1. A segment of the flower magnified.
2. Seed-bud and pointal magnified, with the seeds exposed.
3. Seed-bud cut transversely, magnified.
This very curious plant, so distinct from every genus hitherto described, was introduced from the East Indies, at the same time with the Gærtnera figured in our last number, by the late Lady Amelia Hume. The roots are fibrous and perennial, as are also the leaves, which rise from the root upon footstalks embracing one another at the base, and are of a long lance-shape with strong longitudinal nerves, which are transversely interwoven with little branching veins. The flower-stalks are round, rising to from one to two feet in height, with membranaceous bracts scattered at regular distances, and were four in number in the specimen which we have figured. The blossoms grow in a kind of raceme formed of little bunches or tufts of two to four flowers each: the footstalks are of unequal lengths with a joint near the top, and are attended by incurved bracts at the base, the lowermost bract at each tuft being always the largest. The germ is nearly top-shaped, but a little hexangular upwards. Three of the divisions of the blossom are just perceptibly broader than the other three, and both the corolla and nectary are closely pierced with transparent dots hardly visible to the naked eye, but very distinct when magnified.
We have seen a very good coloured drawing of the plant taken in India in the collection of J. Fleming, esq. which represents the fruit (which has not yet ripened in England) as a bluntly oval, fleshy berry, with the seeds in pairs as in the germ. Both this drawing and the plant received from India by Lady Amelia Hume were marked Teta viridiflora; Teta being perhaps (if we may hazard a conjecture) the name applied to the plant by the native Indians. However this may be, as it appears to be known in India by that name, we have retained it for the specific designation; applying to the genus, in conformity to the Linnæan canons, (from πελιος, lividus, and ανθς, flos,) the name of Peliosanthes. Our drawing represents the original plant imported from India, with which we were favoured by Sir Abraham Hume, bart. last April, through the kindness of A. B. Lambert, esq. who has also informed us, from Dr. Roxburgh’s MSS. in his possession, that the plant is found growing naturally about Chittagong in the East Indies. We have just seen two other species of the genus in the curious collection of T. Evans, esq. at Stepney, imported by him last Autumn from Prince of Wales’s Island, of which they are natives. One of them has the leaves nearly of a blue colour; and Mr. Evans’s collector informs us, that he found five or six species growing naturally in the island above mentioned, although he had not the good fortune to bring them alive to England.
Linnæus was of opinion, that there were not above ten thousand plants in the world; but above five-and-twenty thousand have already been described, and ten thousand probably yet remain to be added to the number!
PLATE DCVI.
ZIERIA SMITHII.
Smithian Zieria.
CLASS IV. ORDER I.