REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.
1. The spathe.
2. A blossom divested of the chive and honey-cup.
3. The honey-cup.
4. The sheath which crowns the seed-bud.
5. The chive, pointal, and seed-bud.
6. The same without its chive.
7. A transverse section of the seed-bud magnified.
The new and elegant plant here figured was obligingly communicated to
us in September last by A. B. Lambert, Esq. who informs us that it had
grown vigorously to the height of about three feet in the bark-bed of
his hot-house, without showing flowers; but that, on being removed
from the tan and placed upon the flue, it soon produced those which
we have here delineated; whence it is probable that the check to its
growth, occasioned by the mere change of situation, was the cause of
its blooming, as in other collections it has not hitherto done it.
Mr. L. likewise informs us that its native country is Coromandel, and
that it is intended for publication by Dr. Roxburgh under the name of
Amomum calcaratum; and showed us a drawing of it, so named, copied
from one that was made in the East Indies from a native specimen, and
which represents the plant somewhat slenderer and less upright than the
individual we have here depicted.
Whoever will carefully investigate and compare our dissected figures
of this plant with those which are given with Renealmia nutans on
our 360th plate, will not only find that they precisely agree with
each other (as much as two distinct species of plants can do), but
that both of them very sufficiently correspond with the essential
characters of the genus Renealmia: yet both are, no doubt, specifically
distinct from Renealmia exaltata; wherefore we have not hesitated
to withdraw the present plant from the genus Amomum, from which,
independent of its widely different mode of flowering, we believe it
to be generically distinct. Neither are the above-mentioned all the
species of Renealmia we have a knowledge of; for even in the British
gardens (exclusive of those which have not yet been introduced to us
alive) we are already acquainted with at least three more. But how
far some of these plants are distinct from the four diandrous Globbæ
enumerated by Willdenow, and from Schrader’s Zerumbet speciosum, which
is a true Renealmia, we are not at present prepared to determine; yet
cannot help remarking that the last-mentioned plant should seem to
resemble the Globba Japonica of Thunberg;--that our present subject
may resemble G. Marantina;--that G. nutans greatly resembles Renealmia
nutans; and that at least one of the figures cited by Willdenow for the
former in Rumphius, is absolutely the same as R. nutans:--and, lastly,
that R. exaltata of Linn. Supp. Pl. possesses, in a very striking and
remarkable manner, the extraordinary habit of the remaining Globba
uviformis.
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