252 CLIV, ERIOCAULE® (BROWN). [ Hriocaulon. 
cuspidate-acute, straw-coloured, thinly bearded with minute white 
hairs on the apical part. Receptacle pilose. Female flowers subsessile. 
Sepals 2, equal, ? lin. long, } lin. or rather more in breadth from front 
to back, spathulate-suborbicular viewed sideways, with a very broad 
wing-like keel, rather coarsely toothed on the keel and apical part of 
the sides, with the actual apex produced into a very short bristle-like 
mucro, straw-coloured, glabrous. Stipes between the sepals and petals 
very short. Petals 3, equal, much exceeding the sepals, # lin. long, 
4-4 lin. broad, cuneately spathulate, very pale yellowish-white, glabrous 
on both sides, ciliate with white hairs at the apex, two of them furni- 
shed with a very conspicuous black gland near the apex, the other 
glandless. Ovary compressed or trigonous, with a bifid or trifid style. 
Male flowers sessile or subsessile. Sepals 2, free to the base, 2-3 lin. 
long, subulate or filiform, pale straw-coloured, glabrous. Stipes between 
the sepals and petals exceeding the sepals, nearly or quite 1 ln. 
long, stout, flattened, curved, pale straw-coloured. Petals 3, very 
unequal; the larger 3-1 lin. long, linear or linear-spathulate, projecting 
beyond the bracts like a little white plume, the two smaller 4- lin. 
long, linear, all densely bearded all over the inner face with long white 
hairs, and furnished with a black gland near the apex, that on the 
larger petal being very minute or absent. Stamens 6; anthers black. 
Upper Guinea. Senegal, Heudelot, 680! 
This is closely allied to E. plumale, N. E. Br., differing in its fewer and very 
much longer peduncles (which are out of all proportion to the small size of 
the rosette of leaves), in the entirely straw-coloured flowering-bracts and sepals of 
the female flowers and rather stouter sepals of the male flowers, The outer flowers 
of the head are all male, with very long stipes between the sepals and the petals, 
then come several series of female flowers, and the centre occupied with males which 
have scarcely any stipes, but the stipes may grow out later, as the only head 
examined was rather young. his and E. plumale are remarkably distinct from all 
the other African species in the very great difference in the form of the sepals of 
the male and female flowers, and in the disparity in the number of sepals and petals, 
for in all the female flowers I have examined I constantly found 2 sepals and 
; petals present : occasionally, but rather rarely, a third sepal is present in the male 
owers, 
26. E. zambesiense, Ruhland in Engl. Jahrb. xxvii. 75. Stemless. 
Leaves all radical, 13-6 in. long, 1$—21 lin. broad, linear, flat, obtuse or 
acute, many-nerved, glabrous. Peduncles numerous, 6—15 in. long, 
slightly 5—6-ribbed, glabrous; their basal-sheaths 143-4 in. long, oblique 
at the mouth, acute or obtuse, glabrous. Heads 2-3 lin. in diam., 
globose, greyish-white, monecious, with the outer flowers female. 
Tnvolucral-bracts #-1 lin. long, 4-4 lin. broad, linear-oblong, obtuse, 
submembranous, glabrous, light brownish-white. | Flowering-bracts 
1-1} lin. long, } lin. broad, oblong or subspathulate-obovate, acute oF 
obtuse, concave, entire or very minutely serrulate near the apex, light 
fuscous, outermost nearly or quite glabrous, inner bearded with white 
hairs at the apex. Receptacle hairy. Female flowers subsessile or very 
shortly pedicellate, larger than the male flowers. Sepals about 1 lin. 
long, 4-4 lin. broad from front to back, concave, with a thick very 
