twelve species were described by Mr. Brown in his Prodro- 

 mus, and eleven more were added, chiefly from the South- 

 western shores of Australia, in the Supplement of the same 

 learned author. The present is one of the handsomest of 

 the Genus ; for the heads or cones of flowers are large, 

 purple or deep rose-colour, exhibiting numerous yellow 

 styles and anthers in a circle as they expand, and these 

 heads are nestled, as it were, among the green foliage. 



Descr. Our plant has attained a height of nearly four 

 feet ; but I possess entire native specimens scarcely two 

 feet high. Stem erect, but little branched. All the younger 

 parts of the plant are downy, and frequently the down is 

 mixed with long, spreading, white hairs, at length every 

 part, occasionally, becomes glabrous. Leaves linear, of a 

 thick and firm substance, in the upper half dividing into 

 three principal branches, which are again more or less 

 deeply divided into two or three segments which vari- 

 ously dilated upwards, tapering to a sharp, brown mucro ; 

 simple, or again once or twice divided, grooved or channel- 

 led above, keeled or subterete beneath, and rough, as it 

 were, with indistinct, prominent veins, and with minute, 

 elevated points. Head of flowers large for the Genus, gen- 

 erally solitary, terminal, but sometimes aggregated, five to 

 six, each in the axil of an upper leaf. Involucre downy ; 

 scales imbricated, sphacelate, ovate, acute, upper ones 

 linear; a few of the lower ones are a little recurved at the 

 apex. Scales oxpaleez, among the flowers, linear-subulate, 

 yellow-brown, very hairy. Perianth full rose-colour. Seg- 

 ments tipped with a minute, silvery tuft of hairs. Stigma 

 fusiform, jointed, as it were, in the middle : upper joint 

 hairy. 



Fig. 1. Flower and bracteal Glume : — magnified. 



