CLITORIA FULGENS, BRIGHT-FLOWERED CLITORIA. 
Class XVII. DIADELPHIA.— Order IV. DECANDRIA. 
Natural Order, LEGUMINOS^E. THE PEA TRIBE. 
Generic Character. — Calyx furnished with two large bracts at the base, five-cleft. Vexillum large. 
Stamens diadelphous, inserted along with the petals, above the base of the calyx. Style rather dilated at 
the apex. Legume linear, compressed, straight two-valved, acuminated by the base of the style, one-celled, 
many-seeded. Seeds usually separated by cellular substance, axillary, pedicillate. 
Section — Centrosema. Calyx campanulate, cleft into five beyond the middle. Vexillum furnished with a 
spur behind. Bracteoles striated lengthwise. Leaves pinnately trifoliate, having one pair of leaves and an 
odd one. 
Specific Character. — Plant a twining evergreen sub-shrub. Stem round, clothed with numerous 
short depressed hairs. Leaflets ovate, pilose, with a fringed margin. Inflorescence racemose, on a stalk six 
inches long. Vexillum scarcely expanding. 
Synonym e . — Centrosema coccinea. — Hort. 
The most fascinating feature of all houses devoted to the display of flowers is, in our mind, those elegant 
plants usually called creepers. Gently supported by the aid of pillars or of trellises, and hanging loosely 
about them, or depending in graceful festoons from the roof, they lend an air of ease and finish that con- 
tributes not a little to enhance the beauty of the general aspect, by divesting it of stiffness and formality. 
The present species is an elegant addition to the number of these plants, and was obtained by Messrs. 
Veitch and Sons, of Exeter, who exhibited a specimen at the Horticultural fete at the Chiswick Gardens 
as a species of Centrosema, one of the divisions of the genus Clitoria. It was discovered by their collector, 
Mr. William Lobb, growing on rocks, — over which the graceful slender branches spread in all the wild 
luxuriance of nature, — on the Organ Mountains of Brazil, in the autumn of 1840; and seeds were received 
from him, at the Exeter Nursery, in the spring of 1841. These were sown immediately, and produced plants 
which flowered for the first time, though rather scantily, autumn 1843. The abundance, however, in which 
the blossom buds have been developed during the spring, justify us in considering it most likely to prove a 
very free-blooming plant. 
The long, slender, and slightly hairy stems are well adorned with handsome foliage, having a smooth 
and bright green upper surface, and the lower side of a paler hue, covered with numerous very short soft 
hairs. The slightly depressed position of the leaves has a pretty appearance, especially when the stems are 
trained spirally round a basket, as they then fall over each other in a neat and loosely tiled manner. From 
the axils of the leaves, the flowers are produced in a clustered head, supported on a stiff and wiry peduncle 
five or six inches long, elevating them sufficiently above the foliage to display, without interruption, the 
bright and glowing scarlet blossoms. 
It has, hitherto, been cultivated in a house intermediate betwixt the stove and greenhouse, but it may 
probably be found to succeed pretty well in the ordinary temperature of the greenhouse. It thrives well in a 
mixture of peat, loam, and sand, and when removed from a small pot to a large one, its natural situation 
amongst rocks would point out the propriety of intermingling with this compost a few pieces of porous broken 
pot or charcoal, to keep the soil open, and facilitate drainage. And, although it will need a reasonable 
abundance of water during the season of growth, it will be proper to limit the supply in winter, as moisture 
is then liable to injure it, especially with a low temperature. 
Seeds have not yet been produced in this country, but it strikes root with tolerable freedom, from 
cuttings.* 
Many of our readers, though fond of gardens will learn perhaps, for the first time, that trees are cheaper 
things than flowers; and that at the expense of not many shillings, they may plant a little shrubbery, or 
make a rural skreen for their parlour or study windows, of woodbine, guelder-roses, bays, arbutus, ivy, 
virgin’s bower, or even the poplar, horse-chesnut, birch, sycamore, and plane-tree of which the Greeks were 
so fond. A few roses also, planted in the earth, to flower about his walls or windows in monthly succession, 
are nothing in point of dearness to roses or other flowers purchased in pots. Some of the latter are never- 
theless cheap and long-lived, and may be returned to the nursery-man at a small expense, to keep till they 
* Paxton’s Magazine of Botany. 
