sented in 1893 to the Royal Gardens, Kew, by Prof. Stewart, 
F.RB.S. (late President of the Linnzan Society), Conservator 
of the Museum, and Hunterian Professor of the Royal 
College of Surgeons. It flowered in a stove in January, 
1896, and ripened its seeds in the following spring. 
Descr.— Tuber (of the Kew plant) nineteen and a half 
inches in circumference, of a dull iron grey colour, and 
with a shallowly lacunose surface, loosely covered with 
small acicular spines rising from scattered tubercles. 
Stem eight and a half inches long by four and a quarter in 
circumference, inclined and flexuous, deeply four grooved, 
the ribs between the grooves closely covered with a series 
of imbricating orbicular woody shields (indurated stipules) 
which are half an inch in diameter, depressed in the middle 
and bifid at the top with diverging short lobes, and studded 
with short spinules round their margins. Leaves at the 
top of the stem, four to five inches long, elliptic-ovate 
oblong or obovate, acute, bright green on both surfaces, 
narrowed at the base into a stout, terete petiole; nerves 
four to six pairs, arched. Flowers half an inch long, 
white, sessile, inserted on the ribs below the stipular 
shields, which conceal the calyx and lower part of the 
corolla-tube. Calyx broadly oblong, terete, truncate ; 
limb very short, obscurely 4-toothed. Corolla clavate, 
-four-lobed in the upper fourth; tube terete, four-ribbed 
within, and with a ring of hairs below the middle; lobes 
oblong, tips obtuse, thickened, incurved. Stamens inserted 
below the meeting of the lobes ; filaments short, stout, in- 
cluded ; anthers broadly ovate, exserted. Disk tumid. 
Ovary four-celled. Style stout, dilated into an infundibular 
truncate stigma.— J. D. H. ; 
Fig. 1, Portion of upper leafing stem and leaves; and 2 of lower flowering, 
both of the natural size; 3, stipular shields; 4, flower; 5, corolla laid open; 
6, ovary, style and stigma:—All enlarged; 7, seedling of the natural size; 
8, view of whole plant greatly reduced, 
