Botanical Magazine 106 - 1880.pdf - hibiscus.org

into cultivation, though so stated by Paxton. The splendid
specimen here figured was flowered by the late deeply-
lamented Dr. Moore of Glasuevin, who was also the first to
flower B. grandiceps. In a letter received with the plant
from him in March of last year, he informed me that he re-
ceived it from the Continent (presumably from Mr. Linden)
under the name of B. Princeps ; that it was then fourteen
feet high, and flowered profusely every year. In another
letter of later date he says, " Although the individual
bunches of flowers are rather smaller than those of its rival
B. grandiceps, their brilliant colour far surpasses it. Both
are in flower here at present, B. grandiceps with upwards of
fifty flowering bunches on it."
The Brownea Ariza of Paxton's Flower Garden, vol. ii.
p. 59 (1351-2), copied in Lemaire's "Jardin Fleuriste,"
1.1942, is a totally different plant from this, and apparently
B. grandiceps.
DESCR. A tree thirty to forty feet high ; branches gla-
brous, and petiole and rachis of leaf covered with brown
shining bark, bearing small scattered smooth warts. Leaves
one foot and more long ; rachis slender, bearing leaflets to
the very base, there swollen into an oblong nob ; leaflets six
to eight pairs, four to seven inches long, quite glabrous, mem-
branous, glaucous beneath, uppermost pair the longest, ob-
lanceolate, caudate-acuminate, narrowed to a rounded obtuse
unequal base, the lowest pair much the shortest, cordate at
the base ; petiolules very short, tumid, densely villous, at
length glabrous. Flowers most densely spicate on a stout
silky columnar rachis two inches long, forming a globose
head of scarlet bracts sepals and petals six inches in dia-
meter ; outer bracts coriaceous, pubescent, orbicular-reni-
form, one to one and a half inches in diameter ; inner spa-
thulate or oblanceolate, membranous, silky, as long as the
flowers; bracteoles connate into a silky spathe enclosing
the flower for more than half its length. Floiuers two inches
long. Calyx-tube sessile, glabrous, obconic. Sepals obovate-
spathulate, more than half as long as the obovate-oblong
obtuse petals, wmich have long slender claws. Stamens
eleven; filaments free almost to the base, glabrous. Ovary
densely villous with silky hairs ; style glabrous.•J. I). II.
Fig. 1, section of flower and braeteokr snathe ; 2 and 3, stamens ; 4, stigma :•
all enlarged.