FUCHSIA, a genus of plants of the natural order onagracem, containing a large number of species, natives of South America and of the southern parts of North America. They are half-shrubby plants, shrubs, sometimes climbers, and small trees, and have generally pendulous red flowers; of which the calyx is funnel-shaped, 4-cleft, finely colored; the corolla 4-petaled; the fruit is a 4-celled berry; the leaves are oppo site; the flower-stalks 1-flowered, springing from the arils of the leaves, or sometimes forming racemes at the top of the branches. Some of the species, as F. coccinea, gracilis, F. globosa, F. fulgens, P. inaerostemon, F. longi,flora, are much cultivated in gar dens and greenhouses for the beauty of their flowers. Most of the species arc too delicate for the climate, at least of the northern parts of Britain; but some of them, although killed to the ground every winter by frost, spring again from the root, and flower beautifully in autumn. A little protection around the root is of great use in preserving them in vigor. All of them are propagated with extreme facility by cut
tings, which has no doubt contributed to their present abundance, even in the gardens and windows of the poor. No flowering shrubs of recent introduction into Britain have become nearly so popular as those of this genus; and new varieties and hybrids have been produced In vast numbers, of which those with white flowers are particu larly prized. The berries of a number of the species are eaten in South America, and preserved with sugar; and they are occasionally used in both these ways in l3rithin, although in Scotland the, fruit' even of the most hardy ripens only in favorable situa tions, for the most part on the west coast. Where the climate admits of it, a F. hedge is extremely ornamental. The wood of some species is employed in their native-regions for dyeing black. The genus is named in honor of Leonhard Fuchs, one of the fathers of modern botany, born in Swabia in 1501, died at Tiibingen, where he was a profes sor, in 1565. •