The germen being here completely inferior, affords the 
technical distinction which separates the genus from its 
next coordinates, Тилљакрзта and Pitcarrnia, where that is 
either partly or else wholly superior. In Bromezia the ger- 
men ripens into a more or less fleshy succulent pericarp, 
which not opening by valves, falls within the definition of a 
berry. In the well-known species Ananas, it is a con- 
creted. cluster, .or rather spike of these berries (іп that 
instance supremely succulent and generally seedless), hori- 
zontally imbedded with the bractes in their common harder 
fleshed peduncle ог. stalk, the core of the mass, which 
compounds the Pine-Apple. In nudicaulis the berries aré 
thinner fleshed, scarcely succulent, do not coalesce, and 
are not esculent ; the bloom alone giving a value to the plant 
in the garden. 
Caudex a short stoloniferous axis. Leaves radical, 
growing much as in the common Pine-Apple plant, con- 
volutely folded and imbricated at the base, where they 
are stained on the inside with purple, divergent,. lorately 
lanceolate, cuspidate, smooth, spinously dentate with teeth 
of a burnt-black colour, outer ones largest, from 12 to 15 
inches in length, and little more than three in breadth. Stem 
simple, . about а foot and a half high, upright, of about.the 
thickness of a finger, very slightly flexuose, covered with a 
white. mealy efflorescence, cylindrical, sheathed by large 
single upright scattered imbricating spathelike bractes of. a 
dull pink colour half stemclasping; membranous, lanceolate 
3-4 inches long, upper ones broadest, closest, quite entire; 
and envelopping the lower part of the inflorescence... Spike 
terminal, simple, scattered, cylindrical, imbricately.many- 
flowered, upright, half a foot or more in length, bracteless: 
stalk or peduncle mealy white, fleshy, rigid, cut into niches 
to hold the flowers. Flowers upright, sessile, about two 
inches and a half long, scarlet, with a violet-blue stain at 
the end of the segments of the corolla, scentless. Calyx 
nearly. of the colour of the corolla, powdered with white 
meal, 3-parted, thick, hard, imbricately tubular,. twice 
shorter than the corolla, which it envelops closely, filled with 
a honeyed lymph in the bottom; segments equal, oblong; 
somewhat obtuse. Corolla two inches long, of three petal- 
like segments, placed alternately with those of the calyx at 
the base of that, tubularly convoluted, slightly spread above: 
segments. subpanduriformly ligulate, acuminate, below the 
