ABELIA FLORIBUNDA. 
73 
ABELIA FLORIBUNDA. 
WITH AN EN GRAYING. 
At one of the meetings of the Royal Botanic Society last 
summer, our attention was caught by a dwarf, half-pendent 
growing little hush, nearly covered with lovely crimson blossoms, 
exhibited among the new plants, by Messrs. Lucombe, Pince, 
and Co., of Exeter. It was there called Vesalia floribunda, an 
appellative it seems to have received in some of the continental 
nurseries from whence it was received, soon after, this name was 
objected to as a barbarism, and by some the plant was referred to 
the genus Russellia , indeed it was supposed to be the R.floribunda 
of Don’s edition of Miller’s Dictionary, but the description of that 
species does not agree with the present plant in many important 
particulars; it is represented as having quadrangular branches 
and stem, with opposite ovate cordate leaves, downy on the mid¬ 
rib beneath, marks fully sufficient to distinguish it from the 
species now figured. 
From the characters given in a recently published synopsis of 
the genus Abelia 3 by Dr. Lindley, in the f Botanical Register,’ 
there remains no doubt of its belonging to that genus, and as we 
do not find any of the species therein enumerated to be at all 
like this plant, we continue the specific term by which it is best 
known, and which it well deserves. It is a plant with many 
slender, somewhat drooping, branches, whose tenuity nearly 
equals that of the branches of the well known Solly a heterophylla ; 
they are amply covered with small deep green, slightly and 
irregularly dentate, leaves, and terminate in large clusters of very 
handsome axillary flowers, the tube of these is from an inch and 
a half to two inches in length, the limb is fiv6 parted, expanding 
nearly or quite flat, and the colour is a pleasing bright rosy- 
crimson, and being copiously produced through the greater part 
of the summer, the plant is indeed an object of great interest, it 
seems to us to be one of the few which, after the charm of 
novelty is passed away, are destined to be continued in collec¬ 
tions for their own intrinsic loveliness ; added to its other quali¬ 
fications is the not less valuable one of possessing a robust 
7 
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