Aeschynanthus volubilis Jack

Horticultural & Botanical History

‘Found in the neighbourhood of Bencoolen.  Stem suffrutescent, weak and twining, round, smooth.  Leaves opposite, petiolate, oval, acute at both ends, very entire, very smooth, rather fleshy; nerves indistinct; two or two inches and a half long.  Petioles downy on the edges.  Stipules none.  Peduncles axillary, two-flowered; pedicels longer than the peduncle.  Bracts two, opposite, large, ovate.  The axil is sometimes occupied by a flower-bearing branchlet, which has the appearance of a many-flowered peduncle.  Calyx tubular, somewhat campanulate, smooth, five-cleft at the mouth, persistent.  Corolla of a crimson colour, longer than the calyx, sub-ringent; tube curved; upper lip erect, two-lobed; segments small and approximate; lower three-parted, segments larger and reflexed.  Stamina five, of which four are fertile and exsert, the middle one sterile; the fertile stamina are at first connected by their anthers, but afterwards diverge from each other.  Ovary surrounded by a fleshy nectarial ring, which is marked with five lobes.  Style nearly as long as the stamina.  Stigma sub-bilabiate.  Capsule silique-shaped, eight to ten inches long, two-valved, two-celled; cells bipartite by the revolute lobes of the septa; dissepiments composed of two laminae easily separable.  Seeds very numerous, attached to the inner surface and edge of the lobes, small, oblong, furnished with a long thread or awn at each end, and having a rounded apophysis above.’  [Jack in Transacations of the Linnean Society of London vol.XIV, p.42 and fig.3 tab.II].

History at Camden Park

Listed in the 1850 and 1857 catalogues [T.32/1850].

Notes