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Tournefortia (Named in memory of Joseph)

(named in memory of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, 1656-1708, the distinguished author of an arrangement of plants under the title of "Institutiones Rei Herbariae"). Including Messerschmidia. ORD. Boragineae. A large genus (nearly 100 species) of stove, greenhouse, or hardy trees or shrubs, sometimes sarmentose or twining, very rarely sub-shrubs, broadly dispersed over the warmer regions of the globe. Flowers rather small, cymose; calyx five-parted; corolla with a cylindrical tube and five imbricated or induplicate lobes; stamens five, affixed to the tube, included. Leaves alternate, entire. The species have little or no horticultural merit. Only two call for mention here: both thrive in any fairly good soil. Propagation may be effected by cuttings, inserted in sand, under a glass, with heat in the case of T. heliotropioides, which is the prettiest plant of the genus. T. fruticosa (shrubby). fl. sweet-scented; corolla yellow, salver-shaped, the tube much longer than the calyx; cymes terminal, loosely trichotomous-corymbose. June. l. petiolate, lanceolate or elongated ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, rather obtuse at base, 3in. long. h. 4ft. Canaries, 1800. Greenhouse shrub. (B. R. 464.) T. heliotropioides (Heliotrope-like). Summer Heliotrope. fl. the colour and shape of those of the common Heliotrope (H. peruvianum), but devoid of scent. May. l. elliptic, obtuse, pubescent on both sides, the margins undulated. Branches terete, and, as well as the petioles, hairy. h. 2ft. Buenos Ayres, 1829. Stove sub-shrub. (B. M. 3096.)