TRITOMA ROOPERII.—NOVELTIES AT THE LONDON EXHIBITIONS. 
113 
TRITOMA ROOPERII.* 
y? IKE all the other Tritomas in cultivation, this is an extremely handsome plant. It is, in some 
AT respects, near T. Burchelli, hut differs obviously from the figures and descriptions of that species in 
its densely-compacted sessile flowers, its very conspicuous bracts, and its included stamens. No other 
described sort seems to approach it. It has been introduced from Kaflraria by Captain E. Rooper, who 
describes it as growing in marshy places ; and we are indebted to the Rev. T. Rooper, of Brighton, 
for the opportunity of figuring it from a specimen which flowered last spring, in his African frame. 
Mr. Rooper has since informed us that it has been flowering in the open air; and he writes:—“A more 
brilliant flower I have seldom seen ; the upper blossoms are the colour of sealing-wax highly varnished, 
the lower yellow, and when the sun shines it is scarcely possible to look long at it. The specimen I 
sent in the winter was flowered in the frame, and did not do justice to the plant. It is easily piopa- 
gated by offsets, and, I believe, is hardy ; at least, all the protection it had last winter was a broken 
hand-light.” Captain Rooper describes it as tuberous-rooted, and varying to deep red. 
It is a half-hardy, or perhaps hardy, perennial, with a fleshy root-stock, terminated by a crown of 
leaves. These leaves are upwards of four feet long, two inches broad at the base, and tapering 
gradually to a long point; they are recurvo-arcuate, carinate, striate, smooth ou the keel, and having 
an entire narrow cartilaginous border below, minutely cartilagineo-serrulate above, especially near 
the apex. The scape is a foot high, leafless, solid, with a few large bracts below the spike, and termi¬ 
nating in a crown or coma of crowded membranous bracts, subtending abortive flowers. The spike is 
roundish-ovate, the flowers sub-sessile and pendulous, very densely arranged in spiral series. The 
pedicels are very short, with a bract at the base of each. These bracts are scarious, those of the 
gpjj£0 oblong-ovate obtuse, with three to five fuscous nerves; they are half an inch long, entire, 
becoming smaller, narrower, and more acute upwards; those of the crown aie oblong-acute, 01 even 
acuminate, one to three-nerved, and have glandular serratures. The peiianth is tubulai, slightly 
curved, narrowed' above the base, an inch and three-quarters long, flame-coloured or orange-red on 
the upper side, greenish-yellow below, six-nerved, the nerves green; the limb consists of six shoit 
erectish ovate-obtuse segments, the three inner recurved at the apex, the three outer somewhat 
shorter, and their apices incurved. There are six hypogynous unequal included stamens, with distinct 
filaments and ovate anthers. Styles three, more or less consolidated in one, the stigmas spirally con¬ 
torted. Ovary ovate-conical, three-furrowed, obsoletely three-sided, three-celled, the cells many- 
seeded.—M. 
NOVELTIES AT THE LONDON EXHIBITIONS. 
JB S usually happens, the July shows have been deficient in novelties, as well as on the whole 
AX i ess attractive than the earlier fetes. The Pelargoniums at the Regent s Park, and the Heaths 
and Roses at Chiswick, were the prominent features. At both, especially the former, the miscellaneous 
stove and greenhouse plants looked “ fagged,” though there were some striking exceptions; and at 
both, also, the Orchids were far inferior to those produced on former occasions. Nothing remarkable 
has been produced among fruits. 
At the Regent’s Park, the most noticeable novelty was a narrow-petalled orange-colouied vaiiety 
of Rhododendron javanicum , or perhaps a distinct species; in this case the tube of the flowei was 
narrow, and the segments of the limb narrower and more reflexed than occurs in the ordinary 
Javanese Rhododendron, more resembling the figures of R. Brookeanum. This came from Messrs. 
Lane, of Berkhampstead. An indifferent plant of a rather pretty blue-flowered stove annual, called 
Klugia Notonicina, came from Messrs. Henderson. There was also a starved example of some South 
* Tritoma Eooperii, n. sp.—Leaves very long, recurved, carinate, taper-pointed, minutely cartilagineo-serrulate above; spike 
rounflLsh-ovate ; flowers sub-sessile, densely crowded in the axils of oblong-obovate scanous bracts, which are obtoe, with three 
fuscous nerves, the upper ones acute or acuminate, one to three-nerved, with glandular serratures, and formmg a coma 
above the developed flowers ; stamens included.—M. Q 
