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TACSONIA MOLLISSIMA. 
TACSONIA MOLLISSIMA. 
(Humboldt, fyc.) 
DOVfNT-LEAVED TACSONIA. 
The Tacsonias are plants nearly allied to j 
the Passion-flowers, from which they may be 
popularly distinguished by the long tube of the 
flower. Tacsonia pinnatistipula, first raised 
and flowered by Mrs. Marryat, of Wimbledon 
House, is now pretty well known, and admired 
on account of its fine pale pink blossoms. At 
one of the meetings of the Horticultural 
Society during the present autumn, we had an 
opportunity of seeing both that and the present 
plant together, thus affording a means of 
contrasting the two, and estimating the com- 
parative merits of the more recently introduced 
species, more accurately than it would have 
been easy otherwise to have done. The blooms 
of T. mollissima are of a much deeper colour 
than those of T. pinnatistipula, the latter being 
a very delicate blush-pink, and the former a 
deep rose-pink, but with rather smaller flowers. 
On the whole, the new one may be expected 
to prove the handsomer of the two. 
It is a climbing shrub, growing to a 
considerable length, with leaves divided deeply 
into three, ovate-lanceolate lobes or segments ; 
they are serrated, and together with the stems 
and leaf stalks, and flower stalks, are downy. 
The flowers are produced singly in the axils 
of the leaves, and consist of a long green tube, 
and five calycine, and five petaline segments, 
together forming ten nearly equal divisions, of 
a lively rose colour. The plant appears to 
produce blossoms throughout the latter end of 
summer and the autumn. 
The present subject was found by Humboldt 
about Santa Fe de Bogota, and by Mr. W. 
Lobb, in woods near Quito. From seeds sent 
by Mr. Lobb, to Messrs. Veitch of Exeter, a 
supply of plants has been raised. It was also 
sent to the Horticultural Society, by Mr. 
Hartweg, and has already been distributed by 
the Society. Like its congener, it requii'es 
only a cool green-house, and is therefore 
peculiarly adapted for planting in a green- 
house conservatory. It is true it is indigenous 
in the tropics of New Granada, but then it 
grows at a height of nine to ten thousand feet 
above the level of the sea, and it is therefore 
evident that a temperate climate will suit it 
best. This has, in fact, been proved by Messrs. 
Veitch, who thus speak of its culture : — " We 
have cultivated it in the stove, but there the 
flowers invariably dropped off before they 
expanded. In a cool green-house it blooms 
freely ; and from what Mr. Lobb has said 
respecting it, and from our own experience, 
we are inclined to think it might survive 
our winter here, (Devonshire,) on a sheltered 
wall, and we shall try the experiment. As a 
conservatory climber it is eminently beautiful, 
and is best cultivated in a mixture of loam and 
peat, with decayed leaves, and a little sharp 
saud." Any moderately rich, light loamy soil 
