ERYTHRINA CARNEA. FLESH-COLOURED CORAL TREE. 
Class XVII. DIADELPHIA. Order III. DECANDRIA. 
Natural Order, LEGUMINOSiE. THE PEA TRIBE. 
The plant which is represented is not the genuine Erythrina carnea, but a downy-leaved variety, with 
smaller flowers, and a less prickly stem. For the opportunity of figuring the species, as originally described 
by Miller, and drawn by Ehret, we are indebted to the Counte de Vandes, in whose hothouse at Bayswater 
our specimen was produced. 
A native of the hottest parts of South America, particularly of Vera Cruz and Santa Martha, whence 
seeds were originally sent to Miller by Houston. It is rather a handsome plant while in flower, but not 
particularly worth cultivating at any other time. 
Stem furnished with short, hooked prickles. Leaves ternate, roundish ovate, very slightly cordate at 
the base, acute, smooth on each side, with a slightly prickly petiole. Racemes appearing along with the 
leaves, from 4 to 6 inches long, erect, very slightly pubescent. Calyxes tubular, truncate, with 5 small cre- 
natures. Corolla pale flesh-colour, about an inch and a half long ; vexillum linear; alee and carina of equal 
length, both included within the calyx, acute. Ovarium pubescent.* 
Plants are distinguished, for their multiplicity and variety ; for that exuberance of imagination and 
taste which they display, and for that sense of elegance and beauty which their Maker must have had, to 
have so formed and diversified them. They are entirely the creation of His choice — the inventions of His 
rich and beautiful fancy. Their attractive shapes and qualities, and the abundant gratifications and im- 
portant uses which we and our fellow animals derive from them, explicitly show that kindness as well as 
goodness actuated His mind when He projected and made them. They have been all individually designed : 
and special thought must have been employed in each; both in fixing their specific differences of form and 
products, and in perceiving what particular combinations and variations of arrangements would effect in 
every one its appointed end and use. 
The Vegetable kingdom expands every where before us an immense portraiture of the Divine Mind, 
in its contriving skill, profuse imagination, conceiving genius, and exquisite taste ; as well as in its inter- 
esting qualities of the most gracious benignity and the most benevolent munificence. The various flowers 
we behold, awaken these sentiments within us, and compel our reason to make these perceptions and this 
inference. They are the annual heralds and ever-returning pledges to us of His continuing beneficence, of 
His desire to please and to benefit us, and therefore of His parental and intellectual amiabilities. They 
come to us, together with the attendant seasons that nurse and evolve them, as the appointed assurances 
that the World we inhabit is yet to be preserved, and the present course of things to go on. 
The recorded promise is, that ‘While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat 
and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease? Gen. ch. viii., ver. 22.. . This declaration 
has been since steadily fulfilled for nearly forty two centuries. 
The Thunder, the Pestilence, and the Tempest, awe and humble us into dismaying recollections of His 
tremendous omnipotence and possible visitations, and of our total inability to resist or avert them ; but the 
beauty and benefactions of His Vegetable Creations — the Flowers and the Fruits more especially — remind 
and assure us of His unforgetting care, of His condescending sympathy, of His paternal attentions, and of 
the same affectionate benignity still actuating His mind, which must have influenced it to design and execute 
such lovely and beneficent productions, that display the minutest thought, most elaborate compositions, and 
so much personal kindness. 
The command for the rise of the Vegetable Kingdom presents them to us in the three natural divisions of 
— the Grasses, the Herbs, and the Trees ; and it extended to ordain their appearing with their reproductive 
powers for the formation of their seeds and fruits, in order to provide for their perpetuation on Earth in an 
unfailing succession, without any new creation. The Deity chose that His own agency, and the secondary 
forces it would employ, should take the form of that organical productivity which is still as great a mystery 
as it has ever been — which no natural properties or powers perceptible in external nature can at all explain 
— and which can therefore be justly referred only to His superintending and actuating Power, that prefers 
Botanical Register. 
