Volume 3 — PLATE CLXVIII. GERANIUM PICTUM. Painted-flowered Geranium.

CLASS XVI. ORDER IV.

MONADELPHIA DECANDRIA. Threads united. Ten Chives.

ESSENTIAL GENERIC CHARACTER.

Monogyna. Stigmata 5, Fructus rostratus, penta-coccus.

One Pointal. Five Summits. Fruit furnished with long awns, five dry berries.

See Geranium Grandiflorum. Pl. XII. Vol. I.

SPECIFIC CHARACTER.

Geranium foliis cordato-oblongis, obtusis, inequaliter incisis, tomentosis, humi adpressis; corolla alba, petalis superioribus profundè supra medium rubro maculatis; staminibus septem fertilibus; radice tuberosa.

Geranium with oblong heart-shaped leaves, blunt, unequally gashed, downy, and lying close to the ground; blossom white; the upper petals deeply marked with red about the middle; seven fertile chives; root tuberous.

REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.

1. The Empalement.

2. The Chives and Pointal, magnified.

3. The Chives spread open, magnified.

4. The Seed-bud, Shaft and Summit, magnified.

No Genus of Plants claims our notice, for its beauty, more than Geranium, and this species, certainly, ranks amongst the foremost. It is a native of the Cape of Good Hope, and we believe only to be found in the Clapham Collection; where, our figure was taken in April this year, from a plant, the bulb or root of which had been received the preceding autumn. It is nearly the only one, amongst twenty-two species of the tuberous kind, all having irregular petalled blossoms and tubular cups, of which we possess drawings, that has seven fertile chives; the greater number have two, four, or five. It appears to flourish under the treatment given it by Mr. Allen, which is, by keeping it in sandy peat, on a shelf, very dry, in the green-house. The propagation appears to be the same for this, as the other tuberous kinds, that is, by the root.