Volume 8 — PLATE DXLIII.

PROTEA SPECIOSA PATENS.

Spreading Showy Protea.

CLASS IV. ORDER I.

TETRANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Four Chives. One Pointal.

ESSENTIAL GENERIC CHARACTER.

Corolla 4-fida, seu 4-petala. Antheræ lineares, petalis infra apices insertæ. Calyx proprius, nullus. Semina solitaria.

Blossom four-cleft, or of four petals. Tips linear, inserted into the petals below the points. Cup proper, none. Seeds solitary.

SPECIFIC CHARACTER.

Protea foliis lanceolatis, undulatis, pilosis: squamis calycinis rotundato-ovatis, marginibus fimbriatis nigricantibus. Caulis patens.

Habitat in Caput Bonæ Spei.

Protea with lance-shaped leaves, waved and hairy. Scales of the empalement roundedly oval, with fringed margins of a black brown colour. Stem spreading.

Native of the Cape of Good Hope.

REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.

1. A flower, one tip magnified. 2. Seed-bud and pointal, summit magnified.

This fine fringed Protea in the foliage is very nearly allied to the P. speciosa, but the flower is more spread open than any of that section we have as yet seen. It is naturally so averse to grow upright, that it is with difficulty prevented from bending downwards, which the branches always do till they are tied up. In this particular it very much resembles the P. repens, and, if left at liberty, would no doubt, like that species, creep or spread itself about on the earth. Our figure was made from a plant lately in the conservatory of G. H. Hibbert, esq., but recently consigned to J. Knight, his botanic gardener, who has commenced nurseryman in the King’s Road, Chelsea, with the whole of that well known valuable collection.