DRACOCE'PHALUM CANES'CENS. 
CANESCENT DRAGON’s-HEAD. 
Class. Order. 
DIDYNAMIA. GYMNOSPERMIA. 
Natural Order. 
labiata:. 
Native of 
Height. 
Flowers in 
Duration. 
Introduced 
Levant. 
2 feet. 
July, Aug. 1 
Annual. 
in 1711. 
No. 502. 
The Greek words dracon, cephale, signifying 
Dragon’s-head, have been compounded in allusion 
to an imaginary likeness of the flower to the head 
of an imaginary animal, see No. 57. Canescens is 
a term appropriately used in reference to the close 
whitish pubescence with which the leaves of this spe- 
cies are covered. 
Notwithstanding this showy annual has been in- 
troduced to England upwards of a century, it is, 
comparatively, little known. Its pretension to a 
place amongst the best annuals that we know is how- 
ever undoubted. Flowers have a destiny. Many 
plants of great beauty are, sometimes, scarcely ac- 
ceptable on account of their attractions being infe- 
rior to those of some similar subject. We know no 
blue-flowered didynamous annual that may be es- 
teemed a direct competitor with this. Such absence 
of rivalry, therefore, must make it the more de- 
sirable. 
It is of the most easy culture, requiring only to 
be sown in the borders, at the end of March. If a 
hotbed be at command, plants may be forw arded so 
as to obtain an earlier blossom. 
Hort. Kew. 2, v. 3, 420. 
