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 Co
m
pl
im
en
ts
of
Architecting
Distributed
Transactional
Applications
Data-Intensive Distributed
Transactional Applications

Guy Harrison,
Andrew Marshall
& Charles Custer

REPORT
 Architecting Distributed
Transactional Applications
Data-Intensive Distributed
Transactional Applications

Guy Harrison, Andrew Marshall,

and Charles Custer

Beijing Boston Farnham Sebastopol Tokyo

Architecting Distributed Transactional Applications
by Guy Harrison, Andrew Marshall, and Charles Custer
Copyright © 2023 O’Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA
95472.
O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional
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Acquisitions Editor: Aaron Black Interior Designer: David Futato

Development Editor: Michele Cronin Cover Designer: Randy Comer
Production Editor: Gregory Hyman Illustrator: Kate Dullea
Copyeditor: nSight, Inc.

January 2023: First Edition

Revision History for the First Edition

2023-01-24: First Release

The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Architecting

Distributed Transactional Applications, the cover image, and related trade dress are
trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
The views expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not represent the
publisher’s views. While the publisher and the authors have used good faith efforts
to ensure that the information and instructions contained in this work are accurate,
the publisher and the authors disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions,
including without limitation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of
or reliance on this work. Use of the information and instructions contained in this
work is at your own risk. If any code samples or other technology this work contains
or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of
others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such
licenses and/or rights.
This work is part of a collaboration between O’Reilly and Cockroach Labs. See our
statement of editorial independence.

978-1-098-14261-2
[LSI]
 Table of Contents

1. Planning for a Distributed Transactional Application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Why Distributed Transactional Applications? 2
The Business Drivers for Distributed Systems 3
The Return of Transactional Consistency 4
The Increasingly Attractive Economics
of Distributed Computing 4
Understanding Your Requirements 5
A Modern Distributed and Transactional
Architectural Pattern 6
Summary 8

2. Distributing the Application Layer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Regions and Zones 9
Old-School Load Balancing 10
Microservices 11
Containers 12
Kubernetes, Pods, and Services 13
Multiregion Kubernetes 14
Event Management 15
Serverless Deployments 17
Multiregion Serverless 19
Summary 19

3. Distributing and Scaling the Storage Layer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Transactional Versus Nontransactional
Distributed Databases 22
Hosting Strategies for Distributed Databases 23

iii
 Serverless or Dedicated Deployment? 26
Kubernetes 28
Placement Policies 29
Multiregion Database Deployments 30
Distributed Database Consensus 30
Survival Goals 32
Locality Rules 34
Summary 35

iv | Table of Contents
 CHAPTER 1
Planning for a Distributed
Transactional Application

This report is an architectural guide for software professionals

who are considering implementing a distributed transactional
application.
A distributed application is an application implemented on multiple
networked computers. A transactional application is an application
that can correctly process simultaneous updates from multiple users.
As we’ll see in subsequent sections, distributed applications—
and increasingly transactional distributed applications—are rapidly
becoming the new normal for modern software products. This is
because the combination of transactional and distributed technolo‐
gies allows for greater application resilience, scalability, and correct‐
ness—mandatory attributes for modern applications.
However, distributed applications pose unique challenges, and
implementing transactional behavior in a distributed context is
particularly tricky. The advantages of the distributed transactional
architecture are undeniable—but so are the problems and the risks!
This report is for software developers, architects, and operational
staff who want to understand the benefits and challenges of dis‐
tributed transactional software architecture. We try not to assume
any specific technology background, but some familiarity with data‐
bases, software development frameworks, and cloud services would
be advantageous.

1
After reading this report, we hope you’ll have a good handle on
the business and technology motivations for modern distributed
architectures and will be familiar with the architectural patterns
and software frameworks most widely deployed across the indus‐
try. In particular, you should be well equipped to understand the
role that technologies and patterns such as Docker, Kubernetes,
and distributed transactional databases play in modern distributed
architectures.

Why Distributed Transactional Applications?

As Marc Andreessen famously wrote over a decade ago, “software
is eating the world”. In today’s world, it’s distributed software
that has the greatest appetite. Increasingly, it’s distributed soft‐
ware that is powering the applications that run our society and
mediate our digital lives.
The events of the last few years have certainly emphasized the
importance of distributed software.
For instance, during the pandemic, “touchless” payments skyrock‐
eted, and cash-only businesses became increasingly rare. Payment
systems that can accept global credit card transactions are inherently
distributed, with points of presence across the globe. As a result,
almost all businesses depend on distributed payment solutions. If
these solutions fail, then business cannot proceed.
The pandemic also accelerated the adoption of online shopping—
customers are more likely than ever to purchase from an online
retailer. When you are selling online, your customers can be any‐
where, so your storefront must be available globally. You can only
offer good service in all locations by distributing your application
across the globe.
Finally, the pandemic emphasized the need to be able to react to
sudden changes in demand. Many businesses faced sudden increases
in demand as their online customer base surged during lockdowns.
Distributed applications can scale up or down quickly by adding or
removing services or instances. Those without a distributed solution
often could not react promptly.
Enterprises that have attempted to maintain monolithic solutions
have often not fared well. In one case we are aware of, a large com‐
pany had its entire system running on a single mainframe. A large

2 | Chapter 1: Planning for a Distributed Transactional Application

snowstorm hit the state where the mainframe was located, causing
a power outage. Diesel generators backed up the site, but the storm
also led to road closures, making it impossible to get fuel deliveries.
Faced with the possibility of going entirely offline if they couldn’t
get additional fuel, they decided to instead fail over to a backup
data center, resulting in a major, customer-impacting interruption of
service. Subsequently, they decided that a more robust distributed
transactional solution was required.

The Business Drivers for Distributed Systems

Distributed systems are increasingly prevalent in our modern soft‐
ware ecosystem due to the significant advantages that they provide:
Reliability
Distributed systems are inherently more reliable than mono‐
lithic systems since they have no single point of failure.
Scalability
Monolithic systems have difficulty coping with increases in
resource utilization. In contrast, well-designed distributed sys‐
tems can expand by adding new nodes or service instances.
Elasticity
Elasticity implies that the application can also scale down
by releasing resources when workload demands reduce. A
well-designed distributed application can release computing
resources by shutting down unneeded nodes or services.
Performance
A distributed application can also provide unique performance
benefits when compared to a monolithic application:
• A distributed application may be able to provide increased
throughput or concurrency by parallelizing tasks across
multiple nodes or services.
• A distributed application may be able to offer reduced
latency by processing requests from specific regions with
services located in the same region. A monolithic appli‐
cation, in contrast, will, by necessity, offer low-latency
requests only in the region in which it is physically located.

The Business Drivers for Distributed Systems | 3

The Return of Transactional Consistency
During the early years of the “modern” web 2.0 internet, applica‐
tion architects were forced to choose between availability, global
scalability, and consistency—and it was widely believed that you
had to choose two out of three of these obviously desirable traits.
Consequently, strong consistency was abandoned in favor of “even‐
tual consistency,” and the definition of “eventual” was stretched to
include “maybe never.”
Eventual consistency caused headaches for application developers,
many of which had no satisfactory solution. Luckily, distributed
software technology has largely moved past the need for eventual
consistency. As we’ll see, modern application frameworks allow
for strong consistency together with very high availability and
scalability.

The Increasingly Attractive Economics

of Distributed Computing
The complexity of distributed systems was an almost overwhelming
obstacle in the past. Until recently, the human resources needed to
maintain multiple software components in multiple locations and
to manage the performance and reliability of these multiple compo‐
nents were beyond all but the largest organizations.
The economics of distributed systems has been completely revolu‐
tionized by technological advances over the past 10–15 years:

• The advent of public cloud computing allows enterprises of any

size to deploy on infrastructures made available by the world’s
largest software providers.
• Containerization technologies, most notably Docker, together
with microservice design patterns, can be used to create easily
deployable and replicable units of application functionality.
• Container orchestration solutions, most notably Kubernetes,
allow the containers that combine to form an application to be
deployed and scaled in a relatively simple and reliable fashion.

The upshot of these advances has reduced the total cost of owner‐
ship for a distributed application as well as reduced complexity in
application design, implementation, and maintenance.

4 | Chapter 1: Planning for a Distributed Transactional Application

Understanding Your Requirements
It’s not possible to select an ideal architecture without firmly defined
business requirements. Here are some of the considerations you
should clarify before finalizing your architecture:
Total cost of ownership
The total cost of ownership of a deployment includes the cap‐
ital costs of hardware (for on-premises deployments) or hard‐
ware rental (for cloud deployments) together with the software
licensing costs and staffing costs for administrators. A fully
managed cloud deployment minimizes staffing costs and encap‐
sulates all other costs into a single subscription. An on-premises
deployment might have higher staffing costs and higher initial
hardware costs but lower software subscription costs, especially
if open source software is used. It’s particularly important to
factor in the higher staffing costs involved in an on-premises
solution as well as the cost savings that can be achieved in the
cloud from elastic scaling.
High availability requirements
Almost all modern systems aspire to continual availability with
minimal downtime. Modern software frameworks can provide
very high availability with very attractive economics. Never‐
theless, there are always cost–availability trade-offs to be con‐
sidered. For instance, a three-node software topology might
survive a single-node failure without issue but be unable to
survive multiple concurrent node failures. As the degree of
redundancy increases, the ability to survive failures increases,
but so do the total operational costs.
Throughput and latency requirements
Most applications have performance requirements that combine
both throughput (transactions per second) and latency (average
or percentile time to complete a transaction). The two require‐
ments are correlated, but one can often be increased at the
expense of the other. It’s important, therefore, to be clear on
what is expected of the application in both contexts.
Geographical considerations
A distributed application may have to be configured to opti‐
mize performance for multiple regions. In addition, a global

Understanding Your Requirements | 5

 application might be subject to privacy and data domiciling
regulations that differ across regions.

A Modern Distributed and Transactional

Architectural Pattern
It’s our belief that there is an architectural sweet spot that provides
a particularly compelling combination of economics, elasticity, and
high availability. The essential components of this architecture are as
follows:

• The use of public cloud platforms as the primary substrate for

all application compute elements
• Using a microservices pattern for the top-level application
architecture
• Using Docker containers as packaging for the microservices
• Where possible, using Kubernetes to orchestrate the deploy‐
ment and maintenance of these containers
• Optionally deploying a message brokering layer like Kafka to
communicate between services
• Using a fully managed, cloud-based, distributed, transactionally
consistent database platform for the persistence layer

This architecture is not a one-size-fits-all solution for the entire

universe of modern applications. However, we think it encapsulates
the needs of a larger subset of all applications than any other single
pattern. It delivers scalability, availability, consistency, and elasticity
in an economical and maintainable fashion.
Let’s look briefly at each of the aforementioned elements of modern
distributed architecture:
Public cloud platforms
Highly available distributed applications require servers run‐
ning in multiple locales, each ideally with redundant network
communications and no single source of failure in any location
or between any two locations. Very large organizations may
be in possession of such an infrastructure, but for most of us,
only the large public clouds—such as those offered by Google,
Microsoft, and Amazon—can offer such a global infrastructure.

6 | Chapter 1: Planning for a Distributed Transactional Application

 These public cloud providers also have fully managed versions
of most of the components needed for a modern application.
Microservices
In a microservices architecture, application functionality is
delivered through the interactions between multiple independ‐
ent software units. This contrasts with the monolithic applica‐
tion, in which all software functionality is delivered from a
single large software unit.
Microservices provide software-engineering efficiencies as well
as improving application scalability and resilience.
Docker containers
Containers are lightweight, virtualized environments that are
perfect for the deployment of microservices. The container iso‐
lates the microservice from any variation in operating system
type or configuration and is portable across any platform that
supports the container platform.
Container orchestration and Kubernetes
Container orchestration frameworks—such as Kubernetes—
arrange for the deployment and management of the containers
that comprise an application. Kubernetes creates and maintains
the containers that compose the application and manages the
redundancy, scalability, and resilience of these containers.
Distributed database services
The use of Dockerized microservices coordinated by Kuber‐
netes works well for the applications’ logic. However, the persis‐
tence layer—the database—has a different set of requirements.
In any nontrivial application, there is data that is scoped across
multiple microservices, and that must persist beyond the life‐
time of those services. It’s rarely possible to run a separate
database for each service—there must be a common data store
shared across the entire application.
However, a single monolithic database is undesirable both
from a performance and availability point of view. Even if a
single database could scale to meet all the needs of the entire
application, in a global deployment, some of the application’s
users would experience poor performance because of living on
a different continent from the database. From an availability

A Modern Distributed and Transactional Architectural Pattern | 7

 perspective, the monolithic database represents a single point of
failure.
Therefore, we need a database that can scale as required by the
application and that has redundancy in its architecture to sur‐
vive failures in individual nodes. This database needs to meet
the requirements of the application for low-latency regional
performance as well as global consistency.
Such databases did not exist until relatively recently, but they
are available today. Some of the candidate databases—such
as CockroachDB and YugabyteDB—are available both as on-
premises deployments and as fully managed cloud systems.
Others—such as Google Spanner or Microsoft Azure Cosmos
DB—are available only on a specific cloud platform.

Summary
Modern enterprises require highly available, globally scoped, and
scalable software solutions. These requirements are best met by
distributed transactional application architectures.
Today, there exists a well-proven cloud-based architectural pattern
for distributed transactional applications. This pattern involves the
use of public cloud platforms, microservices, Docker containers,
Kubernetes, and a distributed transactional database.
In Chapter 2, we’ll take a deep dive into the architecture of the
application layer, and in Chapter 3 we will examine the distributed
database layer.

8 | Chapter 1: Planning for a Distributed Transactional Application

 CHAPTER 2
Distributing the Application Layer

Almost all modern distributed applications can be divided into two

major layers:
Application (or compute) layer
Primarily responsible for application logic and end-user
experience
Persistence (or database) layer
Responsible for maintaining long-term application data and
providing a consistent view of the application state to the com‐
pute layer
These two layers have divergent properties that usually result in
different deployment architectures. In this chapter, we’ll discuss the
architecture for the application layer, and in Chapter 3, we’ll look at
the database layer.

Regions and Zones

The major public clouds all provide computing resources organized
around regions and zones. A region is a broad geographical region
that defines the physical location where you can deploy applications.
Regions are often given vague names (for instance, europe-west1).
However, in practice, a region will generally be located within a
specific country and almost always a specific city. For instance, the
Google Cloud region asia-northeast1 is in Tokyo, while the region
asia-northeast2 is in Osaka.

9
Other documents randomly have
different content
 The Project Gutenberg eBook of The botanist's
repository for new and rare plants; vol. 03 & 04 [of 10]
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The botanist's repository for new and rare plants; vol. 03 & 04
[of 10]

Author: active 1799-1828 Henry Cranke Andrews

Release date: February 9, 2024 [eBook #72911]

Language: English

Original publication: London: The author, 1797

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by Biodiversity Heritage Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOTANIST'S

REPOSITORY FOR NEW AND RARE PLANTS; VOL. 03 & 04 [OF 10]
***
 Volume III.
Index to Volume III
Errata Volume III.
Volume IV.
Index to Volume IV
Errata Volume IV.
Vol. 3.
 of the
Botanist’s Repository
Comprising
Colour’d Engravings

of

New and Rare Plants

ONLY

With Botanical Descriptions &c.

——in——

Latin and English,

after the

Linnæan System.

by

H. Andrews

Botanical Painter Engraver, &c.

 PLATE CXLV.

HILLIA LONGIFLORA.

Long-Flowered Hillia.

CLASS VI. ORDER I.

HEXANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Six Chives. One Pointal.

GENERIC CHARACTER.

Calyx. Perianthium hexaphyllum; foliolis oblongis, acutis, erectis.

Corolla monopetala; tubus cylindricus, longissimus; limbus sexfidus;
laciniis oblongis, planis.
Stamina. Filamenta sex, brevissima. Antheræ oblongæ, erectæ, intra
faucem corollæ.
Pistillum. Germen inferum, oblongum, obsolete hexagonum. Stylus
filiformis, longitudine tubi. Stigma capitatum.
Pericarpium oblongum, compressum, biloculare.
Semina numerosa, minima.
Empalement. Cup six-leaved; leaflets oblong, sharp pointed and upright.
Blossom one petal, tube cylindrical, very long; border six-cleft; segments
oblong, flat.
Chives. Threads six very short. Tips oblong, upright, within the mouth of
the blossom.
Pointal. Seed-bud beneath oblong, slightly six-sided. Shaft thread-
shaped, the length of the tube. Summit headed.
Seed-vessel oblong, flattened and two celled.
Seeds many, very small.

SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
 Hillia corollis sexfidis, laciniis lanceolatis, supra convexis; foliis ovatis,
acutis, glabris.
Hillia with blossoms six cleft, segments lance-shaped, convex above;
leaves egg-shaped, pointed and smooth.

REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.

1. A flower cut open, to expose the number and situation of the

Chives.
2. The Shaft and its summit, natural size, placed by the flower, to
shew its proportional length to the tube.
3. The Seed-bud, with the leaflets of the Empalement attached, cut
transversely, to shew the division of the cells in the center.
This species of Hillia was first introduced to our gardens in the year 1789,
from the Island of Barbadoes, sent in plants, by Mr. J. Elcock, to Messrs. Lee
and Kennedy, Hammersmith. Originally this shrub was specifically termed,
parasitica by professor Jacquin, when he first formed, and titled the Genus,
after Dr. J. Hill, of voluminous memory; from a supposition that it was to be
found growing, only, upon some other plant; a circumstance, which being
denied by Swartz, he has altered it to longiflora. We have followed the latter
name that ours may go in unison with the author of the last Species
plantarum now publishing by Willdenow, as well as professor Martyn, who
in his edition of Miller’s Dictionary has followed Swartz; they appearing to
be the most accurate, as well as the most read and followed of any modern
Botanical authorities. It is a tender hot-house plant, strikes easily from
cuttings, thrives in rich mould and flowers about the end of February. To the
Right Hon. Lord Viscount Valentia we are indebted, for the specimen from
which our figure was taken, sent from his Lordship’s famed collection at
Arley near Bewdley, Staffordshire; where, we believe, it has flowered for the
first time in England.
 PLATE CXLVI.

PSORALEA ACULEATA.

Prickly Psoralea.

CLASS XVII. ORDER IV.

DIADELPHIA DECANDRIA. Chives in two sets. Ten Chives.

GENERIC CHARACTER.

Calyx. Perianthium monophyllum, tuberculis punctatum, quinquesidum;

laciniis acutis, æqualibus, persistentibus; infima duplo longiore.
Corolla papilionacea, pentapetala.
Vexillum subrotundum, emarginatum, assurgens.
Alœ lunulatæ, obtusæ, parvæ.
Carina dipetala, lunulata, obtusa.
Stamina. Filamenta diadelpha (simplex setaceum et novem coalita),
adscendentia. Antheræ subrotundæ.
Pistillum. Germen lineare. Stylus subulatus, adscendens, longitudine
staminum. Stigma obtusum.
Pericarpium. Legumen longitudine calycis, compressum, adscendens,
acuminatum.
Semen unicum, reniforme.
Empalement. Cup one leaf, dotted over with small tubercles, and five-
cleft; the segments equal and remaining, the lower one twice the length of
the others.
Blossom butterfly-shaped, five petalled.
Standard nearly round, notched at the end, turned upwards.
Wings half-moon-shaped, obtuse, small.
Keel two-petalled, half-moon-shaped, obtuse.
 Chives. Threads in two sets (a single one like a bristle, and nine united),
ascending. Tips nearly round.
Pointal. Seed-bud linear. Shaft awl-shaped, ascending, the length of the
chives. Summit blunt.
Seed-vessel. A pod the length of the cup, flattened, ascending, and
tapered to the point.
Seed, one, kidney-shaped.

SPECIFIC CHARACTER.

Psoralea foliis ternatis, minimis, confertissimis, recurvatis, in spinulam

desinentibus.
Psoralea with three-leafletted leaves, very small, very crowded, bent
back, and ending in a small spine.

REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.

1. The Empalement.
2. The Standard of a Blossom.
3. One of the Wings of the same.
4. The two Petals of the Keel.
5. The Chives, a little magnified.
The Prickly Psoralea is not a new plant in our collections; for, it was first
introduced by Mr. F. Masson to the Royal Gardens at Kew, as we learn from
the Catalogue, in the year 1774. But although so long a sojourner with us, it
is not found in many collections, owing to the difficulty in its increase, as it
seldom ripens its seeds; and cuttings, the only remaining method, but seldom
succeed; although by taking them from a vigorous growing plant and giving
them the assistance of the bark-bed of the hothouse, early in March, a few
plants have been procured occasionally. Our drawing was made from a most
beautiful plant in the Clapham Collection, last year, in the month of August.
 PLATE CXLVII.

GLADIOLUS CUSPIDATUS.

Spear-spotted Gladiolus.

CLASS III. ORDER I.

TRIANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Three Chives. One Pointal.

ESSENTIAL GENERIC CHARACTER.

Corolla sexpartita, ringens. Stamina adscendentia.

Blossom six divisions, gaping. Chives ascending.
See Gladiolus roseus. Plate XI. Vol. I.

SPECIFIC CHARACTER.

Gladiolus foliis lineari-ensiformibus, glabris; corolla ringente; laciniis

longissimis, acuminatis, undulatis, subæqualibus, tribus inferioribus in
medio macula oblonga notatis.
Gladiolus with leaves that are linearly sword-shaped and smooth;
blossom gaping; segments very long, tapered to the point, waved and nearly
equal, the three lower in the middle have an oblong spot.

REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.

1. The two sheaths of the Empalement.

2. A blossom cut open, with the Chives remaining attached.
3. The Seed-bud, Shaft, and Summit.
The Gladiolus here figured, represents a variety of one of the most errant
species of the Genus, known commonly by the name of Spade Gladiolus,
and of which we have drawings of eight, quite distinct; yet all,
unquestionably, originating in one common parent. It was introduced in
1796, from the Cape of Good Hope, by Mr. R. Williams, nurseryman of
Turnham-green, near Brentford; is a very hardy greenhouse bulb, increases
from the root in abundance, if planted in very sandy peat earth, and flowers
about the Month of April, or May.
 PLATE CXLVIII.

LACHENALIA QUADRICOLOR.

Four-coloured Lachenalia.

CLASS VI. ORDER I.

HEXANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Six Chives. One Pointal.

ESSENTIAL GENERIC CHARACTER.

Cor. 6-petala, infera; petalis 3 interioribus longioribus. Stamina erecta.

Capsula subovata, trialata. Semina globosa.
Bloss. 6-petals, beneath; the three inner petals the longest. Chives erect.
Capsule nearly egg-shaped, three winged. Seeds globular.

SPECIFIC CHARACTER.

Lachenalia foliis geminis, lineari-lanceolatis; scapo erecto; corollis

propendulis, cylindricis, quadricoloratis, cum limbo petalorum interiorum
patulo.
Lachenalia with leaves in pairs, linearly lance-shaped; flower-stem erect;
blossoms hanging down, cylindrical, and four-coloured, with the border of
inner petals spreading out.

REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.

1. A Flower cut open, with the Chives remaining.

2. An inner Petal, with its Chive, shewn from the inside.
3. An outer Petal, shewn from the outside.
4. The Pointal complete.
About the year 1789, this very handsome species of Lachenalia was first
received by Messrs. Lee and Kennedy, Hammersmith, from the Cape of
Good Hope, sent in bulbs to them by J. Pringle, Esq. It is as hardy as the L.
tricolor, to which it much inclines, well known to collectors, and is equally
easily propagated; an excellent figure of which is to be found, in the 82d
Plate of the Botanical Magazine of Mr. Curtis. The L. quadricolor is given as
a synonym by Willdenow to L. pendula, a plant we have already figured, and
from which this stands quite distinct in the conformation of every part; they
are both to be found in the 2d Vol. of Icon. of Jacquin, from whom we copy
our specific title, the pendula, t. 400, the quadricolor, t. 396.
 PLATE CXLIX.

STRUTHIOLA CILIATA.

Fringed-leaved Struthiola.

CLASS IV. ORDER I.

TETRANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Four Chives. One Pointal.

ESSENTIAL GENERIC CHARACTER.

Perianthium diphyllum. Corolla tubulosa, 4-fida; Nectarium, glandulæ

octo fauci circumpositæ. Semen unum, subbaccatum.
Cup two-leaved. Blossom tubular, 4-cleft; Honey-cup, 8 glands placed
round the mouth of the blossom. One seed like a berry.
See Struthiola imbricata, Pl. CXIII. Vol. II.

SPECIFIC CHARACTER.

Struthiola foliis ovato-lanceolatis, mucronatis, ciliatis, concavis,

quadrifariam imbricatis, apice incurvis; corolla subalbida.
Struthiola with leaves between egg and lance-shaped, pointed, fringed,
concave, tiled in four rows, turned inwards at the point; blossom whitish.

REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.

1. A leaf shewn side-ways that the incurvature of the upper part

may be seen.
2. A flower complete.
3. The two leaves of the Empalement, magnified.
4. A blossom cut open, to expose the situation of the chives, at the
mouth of the tube, magnified.
5. The Pointal, a little magnified.
This is the variety of Struthiola ciliata promised in the last number. It varies
from the other in the largeness and incurvation of the leaves, and colour of
the flower, as well as, in the growth of the plant; in this, the stem rises to
three feet; in that, it seldom exceeds one. With rather less difficulty it is
increased and preferred than the red variety, and makes a very handsome
figured plant, flowering in the month of August, at which season, last year,
our drawing was taken from a plant in the Hibbertian Collection. This Var.
has the advantage of the other, in having the blossoms extremely fragrant, in
the evening.
 PLATE CL.

GERANIUM PRÆMORSUM.

Bitten-leaved Geranium.

CLASS XVI. ORDER IV. of Suppl. Syst. Veg. 1781.

MONADELPHIA DECANDRIA. Threads united. Ten Chives.

ESSENTIAL GENERIC CHARACTER.

Monogyna. Stigmata quinque. Fructus rostratus, penta-coccus.

One Pointal. Five summits. Fruit furnished with long awns, five dry
berries.
See Geranium grandiflorum, Pl. XII. Vol. I.

SPECIFIC CHARACTER.

Geranium foliis inciso-lobatis, reniformibus; lobis cuneiformibus,

præmorsis; floribus subsolitariis, heptaudris; caule flexuoso, subcarnoso.
Geranium with leaves deeply cut into lobes and kidney-shaped; lobes
wedge-shaped, and bitten at the ends; flowers generally solitary, with seven
fertile tips; stem grows zig-zag, rather fleshy.

REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.

1. The Empalement cut open, to shew its tubular structure.

2. The Chives and Pointal.
3. The Chives spread open.
4. The Pointal and Seed bud.
The Geranium præmorsum offers a most beautiful addition to this already
very extensive genus, but is without doubt a true species. It is a native of the
Cape of Good Hope, and was introduced to us, from thence, in the year
1798, by Captain Quarrel; brought in seed, and communicated to Mr. J.
Colville of the King’s Road, Chelsea; who informs us, that it flowers from
March, till November, that he keeps it in rich dungy earth, and that it is
raised, pretty freely, by cuttings; requiring the heat of a dry stove in the
winter months. Our figure was made at the nursery, Chelsea, about the
beginning of March this year.