The specimen figured was first mentioned in the _Gardener’s Chronicle_, 1892, as _Calla Pentlandii_, and two years later in the same publication was again brought to notice as _Richardia Pentlandii_, under which name it was described and figured in the _Botanical Magazine_. Mr. N. E. Brown, who monographed the genus for the _Flora Capensis_, considers it the same as _Richardia angustiloba_ which was described as early as 1865. It was introduced into cultivation by Mr. R. Whyte, Pentland House, Lee, who raised flowers in 1892, and exhibited it at a meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society and was awarded a first-class certificate.
Specimens of the tubers were taken to Kew by Mr. E. E. Galpin in May, 1892.
Our present illustration was made from plants flowered by Mr. H. H. Wickens, Officer in Charge of the Union Buildings Garden, Pretoria.
DESCRIPTION:--_Leaves_ dark green, unspotted; petiole 30-60 cm. long, terete, glabrous; lamina 22-30 cm. long, 11 cm. broad at the widest part, ovate, acute, and produced into a filiform appendage at the apex 1·2 cm. long, sagittate at the base, glabrous, with the midrib prominent beneath and channelled above. _Peduncle_ over 1 metre high, longer than the leaves, terete, glabrous. _Spathe_ gamboge-yellow, dark purple at the base inside, 10-14 cm. long, 4-4·5 cm. broad across the middle, 7-10 cm. across the mouth, loosely convolute for two-thirds of its length, then expanding into a broad, nearly horizontal limb produced into a subulate tip 1·5 cm. long and with recurved margins. _Spadix_ yellow, 4·5 cm. long, cylindrical. _Ovaries_ with subsessile stigmas, pale greenish-white. _Staminodia_ none; anthers yellow. _Calla Pentlandii_, _Gard. Chron._ 1892, p. 124; _Richardia Pentlandii_, _Gard. Chron._ 1894, p. 590; _Bot. Mag._ t. 7397.
PLATE 10.--Fig. 1, plant much reduced; Fig. 2, spathe removed to show the spadix.
FREESIA, _Klatt_; _Benth. et Hook. f. Gen. Plant._ vol. iii. p. 704.
=Freesia Sparrmannii=, _N.E. Br._ var. =flava=, _N.E. Br._
_Gladiolus_ Sparrmanni, _Thunb. in Kongl. Vet. Acad. Handlingar_, 1814, p. 189, t. 9A, and _Fl. Cap. ed Schultes_, p. 49.
According to the _Flora Capensis_ the only species in the genus _Freesia_ is _F. refracta_, Klatt, which is a native of the eastern districts of Albany, Bathurst, etc., and is characterised by having (among other characters) the slender lower part of the perianth-tube shorter than the upper broader part and not more than twice as long as the bracts. But there are at least three other species found in other regions that distinctly differ in habit or in the tube of the flower or in both. One of them collected by Burchell in Bechuanaland and at present undescribed, has a very long tube. Another is a plant found in the coast districts of Swellendam, Riversdale, Ladismith, etc., figured and described by Thunberg under the name of _Gladiolus Sparrmanni_, upon which I found the species _Freesia Sparrmannii_. The reference to this figure is omitted by Schultes in his edition of Thunberg’s _Fl. Cap._, and is not quoted by Baker, but it accurately agrees with the plant Zeyher collected along the Buffeljagts River in Swellendam Division and distributed under No. 4027. It conspicuously differs from _F. refracta_ by the very much longer slender part to the perianth tube, and although Thunberg’s plant and that collected by Zeyher have purplish-tinted flowers, I place the plant here figured as a yellow variety of it, because I find that the late P. MacOwan, in a letter preserved at Kew, gives the following particulars concerning this species, which he also considers distinct from _F. refracta_. He writes: “All along the coast from Cape Point towards Agulhas, notably near Mossel Bay, the other _Freesia_ grows wild. I have never seen it in my Eastern Province peregrinations.... Its colour varies very much, from pale golden daffodil tint to pure white, and is either with or without purplish stains on the outside of the perianth-segments. Here, at the Hort. C.B.S., we paid much attention to this lovely bulb, grew it year after year, roguing out all the yellow and purple-stained individuals and sowing the whitest. This is the ‘_Freesia refracta alba_’ of gardens.”