Page:Curtis's Botanical Magazine, Volume 73 (1847).djvu/46

 Our plants, on their arrival, were soon removed into pots according to their sizes, and placed in a pan frequently filled with water, having moist moss covering the earth: with this treatment, a fine spike of male flowers was thrown up in the autumn of the same year. The spike is large and handsome, from the rich colour of the copious perianths and the numerous yellow heads. The pitchers, or ascidia, are not only remarkable in their shape, and from their different form in different parts of the plants, but for the richness of the colour and spots, and the elongated mouth with the curiously striated margin: the striae terminate internally in teeth, and give a beautifully pectinated appearance to the inner edge.

We possess fine dried specimens from the East India Company, distributed by Dr. Wallich (and our capsule is drawn from one of these); and we have other specimens for which we are indebted to Mr. Veitch, also received from Singapore, and gathered by Mr. Lobb. Dr. Jack well observes "this is the largest and most magnificent species of the genus, being adorned with two kinds of urns, both elegant in their forms, and brilliant in their colouring." We cannot, indeed, we think, do better than copy the description drawn up from native living specimens, by Dr. Jack himself; for we can offer nothing more accurate.

The root is fibrous. Stem ascending at the base, becoming erect and supporting itself on the neighbouring trees: the young parts covered with a deciduous tomentum or down. Leaves alternate, petiolate, the lower ones crowded and lanceolate, the upper more remote and oblong: the adult foliage is smooth; all the leaves are entire, having inconspicuous lateral nerves, and the mid-rib elongated into an urn-bearing cirrhus or tendril. The cirrhi of the lower leaves are not twisted, but hang straight from the apex; they terminate in larger ventricose and highly-coloured ascidia or urns, fringed along the interior angles with two membranaceous fimbriate wings, somewhat contracted at the mouth, which opens obliquely, rising much higher and slightly recurved behind, where the operculum, or lid, is inserted. The tendrils of the upper leaves are twisted into one or two spires at the middle, and terminate in long ascending funnel-shaped urns, flattened anteriorly, but not winged, and gracefully turned at the mouth like an antique vase or urn. Both have the inverted margin beautifully and delicately striated and variegated with parallel stripes of purple, crimson, and yellow. The opercula, or lids, are incumbent, membranaceous, ovate, marked with two principal longitudinal nerves, and cuspidate behind the hinge. The racemes of flowers are at first terminal; but the stem begins, after a time, to shoot beyond them and they become lateral, and are always opposite to a leaf, which differs from the 2D