358 EUPHOKBIACE^ (Browii). [_Eu]pliorUa. 



Described from living plants cultivated at Kew. Judging from specimens in 

 cultivation the female plant appears to be scarcer than the male. 



Tliere can be no doubt that this is the plant originally described by Aiton as 

 E. meloformii^, in spite of the fact that soon after its introduction another species 

 {E. infausta, N. E. Br.) was figured under the name E, meloformis by Desfontaines 

 and De Candolle and has subsequently been mistaken for it. For not only does 

 Aiton correctly describe the peduncles as "at first trichotomous, thereafter 

 dichotomous, rarely simple," which character at once distinguishes it from 

 E. infausta, N. E. Br., but in the British Murieum is preserved an excellent 

 drawing of the plant, made by Masson himself, who introduced it. In Wendland s 

 figure of the female plant the cyme-branches are not represented so depressed 

 upon the top of the plant as they are in nature. 





157. E. infausta (N. E. Br.) ; stem succulent, leafless and spineless, 

 subglobose or obovoid, up to 3| in. in diam., depressed at the apex, 

 producing subglobose branches on its sides, usually 8- (but some- 

 times up to 12-) angled, dioecious, the male plant usually (but not 

 always) with persistent hardened remains of the cymes, glabrous, 

 bright deep green, sometimes somewhat shining, marked with 

 oblique transverse darker green (or purplish) stripes, which are 

 sometimes not very conspicuous ; angles vertical or spiral, some- 

 what acute, with nearly flat and slightly concave (not convex) sides, 

 nearly oven or faintly crenulate at the margin, with the leaf- or 

 cyme-scars about 2^ liti. apart ; leaves rudnnentary, soon deciduous, 

 scarcely 1| lin. long, linear or linear-lanceolate, acute : cymes of 

 the male plant erect or ascending (not depressed on the plant), at 

 first with the peduncles simple, ^-1 in. long, and bearing only 

 1 involucre, finally developing at its apex 1-3 erect or ascendin 

 rays -1-1 in. long, each with 1 terminal involucre or with 2-3 

 involucres scattered along them, green, velvety-puberulous, often 

 persistent and hardening ; cymes of the female plant similar, but 

 much shorter, always deciduous; involucre 1^-2 lin. in diam., cup- 

 shapedj puberulous outside, light green, with 5 glands and 5 

 transversely rectangular or subquadrate ciliate lobes; glands 

 f-1^ lin. in their greater diam., transversely oblong, slightly 

 convex, light green, minutely punctate ; ovary sessile, glabrous ; 

 styles very shortly united at the base, with the free part ^ lin. long, 

 rather stout, two-lobed at the apex ; capsule and seeds not seen. 

 E. meloformis, Besf. in Ann. Mm, Hist Nat. Paris, i. 200, t. 16, 

 Jig, 2, and in Konly and Sims, Ann. Bot I 122, t. 2 ; DC. PI Grass. 

 L 139; Andr. Bot Bep. x. t 617; Haw. Syn. PL Succ. 120; Lodd. 

 Bot Cab. t 43Q; Boiss. in DC. Prodr. xv. ii. S7,parthj; Berger, 



SukL Eajphorh. 101 and 105, fig. 26, not of Alton. 



South Africa : without locality, cultivated specimens, Herb. Haivorthl PiU^^^^ 

 in Herb. Bolus, 10684 ! 



For more thau 100 years this plant has been mistaken for E. mdoformls, having 

 been introduced soon after that species and figured as it. But it is readily dis- 

 tinguished from E. melofonnis by its more freely branching habit, less evidentlv 

 banded stems, more distinctly crenate angles, especially on young plants, and 

 particularly by the outstanding erect or ascending peduncles, which only branch 

 at their apex and do not divide near their base into a trichotomous or dichotomous 



