SPECIFIC CHARACTER, &C.
Polygala, virgata, floribus imberbibus axillari-sessilibus solitariis subdistantibus folio brevioribus, foliis alternis subremotis internodio longioribus subulatisque.
Milkwort, twiggy, with beardless axillary-sessile solitary rather distant flowers which are shorter than the leaf, and alternate remotish awl-shaped leaves, longer than the space they are distant from each other.
Polygala (micrantha) floribus imberbibus axillari-sessilibus, foliis linearibus mucronatis. Thunb. Prod. 121.—Willd. Sp. Pl. 3. 892.
REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.
1. The empalement.
2.The same magnified.
3.The keel magnified.
4.One of the wings.
5.The same magnified.
6.The chives.
7.The same magnified.
8.The pointal.
9. The same magnified
There is an elegance and a grace in the habit and appearance of this Polygala, which in a great measure compensates for its trifling flowers. It forms a small, and but little branched, twiggy shrub; is a native of the Cape of Good Hope; and belongs to the Heisteria division of the genus. We do not know that it has ever been figured before; but, notwithstanding the short character given by Thunberg, have little doubt of its being the plant he intended for P. micrantha. The honour of introducing it, and also some other shrubby Polygalæ, into this country, is due to G. Hibbert, Esq., from whose choice collection at Clapham our figure was taken.
Polygala micrantha continues flowering the greatest part of the year, winter as well as summer, is a very hardy green-house plant, and is propagated by cuttings in the usual way.
If we were to consider the flowers as resupinate, and perhaps they really are so, what we have called the keel would become the standard, and the small appendage which is a part of it below would answer as its keel. The expanded flowers of this species, and also those of P. stipulacea of our 363d plate, viewed in front, very remarkably resemble in outline, and almost in size, the insects which I have named Tineæ Bombyciformes; but the wings of the flower, which answer to the pectinated horns of the insects, appear rather too large. P. alopecuroides of our 371st plate possesses this extraordinary resemblance still more completely; inasmuch as the ciliæ of its keel correspond exactly to the fringes of the insects’ wings! A more perfect similitude between objects in reality so remote and so different, I have very rarely, or never, beheld.[Pg 129]
