A native of Carolina and Virginia, most probably also’of 
some parts of South America. It will not do with us in 
the open ground, where if the root survives for a time, the 
rest dies down in the winter; but in the hothouse it ace 
quires.a stem, and grows with great luxuriance, extending 
itself to the distance of twenty feet or more, if placed in a 
bed prepared in the floor. The bloom is produced in 
abundance for two or three months in succession, while the 
branches continue to advance in’ growth, each flower lasting 
only the day through. Of late it has been cultivated for 
the sake of the fruit, which is sometimes used in the 
dessert. This is about the size and shape ofa large pigeon’s 
egg, or sometimes twice that size, and then more globu- 
lar; when fully ripe, in such as we have seen, it has been 
of a dingy damascene colour, with a yellowish green 
pulp and black-red seed. The flavour is thought to partake 
of that of both the melon and the strawberry; but to 
us the combination seems much inferior to either of these 
fruits singly. In beauty it is evidently behind the more 
‘common and hardy cerulea, introduced from the Brazils 
nearly a century afterwards. We have purposely omit- 
ted the standing synonyms from the works of Jacquin 
and Cavanilles; the figure in the first appearing either to 
belong to another. species, or else to have been chiefly 
put together from description, if not fancy; that in the se- 
cond is manifestly copied from the first. 3 
In the hothouse the stem never dies down to. the 
round. Flower-bearing branches angular, green, fistular, 
lossoming in succession as: they lengthen. Leaves deeply 
three-lobed, of alightish, but bright, green, as well as the 
branches sometimes slightly villous, lobes oblong-ovate, 
acuminate, glandularly serrate, with the teeth curved 
downwards at the point, middle lobe largest: petioles bi- 
glandular. Stipules'small, subulate. Flowers fragrant axil- 
lary, solitary: peduncle triquetral, shorter than the leaf. 
Involucre small, near to the flower, 3-leaved, equal, conni- 
vent, scarcely reaching beyond the tube of the calyx ; leaflets 
rhomboidally ovate, lanceolate, glandularly serrate. Calyx 
about an inch and half deep, thick, spongy, outwards 
deeply dinted in the centre of its base, for about one third 
campanulate, thence 5-parted and rotate; segments oblong, 
whitish within and flat, outwards green and keeled, keel 
deep terminated by a falcately extended mucro or 
point. Petals inserted at the mouth of the campanulated 
