SPATIIOGLOTTIS FORTUNI. 
551 
indeed, they "are not unlike the spotted Japan 
lilies, and, like them, also very fragrant." Sir 
W. Hooker states, that the young plant pre- 
sented to the Royal Botanic Garden of Kew, 
when yet only a few months old, but set on 
the table of a stove heated below by the tank 
system, threw out flower buds from most of 
the dichotomies of the young horizontal 
branches ; and, in the month of March, no 
fewer than ten of the noble flowers were 
expanded at one time. It is also stated that 
a plant sent as a just rooted cutting, a short 
time previous, was returned in bloom, from the 
Exeter nursery, for the purpose of being 
figured. " So freely does this beautiful species 
of Gardenia produce its lovely blossoms." 
This Gardenia is of easy cultivation in the 
stove. Mr. Glendinning, who became pos- 
sessed of some of the plants brought by 
Mr. Whitfield, and has cultivated it during 
the past summer, recommends it to be grown 
in rough peat earth, leaf-mould, and silver 
sand, in nearly equal proportions. " Let the 
pots be well drained, and place a little moss 
over the drainage, to prevent the compost from 
mixing with the drainage ; place the plant in 
a rather high temperature in a close house or 
pit, and give abundance of atmospheric mois- 
ture. Under these circumstances, the cultiva- 
tion and flowering of this choice exotic will be 
certain and complete." 
Some idea of the magnificence of this plant 
may be gathered from the fact that the 
flowers are nine inches long, and five inches 
across. The tube of the flower is of a fine 
deep purple colour, and the five broadly ovate 
segments of the limb of the corolla, " purple 
and white without, pure white within, with a 
shade of blush near the mouth, and covered, 
except at the margin, with oblong dots of deep 
purple elegantly arranged in oblique lines." 
When the flowers begin to fade, the purity of 
the white margin gives place to a delicate 
flesh colour. 
GOMPHOLOBIUM VERSICOLOR,; 
VARIETY, CAtTLIBUS PURPUREIS. 
* (Hooker.) 
THE PTJRPLE-STEMMED VARIETY OF THE 
CHANGEABLE GOMPHOLOBIUJI. 
The Gompholobiums are showy, pea- 
flowered, slender-growing, green-house plants, 
of great beauty, but of a somewhat delicate 
constitution, and requiring especial care to 
bring them to any considerable degree of 
perfection. Two or three species which are 
pretty generally in the hands of cultivators, 
are, however, produced at the grand metro- 
politan floral exhibitions, in a state of great 
beauty, and quite covered with their showy 
flowers ; and this is especially the case with 
G. polymorphum, a slender species of climbing 
or trailing habit, and bearing lar^re bright 
orange-crimson flowers. They belong to the 
natural order Leguminaceae. 
The present plant, which is a variety of 
G. versicolor, with purple-coloured stems, has 
been introduced by Messrs. Lucombe, Pinco, 
and Co., of the Exeter nursery, from Swan 
River ; and was flowered by them in May 
1845, and produced at the exhibition in the 
garden of the Royal Botanic Society, in the 
Regent's Park. Sir W. Hooker's intermina- 
ble name, though not inappropriate, is of 
very inconvenient length. 
The habit of the plant is that of an upright, 
twiggy shrub, rather inclined to grow tall and 
thin, unless kept within more desirable limits 
by timely pruning ; it, however, bears cutting 
well, and then assumes a more bushy habit, 
and flowers very freely. The stems are 
furnished with alternate trifoliolate leaves, 
the segments of which are rather broadly 
linear ; and, from the upper part of the 
branches of the plant, the flowers are produced 
in little axillary racemes of two or three 
together : the flowers are large, pea-shaped, 
and a rich deep red colour. 
It is a green-house plant, requiring similar 
treatment to the other species ; that is, to be 
potted in a soil of sandy peat earth in a rough 
turfy state, in pots perfectly well drained ; to 
be carefully and regularly supplied with water, 
in very moderate potations through the winter 
months, and more liberally, though guardedly, 
in summer ; to be allowed the free access of 
air, when mild and genial ; to be shaded from 
intense sun heat in summer, and to be 
guarded from frost in winter ; and at that 
season placed as fully in the influence of light 
as may be possible. 
SPATHOGLOTTIS FORTUNI. 
(Lindley.) 
MR. FORTUNE'S SPATHOGLOTTIS. 
This is a dwarf and rather pretty Orchi- 
daceous plant, and one of those which are 
called terrestrial, in consequence of their 
growing in the soil, in contradistinction to 
those which are epiphytal, that is, growing on 
the branches and trunks of trees, rocks, stones, 
and deriving stability or support only (not 
nourishment) from those substances. It grows 
up with two lance-shaped plaited leaves, and 
by the side of these springs up a stem about a 
foot high, bearing four or five rather handsome 
pale yellow flowers, the sepals and petals of 
which are ovate, and the lip divided, the two 
side lobes being blotched with crimson, and 
the middle lobe cuneate, or wedge-shaped. 
It is a native of the granite-formed moun- 
tains of Hong Kong, where it was gathered 
