lower half, a quarter of an inch thick in the middle, dull 
dark glaucous green with a band of pale yellowish-green 
down the centre, furnished with a continuous narrow 
brown horny border, with small distant much-hooked 
prickles. Peduncle three or four feet long, furnished with _ 
copious linear barren bracts, the lower ones ascending, the 
upper squarrose. Infloreseence a cylindrical spike seven or 
eight feet long, four inches in diameter when the flowers 
are fully expanded; flowers arranged in sessile pairs sub- 
tended by a small lanceolate scariose bract; pedicels a line 
long, each furnished with a minute lanceolate bracteole. 
Flowers proterandrous, very pale glaucous green in bud. 
Ovary cylindrical, an inch long, constricted at the neck; 
tube searcely any; segments oblong-lanceolate. Stamens 
inserted at the base of the perianth-segments; filaments 
above an inch long; anthers linear. Style not developed 
till after the anthers fade, fmally an inch and a half long. 
—J. G. Baker. 
Fig. 1, A small portion of the flower-spike ; 2, a complete flower in its final stage, 
with stigma developed and stamens faded; 3, half a flower, above the top of the 
ovary, as seen from within :—all life size. 
