ROSA BANKSIAE 
which had climbed to the summit of a poplar sixty feet high. The 
tree itself was dead, but the Rose had taken complete possession, and 
when in flower was a wonderfully beautiful sight. 
In 1878 there was a very fine specimen in the garden of the Villa 
Palavacini at Pegli. 
The yellow Banksian Rose does not differ from the type except 
in the colour of its flowers. Roxburgh had both the yellow and white 
varieties growing in the Calcutta Botanic Garden in 1814, and he 
included them in his Hortus Bengalensis under the name of Rosa 
inermis. Lindley appears to have overlooked this mention of a yellow 
form, for in his Monograph of 1820 and again in the Botanical Register 
of 1827 he says that the double white-flowered Banksian was the only 
one hitherto known. There is a good figure in this Botanical Register l 
together with the following account of the introduction of the double 
yellow Banksian into England : “ The attention excited by the in- 
telligence [of the existence of the yellow-flowered variety] led to special 
directions being given on the part of the Horticultural Society to 
Mr. John Damper Parks, who was sent to China in 1823, to omit no 
opportunity of securing this valuable variety, in which he was so fortunate 
as to succeed, having brought home several plants in the Lowther Castle 
East Indiaman, 1824.” 
There is no record of a single yellow form having been found in 
a wild state, although both the white and the yellow varieties with single 
flowers have been in cultivation for about thirty years. Both were 
growing in the old Botanic Garden Dei Simplici in Florence, and 
Baroni, the Curator, published an account of them in the Bullettino 
della R. Societa Toscana di Orticultura , 2 giving the history of their 
origin. The single yellow form was growing in Sir Thomas Hanbury’s 
garden at La Mortola, Mentone, and was by him distributed in England 
in 1871. It flowered at Kew and also at Warley. The drawing of 
the single yellow form in the Botanical Magazine 3 was made from the 
plant growing in Canon Ellacombe’s garden at Bitton in Gloucester- 
shire. The writer of the description accompanying this figure says that 
the single yellow form was found by Dr. Abel growing on the walls 
of Nankin. This statement is misleading, and as it has been copied 
without verification by subsequent writers, it seems worth while to correct 
it here. Dr. Abel merely enumerates some of the plants he saw growing 
on the walls of Nankin, and amongst them mentions “ Rosa Banksiana,” 
but does not describe it in any way . 4 The same article refers to Dr. 
Abel as having gone out to China as physician to Lord Macartney’s 
Embassy in 1792-94. As Dr. Abel was born in 1780 it is impossible 
that he should have accompanied Lord Macartney in this capacity. 
It was to Lord Amherst’s Embassy of 1816 that Abel was attached 
2 Vol. ii. p. 238 (1877). 
4 Journey in Interior of China, p. 160 (1819). 
I06 
1 t. 1105. 
3 t. 7171. 
