The leaves are short, linear, somewhat triangular, rigid, edged with
fine crooked hairs, very visible when magnified, and terminating in a
mucro or point, on the older branches recurved and mostly eight-rowed;
each branch is usually terminated by four or five flowers, at first
growing closely together, and covered so strongly with a glutinous
substance, as to look as if varnished, and which is so adhesive as to
catch ants and small flies; as the flowering advances, they separate
more widely from each other, and finally a young branch grows out of the
centre from betwixt them; the true calyx is composed of four lanceolate
leaves, sitting close to and glued as it were to the corolla; besides
these, there are several other leaves, which might be mistaken for those
of the calyx, but which may with more propriety be called Bracteae or
Floral-leaves; some of these, like the calyx, are wholly red, others red
and green mixed together, and broader than the leaves of the plant; the
flowers are about an inch and a quarter in length, inflated below, and
contracted above into a long narrow neck, dilating again so as to form a
kind of knob, in which the antherae are contained, just below the limb,
which divides into four somewhat ovate obtuse segments, the upper side
of these segments is of a very pale flesh colour, the under side of them
as well as the dilated part just below them bright red, the body of the
flower flesh colour, marked with eight longitudinal stripes, of a deeper
hue; filaments eight, antherae within the tube; style projecting about
the eighth of an inch beyond the corolla; stigma, a round glutinous
head.
The flowers as they decay become of a deeper red colour, and finally
pale brown, still retaining their form and appearing to
advantage;--hitherto the plant has produced no seeds here, is increased
with difficulty either by cuttings or layers, but with most certainty in
the latter way.
* * * * *
A Catalogue of Heaths, cultivated and sold by Richard Williams, at his
Nursery, _Turnham-Green, Middlesex_.
ERICA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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