are opened at the same time. They also retain 
their beauty for a lengthened period. The regularity with which they are 
arranged round the stem, the singular form of the corolla, and the varied colours of 
