and are known as Hottentot’s bread : in the raw state they 
have a bitter taste. Several species of Brachystelma are, 
or have been, in cultivation; these include B. tuberosum, 
R. Br. (t. 2343), B. craspum, Grah. (t. 3016), .B. Barberiae, 
Harv. (t. 5607), and B. ovanthum, Schlechter (t. 8670), 
which have been figured in this Magazine. The genus 
comprises about seventy-four species, of which forty-five 
are natives of South Africa, and nineteen of Tropical 
Africa ; there are several in India, one in Siam, and one- 
in New Guinea. At Kew B. foctidum is cultivated in a 
dry tropical house devoted to succulent plants, where it 
flowered for the first time in August, 1918, when the 
figure now given was prepared. 
- Description.—Herb with a perennial tuberous rootstock. ‘uber flattened, 
up to 5in. across. Stems solitary or several, ascending or spreading, branched, 
_ 3-6in. long, clothed with short spreading hairs. Leaves opposite, spreading, 
linear-lanceolate, lanceolate or elliptic, rarely obovate, tip acute or obtuse, 
margin sometimes undulate, narrowed at the base into a short petiole, villous 
on both surfaces or glabrous above, 4-2 in. long, 1-3.in. wide. Flowers axillary, 
solitary or often in clusters of 2-6, odour very disagreeable. Pedicels 1-1 in. 
long, pubescent. Sepals lanceolate, acute, 1-1 in. long, pubescent. Corolla 
1-2 in. across, pubescent to nearly glabrous outside, glabrous or rarely puberulous 
within, limb dark-purple and yellow with the lobes greenish upwards, and the 
_ tube beset with tawny minute warts ; tube campanulate, }-} in. long ; lobes free, 
spreading, linear or lanceolate from a deltoid base, acute, 2-1 in. long, j,—7, in. 
wide, shortly ciliate. Outer corona cup-shaped, about as long as the staminal 
column, 10-toothed, so as to form small sacs alternating with the anthers; the 
teeth themselves erect, deltoid, very short. Inner corona with linear, blunt, very 
short lobes incumbent on the backs of the anthers. Follicles geminate or solitary, 
fusiform-terete, bluntly beaked, pubescent, 2}-3} in. long, }-} in. wide. 
ties 1, flower-bud ; 2, corona and gynostegium ; 3, pollinia :-— 
