_Mast.; sp. nov._
[Illustration: ARISÆMA FIMBRIATUM: LEAF, SPATHE, AND FLORAL DETAILS.]
Some few years since we had occasion to figure some very remarkable
Himalayan species of this genus, in which the end of the spadix was
prolonged into a very long, thread-like appendage thrown over the
leaves of the plant or of its neighbors, and ultimately reaching the
ground, and thus, it is presumed, affording ants and other insects
means of access to the flowers, and consequent fertilization. These
species were grown by Mr. Elwes, and exhibited by him before the
Scientific Committee. The present species is of somewhat similar
character, but is, we believe, new alike to gardens and to science. We
met with it in the course of the autumn in the nursery of Messrs.
Sander, at St. Alban's; but learn that it has since passed into the
hands of Mr. W. Bull, of Chelsea. It was imported accidentally with
orchids, probably from the Philippine Islands. It belongs to Engler's
section, trisecta, having two stalked leaves, each deeply divided into
three ovate acute glabrous segments. The petioles are long, pale
purplish, rose-colored, sprinkled with small purplish spots. The
spathes are oblong acute or acuminate, convolute at the base,
brownish-purple, striped longitudinally with narrow whitish bands. The
spadix is cylindrical, slender, terminating in along, whip-like
extremity, much longer than the spathe. The flowers have the
arrangement and structure common to the genus, the females being
crowded at the base of the spadix, the males immediately above them,
and these passing gradually into fleshy incurved processes, which in
their turn pass gradually into long, slender, purplish threads,
covering the whole of the free end of the spadix.--_M.T.M., in The
Gardeness' Chronicle._
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