their original direction: and again, in dry weather, they become 
involute: and this property the plant retains after many years. 
The most absurd fables have been circulated respecting the 
virtues of this plant, and greedily believed by the vulgar. The 
plant is rare in cultivation, and only preserved by annually 
securing the seeds. Our figures are made in part from speci- 
mens out of Mr. Borrer’s garden, at Henfield, and in part from 
the Royal Garden of Kew. 
Descr. An annual plant, branching from the top of its some- 
what fusiform root; everywhere hoary, with dense stellated hairs. 
Leaves spathulate, the lower ones entire, the upper ones remotely 
toothed. Racemes lateral, generally arising from a little above 
the branch of a fork, erect, rigid, almost spiny, bearing seven 
or eight nearly sessile inconspicuous flowers. Calye of four 
stellato-pubescent sepals. Petals orbicular, clawed, longer than 
the sepals. Stamens six, tetradynamous, four long, two short, 
toothless. Anthers oblong, yellow. Hypogynous glands four. 
Ovary stellato-pubescent, two-valved, each valve spuriously two- 
celled: the valves in the state of the ovary obscurely auricled, 
which auricles, in maturity, are protruded into two large, erect, 
concave appendages, as large as the valves themselves. Style 
short. Stigma dilated, umbilicated. Silicule remarkable for its 
two large orbicular ears. Hach ce// has two transverse almost 
orbicular seeds. 
The Plate represents a living flowering specimen, and a withered, dried one, 
as driven about the deserts :—matural size. Fig. 1. Flower. 2. Petal. 3. Flower 
from'which the sepals and petals are removed. 4. Young fruit. 5. A ripe 
fruit. 6. The same with one valye removed. 7. Valve. 8. Seed. 9. Embyro:— 
