lepidote on both sides, especially on the under surface, 
narrowed gradually to a cuspidate tip, margined with 
crowded lanceolate small spreading brown prickles, which 
grow gradually less from the base of the leaf upwards, 
Pedunele about a foot long, stout, stiffly erect, clothed 
throughout with thin white lepidote tomentum, furnished 
with numerous reflexing persistent crimson lanceolate bract- 
leaves with toothed margins. Flowers in a dense oblong 
spike three or four inches long, each subtended by a minute 
lanceolate membranous bract. Calyx including the ovary 
half an inch long, clothed throughout with white tomentum ; 
sepals about as broad as long, oblique, much imbricated, 
furnished with a large pungent cusp. etals lingulate, 
half an inch long, blue when they first open, turning red 
as they fade, furnished each with a pair of minute fimbriated 
scales at the base. Stamens and pistil reaching to the 
summit of the petals.—J. G. Baker. 
_ Figs. 1, and 2, entire flowers, life-size; fig. 8, a calyx-segment, of unusually 
irregular form; fig 4, a petal and a couple of stamens; fig. 5, two anthers, 
showing their insertion on the filament ; fig. 6, stigmas and summit of style; 
fig. 7, horizontal section of ovary :—all more or less enlarged. 
