sp 
ll 
ERICA LEEANA. 
EKICA LEEANA,— Yah. : VIRIDIS. 
Nat. Order. — Eeicacex. 
Generic Character.— Erica, Linnaeus — Calyx four-toothed 
or four-parted. Corolla hypogynous, varying — globose, urceo- 
late, campanulate, or salver-shaped ; limb four-toothed. Stamens 
eight, inserted beneath a hypogynous disk, included or exserted ; 
filaments free; anthers terminal or lateral, distinct or cohering 
at the base, unarmed, awned, or crested, cells bursting by an 
orifice at the summit. Ovary four-celled, cells -with many 
ovules; style filiform; stigma capitate, cup-shaped, or peltate. 
Capsule four-celled, loculicidally four-valved, valves septiferous 
in the middle, the septa opposite or alternate to the angles of 
the four-sided or four-ringed central placentiferous column, 
sometimes adnate. Seeds numerous, oval, reticulated. — Shrubs 
not very common in middle and southern Europe, of vast num- 
ber of species and forms at the Cape of Good Hope, peculiar in 
habit ; leaves alternate, opposite, or whorled, acicular, flowers 
axillary or terminal, with three bracts, close to or distinct from 
the calyx, the pedicels sometimes provided with involucral 
leaves at the base.— [Endlicher Gen. Plant., 4313.) 
Erica Leeana, Dryander.— Lee's Heath. — Leaves rigidly 
linear, erecto-incurved or spreading ; flowers shortly stalked in 
whorled spikes ; bracts approximating to the calyx and half 
equalling or surpassing it; sepals lanceolate-linear, rather 
glabrous and clammy ; corolla clavate-tubular, rather incurved, 
ribbed, hairy-scabrous, clammy, a little contracted below the 
mouth ; ovary very downy at the summit. 
Yar. viridis, Zeyher.— Green Lee's Heath. — Corollas eight to 
ten lines long, yellowish green, hairy and very clammy. 
Stn. — Erica viridis, Andrews ; Syringodea viridis, G. Don. 
ITjESCEIPTIOjN'. — Stem shrubby, erect, the branches mostly simple, erect, and rigid. Leaves 
Qz* in whorls of six, linear, obtusely pointed, spreading, or finally recurred. Flowers arising 
near the ends of the branches, crowded in whorls from the midst of the leaves, shortly stalked, 
horizontal ; calyx four-leaved, clammy, with lanceolate-linear segments, appressed to the corolla, 
and with three bracts appressed to itself ; corolla cylindrical or somewhat clavate, from three- 
quarters to one inch long, a little curved, green, clammy, and roughish, the segments of the 
limb reflexed ; stamens eight, capillary ; anthers without appendages, included ; ovary depressed- 
globular, downy ; style filiform ; stigma four-sided. 
History. — Native of the Cape of Good Hope, long since introduced into this country, but 
rare in cultivation. The species appears to be very variable in the size and especially the 
colour of the corolla. The plant figured is more delicate in habit than specimens in Zeyher's 
collections, but there appears to be no doubt of its identity with Andrews's E. viridis, which we 
have referred to Leeana, according to the views propounded in De Candolle's Prodromus. Our 
drawing was made last summer, from a fine plant in the collection of the Messrs. Eollisson of 
Tooting, Surrey. — A. H. 
Culture. — For the culture of Ericas, we refer to various articles and the Calendars of our 
previous volumes. 
Kegfttkb 3%5inlDgt[. 
r 
By ARTHUR HENFREY, Esq., F.L.S., Lecturer on Botany at St. George's Hospital. 
ABSORPTION. 
i7N the last paper I briefly considered the more important phenomena presented by young plants 
during their liberation from the last traces of dependance, — in that stage of existence in which 
they are forming their first instruments of self-support, at the expense of food provided for that 
purpose before they became separated from the parent plant. When their rudimentary organs have 
become developed sufficiently to undertake their appropriate functions, when the root and leaves have 
arrived at a size and condition which enable them to fulfill the offices connected with nutrition, the inde- 
pendent Life may be said to have begun ; and with the examination of this we cuter upon the con- 
sideration of a series of operations of much greater complexity, and upon the investigation of a 
collection of facts which at present we are by no means able to reduce under settled law and order in 
our conceptions of them, regular and harmonious as they are in their occurrence in living nature. 
With the assumption of a definite form and the acquisition of a certain size, a plant (if it belong 
to any but the lowest tribes) begins to exhibit a difference of function in its different parts. The 
portion of the axis growing downward, the root, makes its way into the midst of the sources of nutri- 
ment, and becomes exclusively devoted to the absorption of external matters for the support of the 
whole plant. The stem ascends to push out leaf after leaf, and freely expose them to the light and 
air, increasing at the same time in bulk, so that it may possess sufficient strength to support the ever- 
increasing weight. Its surface while young partakes of the functions of the leaves; luit the main 
physiological importance of the stem generally consists in its constituting the medium of commoni- 
YOL. III. V 
m w^ 
^^eN 
