Descr. Stem woody, erect ; bark brown, and marked 
by the fallen leaves. Branches long, straggling, and pen- 
dulous in the cultivated specimen, which is, perhaps, pre- 
ternaturally luxuriant, for in a native specimen in Sir 
Wittiam Hooxer’s Herbarium they are erect and shorter, 
and the whole plant does not exceed sixteen inches in 
length—the cultivated one described is exactly one foot 
more, the branches subverticillate, the lower ones being 
one foot long, the upper three inches, everywhere, as well 
as the stem, glabrous. Leaves opposite, narrow, linear- 
oblong, gradually broader towards the extremity of the 
branches, acute, mucronulate, glaucous, glabrous, indis- 
tinctly veined ; midrib channelled below, flat above. Capi- 
tulum terminal, very large ; involucre much broader than the 
leaves, and (in the specimen described) of a paler colour, 
occasionally slightly reddened at the apices, cordate-ovate, 
acute. Pedicels short, hairy. Perianth equal to the invo- 
lucre, white, before expansion reddish at the apex, every- 
where hairy except on the inside of the tube; Aairs in the 
middle of the tube long and spreading, elsewhere short and 
subappressed ; tube striated at its base ; Limb spreading, 
Segments ovato-lanceolate, becoming reflexed in the sides, 
and afterwards undulate. Stamens at first erect, afterwards 
reflected along the limb, than which they are shorter ; fila- 
ments colourless, glabrous; anthers pale yellow, linear. 
Pistil longer than the perianth, erect ; stigma small, capi- 
tate ; style filiform, colourless, oblique upon the apex of the 
sermen; germen green, glabrous, keeled on one side.. 
Ovule solitary, pendulous. Graham. 
