Tenore gives the mountain pastures in the Abruzzi, 
Bentham gives near Rome, on the authority of Mauri, and 
there is a specimen so ticketed in the Kew Herbarium, but 
it is not the true plant. Its nearest ally is the common 
S. of Europe V. phlomoides, in which the leaves are crenu- 
late, and the corolla-lobes are spreading, not, as in 
longifolium, forming a cup. 
V. longifolium was raised in the Royal Gardens, Kew, 
from seed procured from Messrs. P. Barr & Sons, Thames 
Ditton, in 1898. As it flowered in the Herbaceous ground 
in July, 1899, it must be an annual, though described as 
a biennial by Boissier. ee 
Descr.—Whole plant as here described, three or four feeb 
high, clothed, except the corolla, with white or yellowish 
flocculent tomentum mixed with stellate hairs, forming a 
low conical mass of leaves crowned with a sceptre-like 
columnar inflorescence. Leaves innumerable, densely 
superposed, gradually diminishing upward in size and 
breadth ; lower one and a half to two feet long, spreading, 
narrowly ovate, or oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, base 
narrowed into a short petiole, upper sessile, base am- — 
plexicaul, all quite entire, with strongly waved margins. 
Inflorescence sessile, a foot high, by three and a half 
inches in diameter, of innumerable short, stout appressed 
flowering branches; bracts filiform, green. lowers 
shortly pedicelled. Calyz stellate-tomentose ; lobes lan- 
ceolate, acuminate. Corolla cup-shaped, an inch broad, — 
golden-yellow. Three short filaments and connectives of _ 
the small, short anthers, villous, with simple, clavellate — 
white or violet hairs ; two longer filaments quite glabrous, 
anthers twice as large, lunate, quite naked. Ovary hispid, 
base of style stellately hairy.—J. D. H. 
Fig. 1, calyx with style and stigma; 2, stellate hairs of foliage, &c.; 
3, base of corolla and stamens; 4 and 5, anthers of two long stamens; 6 and 
7, short stamens ; 8, hair from do. ; 9, : 2 
is ns of whale ae a yodaaad. ovary and base of style :—all enlarged ; 
