268 
DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF NEW PLANTS. 
club-footed protuberance, and these stems divide sparingly into a 
few dumpy branches, each bearing two or three leaves only. Its 
rate of growth is so slow, that half a century is not too great an 
age to assign to an individual scarce afoot high. Its appearance 
is the more singular, because from its leafless, stunted branches 
there appear many very handsome rose-coloured flowers, bordered 
with crimson, and fully two inches long. According to Alfflionse 
Decandolle, this shrub is found in dry places in Wallo and 
Senegambia, where it is commonly called Honghel; we also have 
it from the late Mr. Forbes, who found it at Delagoa Bay. At 
present little is known of the habit of this; but it seems to be 
a plant of easy culture, requiring a dry stove, where it can be 
fully exposed to bright sunshine. It grows well in a mixture of 
peat, loam, and sand, when the pot is well drained. 
FABACEiE. —Monadelphia Decandrici. 
Calycotome spinosa. Everybody who cultivates hardy shrubs 
knows how difficult it is to settle what is a Genista and what a 
Cytissus by the old definitions to be found in books, and this diffi¬ 
culty has been increased by the way in which the species have 
been transferred from one to the other by systematical botanists. 
This has arisen from the original adoption of bad marks of dis¬ 
tinction, unsuited to the purpose for which they were employed, 
and the unscientific dread of “ innovation,” even where most re¬ 
quired. This feeling led to the rejection of Link’s genus Caly¬ 
cotome, although it was perfectly natural, and not to be confused 
with anything else, and notwithstanding the evident advantage of 
one well-defined group from a mass of species collected together 
by vague characters. Mr. Bentham, however, has now accepted 
it, and no doubt can exist of the propriety of doing so, whether 
the technical character (deciduous teeth, and a truncated mem¬ 
branous edge to a calyx subtended by a bract) or the habit (stiff 
spiny yellow-flowered bushes) be regarded. In like manner we 
look forward with confidence to the reception of Boissier’s genus 
Retama for Spartiums like S'. monospermum, of Griesbaeh’s Sys- 
pone for Genista saggitalis, of the same author’s Lembotropis for 
Cytisus nigricans, and even to the restoration of the ancient genus 
Laburnum. C. spinosa is a pretty shrub capable of withstanding 
the ordinary winters in the open border, but injured by severe 
