perfect, at first short and truncated, till the crown of the plant 
is clothed with perfectly formed mammille resembling aloid 
leaves, four or five inches long, glaucous green, succulent, trian- 
gular, truncated at the apex, and there bearing six or seven long 
chaffy, or almost horny, linear-subulate, flexuose scales, of which 
the central one is about as long as the mammille, and the 
others, forming a whorl round the centre, are about two or 
three inches long, spreading, triangular below. These appear 
to be after a time deciduous, for the lower withered mammille 
are destitute of them. From near the centre of the summit of 
the plant the flowers appear, solitary, from the axil of a mammilla, 
large, sulphur-yellow. Cady formed of a number of imbricated, 
oblong, greenish scales, gradually passing upwards into longer 
and more coloured scales, till they spread into a long ray of 
numerous, yellow, acute, linear, glossy petals, giving four inches 
and more to the diameter of the blossom. Fi/amenfs numerous, 
pale yellow, arising from below the base of the petals: anthers 
subglobose, orange. Style as long as the stamens: stigma of 
nine, spreading, downy, subulate rays, recurved at the points. 
Our plate represents a much reduced figure of our largest flowering specimen, 
and the upper portion of a plant :-— xadural size, 
