THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[February 27. 
230 
person, be bis rank what it may, actually detected in 
any dishonourable act, might be denounced throughout 
the union, by merely communicating to all the branches 
that Mr. A. B. is not considered eligible as a member of 
the union. We hope our country friends will consider 
this subject.—E. Y. 
NEW PLANTS. 
THEIR PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES. 
Border-coloured Pharuitis (Pharhitis limbata). 
Gardener’s Magazine of Botany, ii. 217.—J he specific, 
or second, name of this very beautiful Bindweed, indi¬ 
cates the manner in which the two colours are arranged 
in the flower; limbatus, meaning that one colour is bor¬ 
dered round by a different colour—an arrangement of 
colours not usually met with in flowers. The flowers of 
this Bindweed are of a deep violet purple colour, edged 
round with pure white; giving them, at once, a singular, 
interesting, and very handsome appearance. It is an 
annual, a native of Java, whence it was introduced, in 
1848, by the Messrs. Rollisou, nurserymen at Tooting, 
near London. As it produces seeds freely, and only 
requires the same kind of culture as the old Convolvulus 
major, it will soon be as common as that annual, making 
a handsome addition to our half-hardy summer climbers. 
Tlants like this, having very showy flowers, and produc¬ 
ing their seeds abundantly, have been so carried about 
from one country to another by seafaring men, that it is 
difficult to ascertain their native country after a few 
years. It may yet turn out that this plant from Java 
i had been introduced there by a Dutch captain from 
■ some Brazilian port. We have an annual Bindweed 
: from the Brazils, called Pharhitis Nil, which, at first 
I sight, might be mistaken for the subject of our biogra¬ 
phy. A third plant, or a variety of this, was discovered 
by the late Mr. Gardener, in Brazil, which he referred 
to Pharhitis Nil; and the characters by which the three 
; are distinguished one from the other are so slight, that 
we incline to the belief they are referable to the same 
type. Be that as it may, the circumstance does not 
lessen the value of our Java plant. There is a highly j 
finished coloured plate of Pharhitis limbata in the last 
November number of the Gardener's Magazine of 
Botany —the best and most spiritedly conducted work 
of all our gardening monthly periodicals. Pharhitis is j 
a genus recently divided from Ipomcca, and the principal 
distinction between the two families is, that Pharhitis 
has more seeds than four in the capsule, or seed pod, 
the true Ipomcea having only four. The name is derived 
from pharhe, colour; alluding both to the brightness of 
the colour, and to its variation in the same flower at 
different periods. Thus Pharhitis Learii, or Ipomata 
Learii, the finest of the family, opens in the morning a 
light blue, and fades away towards the evening a pale , 
purple. 
The genus Pharhitis was named by J. D. Choisy, a 
Swiss botanist, who is the latest author who studied this 
| order, and arranged the genera in Decandolle's “ Pro- 
dromus,” and in a long memoir published at Geneva in 
1834. His labours among the Bindweeds have been 
very sharply criticised by Mr. Bentham in the London 
Journal of Botany, for May, 1845. Nevertheless, his 
Pharhitis has been acknowledged by Mr. Bentham and 
others in this country as valid, and also his Exogoninm, 
which includes the true Mexican Jalap plant, which 
formerly went by the name of Ipomcea Jalapa and I. 
Purga. 
The source of the Jalap drug was a mystery for many 
years, and is so to this day by the great mass of plant col¬ 
lectors. We cannot, therefore, employ the space allotted to 
this biography better than by giving that of the Jalap plant, 
Exogoninm Purga, of Choisy, or the Ipomcea Purga, and Con¬ 
volvulus Jalapa of other days. Exogoninm is taken from exo, 
outside, and goneuo, to beget; alluding to the stamens being 
exserted, as botanists term it, that is, growing out beyond 
the limb of the flowers; a Bindweed, with exserted stamens, 
must, therefore, be referred in future to the genus Exoyo- 
nium. The true Jalap plant was known to Philip Miller, 
“ the King of Gardeners,” from seedlings of it which he 
reared in the apothecary’s garden at Chelsea; but he did 
not flower it, probably because he mistook it for a stove 
plant, which it is not. He says, “ from a drawing of the 
plant made by a Spaniard, in the country where it grows 
naturally, who gave it to Dr. Houslcnin, and is now in my 
possession, the flowers are shaped like those of the common 
Great Bindweed, each footstalk supporting one flower; but 
as it is only a pencil drawing, so the colour is not expressed, 
therefore I can give no farther account of it.” Having seen 
this plant in (lower in the open air in England, we can make 
up for Miller’s deficiency, by saying the colour is a light 
crimson ; and as the Purga requires about the same kind of 
treatment as the Dahlia from the same country, we recom 
mend it as a fine thing; and we wotdd plant out the roots 
on a south warm border, that the slender stems might have 
the advantage of a south wall. In the neighbourhood of 
Edinburgh, it has been flowered in a plant stove lately, but 
I that was an unnatural way of treating it. The true Jalap 
! plant did not escape the great Humboldt. He says ( New 
I Spain, vol. iii. ), “ The true Purga de Xalapa delights only in 
a temperate climate, or rather an almost cold one, in shaded 
j rallies and on the slope of mountains.” We may, therefore, 
assert confidently that the Jalap plant would repay its culti¬ 
vation in Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, Port Natal, and 
other colonies ; a fact of great importance to practitioners 
in these settlements, were it only to avoid the ill effects of 
the adulterations of the officinal drug, a common practice, 
the roots of the white Bryony, and other less dangerous sub¬ 
stances being mixed with it. The Jalap roots are not much 
