Desor. An erect dush, very much branched; branches 
suberect, cylindric, upper clothed with spreading rigid 
flexuous bristles, which are variable in quantity and length, 
being much softest and sparsest in the cultivated specimens. 
Leaves crowded, shortly petioled, a quarter to one-third of an 
inch long, coriaceous, ovate or oblong, obtuse or acute, 
margins revolute, clothed above and beneath with sub- 
appressed bristles, nerves one on each side the very stout 
midrib. Mowers solitary, terminal, shortly pedicelled, pen- 
dulous, together with the bracts upwards of an inch long, 
each with two opposite spreading leaf-like bracts, and four 
decussating orbicular concave coriaceous appressed ones, the 
inner of which reach the base of the calyx-lobes, all as well 
as the calyx clothed with appressed rather silky bristles; the 
four inner bracts are pale yellow-green, the outer pair sul- 
fused with red. Calyx-tube broadly ovoid, lobes five, large, 
broadly ovate, concave. Corol/a tubular, deep violet-purple. 
Petals broadly obliquely obcordate, ciliate, convolute. 
Stamens included, filaments short; anthers linear, with 
short basal appendages. Ovary free, appressed, strigose, 
5-celled, 5-angled, with five obtuse terminal auricles.— 
fDi. ) 
Fig. 1. Leaf; 2, petal; 8, calyx and stamen; 4, vertical section of ditto; 
5, stamen :—all magnified. 
