Derscr. A slender erect annual, with the habit of a 
Scabious, glabrous, or more or less pubescent, especially at 
the nodes, which are usually woolly. Leaves scattered, 
spreading, three to five inches long in garden specimens, 
often only one to two inches long in dwarf native ones, laxly 
2—3-pinnatisect, with spreading and recurved narrow-linear 
acuminate, or almost aristate lobes one-twelfth to one-eighth 
inch broad. Flower-heads one anda half inches diameter, 
globose, of a uniform fine cobalt blue, covered with large 
projecting stamens, formed of innumerable few-flowered, 
densely-packed cymes. Calyx woolly ; tube obvoid ; teeth five, 
triangular-acuminate, erect. Corolla-tube funnel-shaped, rather 
longer than the calyx ; limb half an inch diameter ; lobes five, 
oblong, obtuse, spreading. Fi/aments inserted at the mouth 
of the corolla, as long as its lobes, erect; anthers oblong. 
Style slender, exserted; stigmas three.—J/. D. H. 
Fig. 1, Flower :—magnified. 
