Miconia

Plant Characteristics

Cultivation

Scientific Names

Miconia >

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Read about Miconia in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture

Miconia (D. Micon, Spanish physician). Melastomaceae. Glasshouse subjects, notable for the handsome foliage. A Trop. American genus of trees and shrubs, with large and showy opposite or verticillate strongly veined lvs.: fls. relatively small, usually corymbose or paniculate, white, rose, purple or yellow; petals 4-8, rounded at the apex, spreading or reflexed; stamens variable in number and shape, but usually 8-16, the anthers polymorphous: fr. a dry or leathery berry, 2-5-loculed, and few- or many-seeded.- Cogniaux (DC. Monogr. Phaner. 7) admits 518 species to this genus, including the plants known to the trade as Cyanophyllum. Krasser (Engler & Prantl, 111:7) reduces the group to a subgenus or section of Tamonea (but subsequently restored), the latter genus comprising at that time (1898) about 550 species in Trop. Amer. Many species have been described recently. The most popular of the greenhouse plants, Cyanophyllum magnificum, is placed by Cogniaux among the species that are imperfectly known and is not described in the monograph, although it was illustrated and described as long ago as 1859. See Tamonea. The miconias of gardeners are conservatory or warm house subjects, grown for their large and striking foliage. They belong to the old genus Cyanophyllum, in which the anthers are subulate and incurved and with a single pore, the flowers large and the calyx oblong or campanulate and truncate or dentate. They propagate by cuttings of the firm wood over bottom heat. The plants should be screened from the direct glare of the sun, and be given abundance of water. Use a fibrous soil. Since the plants are known to gardeners mostly for their foliage, it is probable that some of the trade species are referred to wrong genera. Flowers are not always known when the plants are named. Some of the names have no standing in botanical literature. For culture, see Melastoma and Medinilla. The above text is from the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture. It may be out of date, but still contains valuable and interesting information which can be incorporated into the remainder of the article. Click on "Collapse" in the header to hide this text.

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References

• Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by L. H. Bailey, MacMillan Co., 1963

External links

• w:Miconia. Some of the material on this page may be from Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons license.
• Miconia QR Code (Size 50, 100, 200, 500)