eae ae [Dec. 1,5 
: MONTHLY BOTANICAL REPORT. 
FTER an intermission of a year, we are happy to announce another number of the Exoe 
tic Botany, in which Dr. Smith favours us with, 1. Amomum grandiflorum, a new spe- 
cies introduced by Professor Afzelius from Sierra-Leone, where this learned botanist so- 
journed some time under the auspices of the company. It is se like to the Amomum exsca- 
pum of Dr. Sims in the first volume of the Annals of Botany, that at first we thought it must 
be the same, it seems however to be very distinct, having a much greater number of spa~ 
thaceous bractes, and the termination of the filament being quite entire and obtuse, which 
in exscapum is cleft into two sharp pointed teeth. 9. Zingiber Zerumbet. Mr. Roscoe. haa 
judiciously separated the Gingers from the genus Amomum; see his very learned paper on 
the Scitaminez, published in the eighth volume of the Transactions of the Linnean Society. 
This natural order was very imperfectly known to Linnzus, who had an opportunity of see- 
ing very few living plants belonging to it; on this account we are very glad to see Dr. 
Smith so readily embrace every occasion of bringing us acquainted with them. 3. Andro- 
era rotundifolia, a near relation to Cortusa Gmelini, which in reality, it is here observed, be- 
longs to this genus and not to Cortusa. This is one of Dr. Buchanan’s plants gathered in 
Nepal: as is also, 4 Primula denticulata which seems to approach P. glutinosa, but is a much 
larger plant. 5. Colebrookea oppositifelia. A genus named in honor of Thomas Colebrooke, 
esq. chief judge of the supreme civil and criminal courts for the natives of Bengal, eminent 
for the pains he has taken respecting the plants of that country. Another plant under the 
same generic name occurs in Donn’s Catalogue, but this Dr. Smith finds to be the Globba 
of Linnzus. The striking essential character of Colebrookea consists in the teeth of the 
calyx, which grow out after flowering into long feathery awns; a still more singular parti- 
cularity is a single solitary seed in a Didynamious plant.. This shrub was also gathered by 
Dr. Buchanan in Nepal. 
The Botanical Magazine for the last month contains: 1. Wachendorfia thyrsifora. The very 
species from which Professor Burman formed his generic character, and one of the most 
stately plants among the Cape bulbs, when in full vigour. It is remarked here to be now 
common in our greenhouses, and to thrive there with very little care. We have however 
very rarely seen it in flower, and never in that perfection, as described by Burman. This 
may perhaps be owing to its not being sufficiently supplied with water, during the growth of 
the flowering stem, of which Burman remarks it is so greedy, as to induce him to believe that" 
it must naturally grow in wet places. 2. Morza ciliata B. a blue flowered variety of one be- 
fore published No. 1012. 3. Heionias Juea, the Veratrum luteum of Linnzus. The fiow- 
ers however are white, and only like many others, turn yellow when dried. 4. Ophiopogon 
japonicus; the Convallaria japonica of former botanists. We have no doubt but that this 
plant forms a genus totally different from Conyallaria. Why the Japanese call it snakes- 
beard, or what sort of beards the serpents of Japan wear, Kampfer has not informed us, or 
we might have been enabled to judge with how much propriety Mr. Gawler has adopted se 
whimsical a name. 5. Echites suberecta 8. We suspect, but have not the means of deter- 
mining, that this is a different species from E. suberecta of Jacquin. 6 Polygonum crispulum; 
supposed by Dr. Sims to bea mere variety of Atraphaxis spinosa of Linnzeus, but has all the 
characters of a Polygonum, and is the same perhaps as frutescens, but Dr. Sims thinks more 
than one species have been confounded under this title, and therefore gives this a new spe- 
cific name, leaving that of frutescens for the one described by l’Heretier. 7. A quarto plate, 
a beautiful figure of Melia Azedarach. Dr. Sims, contrary to the opinion of Professor Swartz, 
believes this and the sempervirens tobe the same, Perhaps the Syrian plant may be different, 
but if so, this seems to have been the species described by Linnzus in his Flora Zeylanica, 
under the name here given. 
In the Botanist’s Repository, we find: 1. Broussonnetia papyrefa or the Paper Mulberry, 
a plant long known in our gardens, but which has not till of late years begun to bear fruit, 
The writer in this work remarks, that it neither belongs to the same class or order as Mo- 
rus. Both, however, do belong to the same order (tetrandria); and many plants, naturally 
congeners, cannot in the artificial system be properly arranged under the same class: an im- 
< . . ‘ oe \o . . ” ‘ 
periection in the system, which no one was more sensibie of than Linnzus himself, and in 
such cases for the most part made his system give way to nature. The single circumstance 
of the male and female flowers being on distinct trees would not have induced the French bo- 
tanists to have separated this genus from Morus: there is the greatest affinity between the 
two; indeed the only generic differences we can perceive are that Broussonetia has the seg- 
ments of the calyx subulate and only one style and a single seed, whereas Morus has the 
former ovate and obtuse, a double style, and the rudiments of two seeds, one of which how- 
ever always proves abortive. These difierences are perhaps sufficient to sepatate the genera in 
a natural system, where no inconvenience would arise from it, as they would still stand close 
together, but it would have been much better to have kept them in the same genus, than to 
have thus forcibly diviced them into different classes. ¢ Prowidendum est, ne planta cognata@ et 
congencres Separentur.” 2. Gnaphalium grandiflorum. It appears to. us that there has beena 
good deal of contusion made between grandiflorum and fruticans ; if we mistake not, the plant 
here 
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