Brachystelma. | LXXXV. ASCLEPIADEE (BROWN). 467 
caudicles to the pollen-carriers or subsessileupon them. Style truncate or 
convex at the apex. Follicles fusiform or linear-fusiform, smooth. Seeds 
‘crowned with a tuft of hairs.— Perennial herbs with atuberous rootstock 
or a fascicle of thick fleshy roots, usually of dwarf habit. Stem simple or 
much branched, erect, prostrate, or rarely twining, leafy to the top. 
Leaves opposite. Flowers small or of moderate size, solitary and sub- 
lateral at: the nodes, or two to many together in lateral or terminal umbels 
or umbel-like cymes. 
Species many, natives of Africa and India. Closely allied to Ceropegia, differ- 
ing in habit, and in the corolla-tube being saucer-shaped or campanulate and not 
inflated at the base, but Ceropegia loranthiflora tends to connect the two genera. 
‘The tubers of most, if not all, ot the species are eaten by the natives. 
Flowers in terminal umbels. 
Leaves elliptic, oblong or oblanceolate-oblong ; corolla- 
lobes broadly deltoid. 
Corolla entirely blackish-purple . : : - Ll. B. Buchanan. 
Corolla concentrically zoned with yellowish and 
blackish-purple . : : : : . 2. B. magicum. 
Leaves linear ; corolla-lobes linear. 
Corolla-lobes 3 in, long, with long white hairs or. 
their inner face . i : 3 : . 38. B. Johunstoni. 
Corolla-lobes # in. long, glabrous on their inner 
fue . : 4 5 . 4. B. phyteumoides. 
Flowers in pairs or 1-4 at the nodes. 
Leaves elliptic-oblong to oblanceolate, 3-1 in. broad ; 
corolla-lobes deltoid-ovate i . é - 5 B. Bingert. 
Leaves linear or linear-lanceolate, 4-23 lin. broad. 
Corolla-lobes 6-10 lin. long, linear or lanceolate- 
I'near. 
Pedicels and corolla quite glabrous . . - 6. B. plocamoides. 
Pedicels pubescent or subtomentose. 
Leaves 3-11 in. long; corolla rotate. - 4. B. Lacdle, 
Leaves 14-21 in. long; corolla with a cam- 
panulate tube 2 lin. long : : . 8. B. lineare. 
Corolla-lobes 13 lin. long, broadly ovate : - 9: BD. Schanew, 
1. B. Buchanani, JV. /. Br. in Kew Bulletin, 1895, 263. Root- 
‘stock a large fleshy tuber. Stem erect, stout, with a very short spread- 
ing pubescence. Leaves large, subsessile, 1}—5 in. long, }-2? in. broad, 
elliptic-obovate, very obtusely rounded with or without a very short 
triangular point at the apex, cuneate-acute at the base, both sides 
shortly pubescent, ciliolate. Umbel terminal, sessile, 20—30-flowered; 
pedicels 1 in. long, shortly pubescent. Sepals 2~3 lin, long, lanceolate, 
acuminate, pubescent. Corolla ?-1 in. in diam., saucer-shaped, blackish- 
purple, glabrous on both sides, 5-lobed to half-way down; lobes tri- 
angular, acute. Outer corona shortly cup-shaped at the base, 10- 
toothed ; teeth connected in pairs by a fleshy partition to the backs of 
the inner coronal-lobes, their free part 4 lin. long, deltoid-subulate, 
erect or ascending (not spreading as originally described), retrorsely 
pubescent; inner coronal-lobes }~—% lin. long, oblong, emarginate, 
incumbent on the backs of the anthers and equalling or slightly 
