Hamelia
(named after Henry Louis du Hamel du Monceau, 1700-1782, a celebrated French author). ORD. Rubiaceae. A genus containing six or eight species of handsome, ornamental, free-flowering evergreen stove shrubs, natives of tropical and sub-tropical America. Flowers yellow, reddish or scarlet, in dior trichotomous cymes, sessile or shortly pedicellate; bracts minute. Leaves opposite or three to four nate, verticillate, petiolate, membranaceous, ovate oblong, and acute at both ends. Hamelias succeed best in a compost of sandy peat and fibrous loam. Nearly ripened cuttings will root during the early part of summer, inserted in sand, under glass, with bottom heat. The two species here described are those usually seen in stoves.
H. patens (spreading). fl. almost scarlet; cymes di-trichotomous, disposed in a terminal pedunculate umbel. Summer. l. three in a whorl, oval-oblong, pubescent. h. 5ft. to 10ft. South America, 1752. (B. M. 2533.) H. ventricosa (swollen). fl. yellow, almost 1in. long, campanulate, ventricose, on long pedicels; racemes terminal. September. l. three in a whorl, glabrous, oval-oblong. h. 8ft. South America, 1778. (B. M. 1894; B. R. 1195.)