Turnham Green, by whom it was communicated in flower, 
in June last. A native of the Cape of Good Hope, and 
capable of cultivation in sandy loam, in a good frame. 
The berries of this genus are said to be eatable, having 
an agreeable odour, and being generally of a yellowish 
colour, with a transparent pericarpium through which the 
seeds are seen. 
Gethyllis is the only plant of the order Amaryllideae at 
present known, in which the number of stamens exceeds 
six; it may be said to represent Vellozia, in Southern 
Africa. But if no truly dodecandrous Amaryllideae have 
hitherto been discovered, we are not unacquainted with 
certain plants in which a tendency to such a structure 
exists in a high degree. Such is the genus Phycella, in 
the original species of which six sterile stamens alternate 
with the six fertile ones; a most remarkable circum¬ 
stance, the importance of which Mr. Herbert, in some 
recent observations upon a plant he refers to Phycella, 
seems to have entirely overlooked or misunderstood. Such 
also is Mr. Mjers’s Chilian genus Placea; a plant with 
the flowers of a small Brunsvigia, but with six coloured 
sterile ligulate stamens alternating with the fertile ones, 
to which they are equal, or nearly so, in length and size. 
The flowers are very sweet-scented; the only one we 
saw of this plant was decandrous; but we presume that 
twelve stamens constitute its normal structure. 
Bulb testaceous, ovate, scaly, with a yellowish, viscid, 
fetid juice; scales fleshy, the outer shortest; roots 
simple, fleshy, fascicled. Leaves numerous, linear from a 
broad base, somewhat fleshy, blunt, green, pale at base, 
spotted with olive green, nearly erect, somewhat longer 
than the flower. Flower solitary, fragrant, with a short, 
subterraneous, one-leaved, fleshy, sheathing spatha. Peri- 
anthium hypocrateriform, with a long, filiform, semisubter- 
raneous tube, which is white at the base, and purple at 
the upper end; limb spreading, 6-parted in a double row; 
segments imbricating at the base, oval, acute, the inner 
narrower, and somewhat wavy; all white, with a purple 
streak at the back. Stametis 10 (naturally 12?), spreading, 
shorter than the limb. 
J. L. 
