Duscr. Roots fibrous. Stems tufted, one to two feet long, 
suberect or pendulous, one-half to three-quarters of an inch 
diameter, simple or here and there producing a short side- 
shoot, cylindric, slightly constricted at irregular distant 
intervals, eight-grooved and ridged, the ridges divided by 
shallow transverse depressions into tetragonal or hexagonal 
prominent areoles, each with a white central papilla (the 
remains of an undeveloped leaf), of a uniform bright green, 
firm consistence, and minutely granular surface. Buds from 
the transverse depressions on the ridges. Mowers small, pro- 
duced in the ridges towards the ends of the branches, fascicled, 
sessile, bright yellow, a quarter to one-third of an inch 
diameter. Calyx tube, hemispheric; lobes 5, triangular, 
acute, spreading and recurved, valvate. Corolla very broadly 
rotate-campanulate, the short open hemispheric tube ex- 
panding into 5 orbicular acute spreading lobes. Staminal 
crown 0; anthers forming a minute depressed five-lobed body 
in the centre of the flower, connate at their bases and 
coherent at their membranous tips with the small five-gonal 
stigma ; each broadly elliptic, inflexed from about the middle, 
smooth. Pollen masses erect, globose, yellow; their con- 
tiguous surfaces produced into a vertical transparent mem- 
brane, that is continuous with the very short cuneate stalk, 
which again is fastened to the.small brown gland.—/. D. H. 
Fig. 1, Flower; 2, calyx and stamens; 3, pollen-masses :—all magnified. 
