Tas. 6061. 
PELECYPHORA ASELLIFORMIS VAR. CONCOLOR. 
Native of Mezico. 
Nat. Ord. Cactra.—Tribe EcHINOCACTES. 
Genus Petecyruora, Ehrb. ; (Benth. and H. f. Gen. Plant. vol. i. p. 848). 
Pexecypuora aselliformis; Ehrenberg in Bot. Zeit., vol.i. (1 843) p. 737; Walp. 
Rep., vol. v. p. 822; Salm-Dyck Cact. in Hort. Dyck, cult. 5, et adn. 78; 
Forst. Handb. der Cact. p. 257 ; Labouret. Monog. Cact. p. 148. Iilust. 
Hortic., vol. vi. t. 186. 
‘Var. concolor, petalis concoloribus. 
This remarkable and still very rare plant, has been long 
known amongst Cactus growers, and has in fact been in the 
trade for many years, having been imported by the brothers 
Tonel from Mexico, where it was said to have been found - 
with the equally anomalous Cactaceous genus Anhalonium 
(il. Hort., vol. xvi. t. 605 a). It was first published by Ehren- 
berg, from specimens grown in Berlin in 1843, but nothing was 
known of its floral character till Lemaire, in 1858, published 
in the “Illustration Horticole” quoted above, an excellent 
figure of it with a very full and interesting description. 
The specimen here figured was forwarded by Mr. Justus 
Corderoy of Blewbury, early in June last, with the observa- 
tion that the flower differs markedly in colour from that of 
Lemaire’s plant, which has an outer series of pale petals, — 
whereas those of this are uniformly of a rose-purple, like the 
inner series of Lemaire’s. Though so unlike other Cacti in the 
sculpturing of the stem and its mammille, Pelecyphora is not 
essentially different in these respects from Mammillaria ; 
the mammille (which Lemaire regards as abnormal petioles 
and calls podaria) are vertically oblong, and crowned verti- 
cally with two contiguous rows of flat short horny cuspidate | 
processes that overlap horizontally, and resemble the teeth 
of a comb ; these are analogous to the spines of a Mammillaria, 
OCTOBER Ist, 1873. 
