HOUSTO'NIA CjERU'LEA. 
BLUE-FLOWERED HOUSTONIA. 
Class. Order. 
TETRANDRIA. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order. 
gentianea:. 
Native of 
Height. 
Flowers in 
Duration. 
Introduced 
N. America. 
5 inches. 
June, Aug. 
Perennial. 
in 1785. 
No. 493. 
Doctor W. Houston, in honour of whom this plant 
was named, resided, we are told by Sir J. E. Smith, 
several years in the West Indies, and was a corres- 
pondent of Miller, between 1728 and 1732. Some 
engravings, by his own hand, of the parts of fruc- 
tification of various new genera of plants, came into 
Miller’s hands, who sent an impression of them in 
1736 to Linneus. Most of these plates were pur- 
chased, with Miller’s herbarium and papers, by Sir 
Joseph Banks, who printed and liberally distributed 
an edition of them, with the Latin descriptions and 
remarks of the author, under the title of Reliquiae 
Houstounianae, in quarto, in 1781, a work which is 
now somewhaj scarce. 
This is a charming little plant, both for pot cul- 
ture and the parterre, and especially for artificial 
rock-work, or stone borders; where, under the south- 
ern side of the rugged mineral, it may luxuriate in 
beauty, and bid defiance to the northern breeze. 
The ‘experienced cultivator alone can duly estimate 
the value of such rough nurses as rest on a stone 
border — nurses beneath whose shelter, he may an- 
ticipate the rise of springing beauties, the incoming 
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