Cup of one leaf with a spur five-cleft. Petals two to five. Summits three, or summit three-cleft. Berries three, dry, and one-seeded.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
Tropæolum petalis serrato-incisis, duobus maximis, tribus minimis. Jacq. Hort. Schœnb. 1. p. 51. tab. 98.
Tropæolum with the petals tooth-gashed, two much larger than the rest; three very small.
REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.
1. Chives and pointal.
2. Seed-bud and pointal, summit magnified.
The Tropæolum peregrinum grows naturally in Peru, and was gathered wild by the French naturalist Feuillée near the town of Lima. The native name, according to that author, is Malla; the Spaniards call it Paxarito, which signifies a little bird; from the resemblance the expanded blossoms have to little humming-birds flying. Attaching itself by the long footstalks of the leaves to the branches, the plant often ascends to the very summits of trees in its native soil; and Professor Jacquin, director of the Emperor of Germany’s gardens at Schœnbrunn, informs us (in the work above quoted) that it grew there in the open ground to twenty-six feet in length, with a stem of a finger’s thickness, and a great many branches, but produced no flowers until transplanted into the green-house. A. B. Lambert, esq. who communicated the specimen from his gardens at Boyton last November, informs us that he cultivated it in a three-light melon-frame, which it completely filled, branching in all directions, and producing almost innumerable blossoms. The seeds but rarely ripen in this country, and are generally imported from Spain or Portugal. The plant, however, may be propagated by cuttings. Besides the five species of Tropæolum enumerated in the edition of the Species Plantarum by Willdenow, and the new species in our last volume (T. pennatum), three more species are described and figured in the Flora Peruviana of Ruiz and Pavon; some of which, and others of the many beautiful flowers of that country, the great intercourse now carried on with South America gives us to hope that we may soon see. One of the species in the Flora Peruviana having only two petals, has obliged us to make a little alteration in the generic character.