mainly on the “jet-black almost globose fruit’ of 
Wilson’s plant, the fruits of the original B. levis being 
ovate and blue-black. This particular feature we find, 
however, to be far from distinctive, for in B. atrocarpa 
the fruits before becoming jet-black are covered with a 
blue bloom, while, at least on our plant of B. atrocarpa at 
Kew, the fruits rarely approach a globose shape, their 
usual form being somewhat narrowly ovoid. Yet there 
is little room to doubt that Schneider is fully justified 
in regarding B. atrocarpa as specifically distinct from 
B. levis. The two species are certainly closely allied, 
and are both well marked among their nearest congeners 
by the immersed almost invisible secondary nerves of 
the leaves. Yet B. atrocarpa is easily distinguished from 
_B. levis by its angular grooved branchlets, by its thinner, 
longer and proportionately narrower leaf-blades, the 
serrations along the margin of which are more remote, 
and especially by the smaller number of flowers in a 
fascicle. We have not found more than eight flowers 
together in B. atrocarpa, and the number is rarely so 
great, whereas according to Franchet there are in 
B. levis sometimes as many as forty. B. atrocarpa is 
one of the most vigorous of evergreen barberies and one 
of the most formidably armed, its slender needle-like 
spines having a steel-like rigidity. It grows freely, and 
although it suffered to some extent in the hard weather 
of the early part of 1917, it soon recovered. 
Description.—Shrub of erect habit, 5-6 ft. high; branchlets stiff, grey, 
glabrous, sulcate, armed with very rigid, three-pronged, pale brown spines 
{-1} in. long; internodes 1-23 in. long. Leaves evergreen, in clusters of three 
to eight at each node, coriaceaus, glabrous, elliptic-lanceolate, 13-33 in. long, 
i-i in. wide, acute, slenderly cuneate at the base, subsessile or with a petiole 
up to 4 in. long; margins set with slender, forward-pointing teeth ;); in. long; 
dark rather glossy green above, paler beneath, very smooth; nerves scarcely 
perceptible. Flowers produced at the nodes in April, in fascicles of 6-12, 
yellow, } to } in. in diameter ; pedicels } to } in. long, slender, terete, glabrous. 
Sepals oval. Petals bifid at the apex. Fruit ovoid to oval, 3 in. long, at first 
covered with a blue bloom, ultimately black and shining, the style adhering at 
the summit, ripening in October. 
Tas. 8857.—Fig. 1, flower; 2, petal; 3, stamen; 4, pistil :—all enlarged. 
