cultivated at Kew, where it was received from the Con- 
tinental gardens. 
Descr. Trunk one foot high, clothed with brown remains 
of old leaves. Leaves forming a nearly-rounded coma six 
feet in diameter, spreading on all sides, straight, rigid, bright 
green, narrowly lanceolate-ensiform, contracted above the 
base, gradually narrowed into a long, pungent, deciduous, 
chestnut-brown spine; margin with remote, incurved, horny, 
chestnut spines, a quarter of aninch long; upper surface con- 
cave and granular, convex and almost keeled at the con- 
tracted part; lower surface rough, with close set points, 
convex, raised along the miiddle line towards the base and 
there armed with a few spines. Scape fifteen to twenty feet 
high, slender, strict, green, with a few small sub-erect lan- 
ceolate-subulate bracts. Panicle four to six feet high, spread- 
ing, laxly branched; branches slender, erecto-patent, lax- 
flowered. Bracts at the bases of branches small, green. 
Flowers two inches in diameter, rather crowded on short 
branchlets, drooping, very shortly pedicelled; bracteoles 
small, green, subulate. Ovary oblong, half an inch long. 
Perianth-segments equal, elliptic-oblong, rounded at the apex, 
spreading and incurved, almost white externally ; internally 
green, with a broad white margin. Stamens about one-third 
the length of the perianth. i/aments fleshy, triangular- 
subulate, greenish white; anthers small, yellow. Style 
subulate. 
Fig. 1, Whole plant, reduced ; 2, leaf, reduced ; 3, portion of leaf; and 
4, of panicle :—of the natural size. 
