* 
DAUBENTONIA, Benth. THE DAUBENTONIA. 
Nat. Ord. Leguminosse. Lin. Syst. Diadelphous-Decandria. 
Generic Character. —Calyx campanulate, five-toothed. Keel very blunt. Yexillum round¬ 
ish, stipitate. Legume stalked, oblong, compressed, furnished with four wings, and with 
the seeds interrupted with a spongy substance.—(G. Don.) 
DAUBENTONIA TR1PETIANA, Poir. MONSIEUR TRIPET’S 
DAUBENTONIA. 
Engravings. —Our Plate 3. 
Specific Character. —Leaves with 12—15 pairs of oblong, obtuse leaflets, which are mucro- 
nate at the apex.—Racemes erect, superaxillary, a little shorter than the leaves. 
Description, &c. —This beautiful plant has long racemes of from 
fifteen to twenty-five flowers, and abruptly pinnate leaves, with oblong 
stipules. The flowers resemble those of the pea in form, but they are of 
a most brilliant carmine; the standard, which is generally more than an 
inch broad, being of a much deeper tinge than the keel and wings, which 
are nearly orange. The flower-buds are of a beautiful orange scarlet, 
with a dark red calyx, and a purplish foot-stalk. The leaves are glaucous, 
and somewhat silky below, and of a dark green on their upper surface. 
They are alternate, and the flower-stems do not spring from their axils, 
but above them, so as to be quite distinct. 
The species is a native of Buenos Ayres, whence seeds of it were 
sent by M. Boquin, first physician of the government there, to M. Tripet 
Le Blanc, Boulevard des Capucines, No. 19, Paris. M, Le Blanc, who 
is one of the first seedsmen and nurserymen in Paris, sowed the seeds in 
February 1840, in a hotbed-frame. They came up in three weeks, and 
growing rapidly, by August in the same year they had become handsome 
plants three feet high, taking a tree-like character, with a straight stem, 
woody at the base, and a branching head. About the 15th of August 
some of the plants which had been potted, and several times shifted into 
larger and larger pots, and afterwards plunged into a bed in the open air, 
began to show flower-buds; these buds springing, as before remarked, 
not from the axils of the leaves, but from a clear part of the stem, above 
the buds in the axils of the leaves, and quite distinct from them. The 
racemes when they first appeared were small, but they gradually elongated 
themselves as the flowers expanded, till at last some of them were about 
six inches long, with (as before observed) from fifteen to twenty-five 
flowers on each* As the plants grew, fresh flower-buds appeared, so that 
long after the flowers in the lower part of the tree had fallen, and when 
VOL. I.-—NO. III. 
K 
