This plant is easily raised from cuttings, and easily preserved; it may be kept through the Winter in a common hot-bed frame, and in mild Winters will stand abroad, especially if sheltered amongst rock-work; its greatest enemy is moisture in the Winter season, this often proves fatal to it, as indeed a long continued damp atmosphere does to many others; the Nurserymen about London complain of losing more plants the last mild Winter, from this cause, than they generally do from severe frosts.  In a little green-house which I had in my late garden, Lambeth-Marsh, most of the plants became absolutely mouldy; in such seasons then, though in point of cold the plants may not require it, we must dissipate the superfluous moisture by a gentle heat.

[125]

ALSTROEMERIA LIGTU.  STRIPED-FLOWER’D ALSTROEMERIA.

Class and Order.

HEXANDRIA MONOGYNIA.

Generic Character.

Corolla 6-petala, sub-bilabiata:  petalis 2 inferioribus basi tubulosis. Stamina declinata.

Specific Character and Synonyms.

ALSTROEMERIA Ligtu caule erecto, foliis spathulato-oblongis,
      pedunculis umbellae involucro longioribus, corolla bilabiata.
      Linn.  Syst.  Veget. ed. 14. Murr.  Suppl. p. 207. Amoen. 
      Acad.  V. 6. p. 247.

HEMEROCALLIS floribus purpurascentibus striatis. Few.  Peruv. 2. p. 710.
      t. 4.

[Illustration:  No 125]

This plant receives its generic name from CLAUDIUS ALSTROEMER (son of Sir JONAS ALSTROEMER, a most respectable Swedish Merchant) who first found the other most beautiful species the Pelegrina in Spain, whither it had been transmitted from Peru; its trivial name Ligtu is a provincial one.

According to FEWILLEE, who has written on the plants of Peru, this species is found on the banks of the rivers in Chili:  we treat it, and successfully, as a stove plant; its flowers, which usually make their appearance in February and March, emit a fragrance scarcely inferior to Mignonet; its leaves, contrary to most others, grow inverted, which is effected by a twist of the footstalk, and afford an excellent example of LINNAEUS’s Folium resupinatum; the filaments, after the pollen is discharged, turn upwards, and the antherae become almost globular.

It is usually propagated by parting its roots in Autumn.

Our figure was drawn from a plant which flowered extremely well in the stove of Messrs. GRIMWOOD and Co.  Kensington.

[126]

ALYSSUM DELTOIDEUM.  PURPLE ALYSSUM.

Class and Order.

TETRADYNAMIA SILICULOSA.

Generic Character.

Filamenta quaedam introrsum denticulo notata. Silicula emarginata.

Specific Character and Synonyms.

ALYSSUM deltoideum caulibus suffrutescentibus prostratis, foliis
      lanceolato-deltoidibus, siliculis hirtis. Linn.  Syst.  Vegetab. p.
      591. Sp.  Pl. 908.