PETUNIA NYCTAGINIFLO'RA 
LARGE-FLOWERED PETUNIA. 
Class. Order. 
PENTANDRIA. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order. 
S0LANE./E. 
Native of 
Height. 
Flowers in 
Duration. 
Introduced 
S. America. 
4 feet. 
July, Oct. 
Perennial. 
in 1824. 
No. 208. 
The Petunia is closely allied to nicotiana, or to- 
bacco ; and the general Brazilian name for this being 
petum, or petun, seems to have occasioned Jussieu’s 
adoption of our present generic term. Nyctagini- 
flora, from Nyctago, produced in the night; an 
appellation applied by the same author to the Marvel 
of Peru, which our present subject resembles. 
The Petunia nyctaginiflora was first discovered 
by Commerson, on the Rio de la Plata; a South 
American river of immense extent, formed by the 
united streams of the Paraguay and Parana, each 
of which probably traverses a line of two thousand 
miles previous to their union. After the conflux of 
these, under south latitude 27° or thereabouts, the 
Rio de la Plata flows a distance of six hundred miles, 
and presents an expanse of majestic waters appa- 
rently but little inferior to the ocean itself; spreading 
more than an hundred miles from shore to shore, and 
occasionally overflowing its banks, and diffusing a 
fertility, similar to the waters of the Nile. 
“ Scarce the muse 
Dares stretch her wing o’er the enormous mass 
Of rushing water; scarce she dares attempt 
