Chaetogastra
(from chaite, a bristle, and gaster, a belly; in allusion to the tube of the calyx being beset with bristles or scales). ORD. Melastomaceae. The plants formerly placed here are now generally distributed in the genera Brachyotum and Pleroma. Greenhouse or stove shrubs or herbs, for the most part clothed with strigose hairs. Flowers terminal. Leaves three to five-nerved, quite entire, or hardly serrulated. They are of easy culture in peat and loam. Propagated by seeds, sown in March; or by cuttings (of the perennials), in sandy peat.
C. gracilis (slender).* fl. red, lilac, axillary; pedicels one-flowered; terminal ones three-flowered. l. almost sessile, lanceolate-linear, acute, quite entire, villous. Plant erect, nearly simple, naked at the apex. h. 1ft. Brazil, 1848. Greenhouse perennial.
C. lanceolata (lance-shape-leaved). fl. white; peduncles trichotomous, axillary and terminal. January. l. petiolate, broadly lanceolate, acuminated, serrulately ciliated, villous on both surfaces. h. 1ft. Peru, 1820. Stove annual.
C. strigosa (short-bristled).* fl. rosy-purple; cymes terminal, pedunculate, few-flowered. August. l. on short petioles, ovate, acute, hardly three-nerved, quite entire, with a few thick, scattered, adpressed bristles on the upper surface. h. 1ft. West Indies, 1848. Greenhouse evergreen shrub.