Page:Books from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (IA mobot31753002447982).pdf/171

NEILGHERRY PLANTS.

Flowers usually bisexaul. Calyx-tube ovate, rarely turbinate: limb short, truncated or toothed. Petals 4-8, usually 5-6, either distinct or more or less united: æstivation valvular. Stamens as many as the petals and opposite to them: filaments adnate to the base of the petals, free at the apex: anthers 2-celled, adnate, or erect, or versatile. Style filiform. Stigma simple, capitate or turbinate. Berry roundish, ovate, or oblong, or turbinate, 1-celled, 1-seeded, usually crowned with the limb of the calyx. Shrubs usually parasitical, rarely growing on the ground. Leaves opposite or alternate, entire, usually thick and coriaceous. Flowers spiked, or racemose, or panicled.

The Neilgherry species of this genus are numerous and individually abundant. How many species there may be is very doubtful, but my impression is, that as many as 20 are natives of these Hills, though I have not yet collected so many. Every wood about the Hills abounds with them, and scarcely a tree grows but is subject to their attacks. In their general appearance they greatly vary; some are stout, erect growing shrubs, some slender, twiggy and pendulous, some with bright foliage, at first of the richest crimson tints, while others are of the most dull and unassuming. The colour and appearance of the flowers equally vary; some are large and richly coloured, others smaller, but still conspicuous for the richness of their colouring; while others are the dullest imaginable, and as if to conceal the little colour they have, are clothed with dirty whitish or tawny coloured hairs. Many attain a great size, and by their drain on the vital fluids of their support, speedily induce the premature decay consequent on deficient nourishment.

LORANTHUS NEILGERRENSIS, (W. and A. :) glabrous branches terete, young ones obscurely and bluntly angled: leaves alternate, elliptic-oblong, shortly petioled, thick and somewhat fleshy, ultimate one of the branch (always?) orbicular ovate peduncles axillary, aggregated, very short, about the length of the petiole, bearing an umbel of 3-7, very shortly pedicelled flowers: bractea solitary under the ovary and close to it, lateral, ovate: margin of the calyx obscurely repand toothed: corolla glabrous, ventricosely gibbous at the base, equally 5-cleft to beyond the middle: segments cuneate linear, recurved.-. and A. Prod. p. 382. This is a fine species of great size, and when in perfection, most conspicuous from its numerous deep red, almost crimson coloured flowers, which completely cover the branches, while the young leaves on the new shoots, are also often deep red.

This is a small, but to the Horticultural Amateur, an interesting family, as including within its narrow limits the Elder, the Honeysuckle, the Tinus and Lauristinus, Guelder, Rose, and numerous other ornaments of the shrubbery and arbour. They are the more esteemed as, being for the most part natives of temperate climates, they are hardy enough to bear the winters of England. In its geographical distribution this family occupies a wide range, extending from Lapland within the arctic circle, where Linnea borialis is indigenous to New Zealand, nearly 50° South of the equator, the native country of the genus Alseuosmia; and all round the world from the Western shores of America, to the Eastern ones of China and Japan. But while thus extensively inhabiting the temperate regions of both hemispheres, they are of rare occurrence within the tropics; except where, as in the instance of these mountains, local circumstances produce a temperate climate.

In Nepaul and the Hymalayas generally, they are numerous; upwards of 20 species being described from the valley of Nepaul alone; thence they extend Southward to Ceylon, and Eastward to Japan. On the Neilgherries 6 species are indigenous, two of Lonicera, and four of Viburnum: thereby indicating by their vegetable productions, the extra-tropical character of the climate of these Hills.