Botanical Magazine 106 - 1880.pdf - hibiscus.org

Loudon, the Swamp Gooseberry has never till now been
well figured ; our specimen is from a fine bush that flowers
annually in Kew in the month of June.
DESCH. A bright-green erect shrub, three to five feet
high ; young branches straight, rather stout, densely clothed
with rigid purple-brown spreading bristles ; these pass into
slender straight shining weak spines, which again are longer,
stouter, and fascicled beneath the insertion of the leaves.
Leaves with very slender petioles, one to two inches in
diameter, suborbicular with a deeply cordate base, membra-
nous, palmately three- to five-lobed or parted, lobes lobulate
and irregularly crenate-toothed, glabrous ; petiole one to
two inches long, very slender, glabrous or sparsely hairy.
Racemes one to three inches long, slender, drooping, glan-
dular-hairy, many-flowered; bracts small, elliptic, green,
and as well as the pedicels and calyx-tube glandular-hairy.
Flowers one-fourth of an inch in diameter. Galyx-tube short ;
limb rotate, obtusely five-lobed, nearly white. Petals much
shorter than the calyx-limb, cunéate, yellowish, pink towards
the base. Stamens about equalling the petals. Style-arms
two to three, as long as the stamens. Berries size of a pea,
hispid.•J. D. H.
Fig. 1, flower ; 2, the same cut vertically ; 3, petal ; 4, stamens :•all enlarged.