“ Sir Joseph Banks is said to haye sent it to Kew about 
the year 1784. It is cultivated in China, as a favourite 
bower plant, though of what precise country a native is not 
known. We have been told it is wild in Sumatra. The late 
Lady Amelia Hume received a fine plant of this species in - 
1789, which covered the stern of the ship with its fragrant 
green blossoms, during a great part of the voyage, and has 
since been widely propagated in this country. It thrives 
-either in a stove or warm conservatory, flowering through- 
out the summer and autumn, and exhaling, in an evening, 
that peculiar, light, lemon-like, but luscious fragrance, of 
which the Chinese are so fond, and which belongs to vari- 
ous greenish night-scented flowers, as the CHnoraNTHuS in- 
‘conspicuus, and some Orchidee. The root is branched, 
widely spreading. Stem shrubby, round, branched, twin- 
ing and climbing to a great extent; downy when young; 
the bark spongy and cracked when old. Leaves opposite, 
stalked, deflexed, heart-shaped, rather taper-pointed, en- 
tire, opaque, veiny, downy at the veins and margin, paler 
beneath, each 2-3 inches long.  S¢ipulas none, but the 
footstalks much shorter than the leayes, are glandular at 
their summit, as well as on each side at the base. Panicles 
axillary, solitary, drooping, forked, many-flowered, downy. 
Bracteas lanceolate; at each division of the panicle. Flowers 
the size of a primrose, pale yellowish-green, bearded within, 
their segments linear-oblong, oblique, the length of the 
tube, fringed.” 
_  Linneeus had in his Herbarium a chinese specimen of 
‘this plant, marked tomentosa, with a’‘note at the back sig- 
nifying that the Catholic clergy at Macao prepare, from its 
‘milky juice, a medicine for the dysentery. We cultivated 
the same in his stove, and described it in his Mantissa. 53. 
‘The name and specific character however do not apply to 
this, but to a very different plant, Forskael’s: Ascuepras 
_ -cordata. Flos siamicus, Rumph. amb. auctuar. 7. 58. t. 26. 
f-1., seems to be intended for our present species; though 
“‘CyNANcHUM Odoratissimum, ‘of Loureiro, by the description 
of the yellow flowers, probably belongs rather to minor.” 
The drawing was taken at Mr. Pamplin’s nursery in the 
‘King’s Road, Chelsea. 
