Schizoglossum. | ASCLEPIADEZ (Brown.) 589. 
and furnished with 2 keels and often with 1 or 2 lobes, filiform 
points, teeth or other appendages on the inner face, rarely without 
keels or appendages. Staminal column arising from the base of 
the corolla, united above with the dilated top of the style; 
anthers erect, terminated: by membranous appendages, which are 
inflexed over the top of the style or erect. Style truncate or 
depressed at the apex. Follicle usually solitary by abortion, 
narrowly fusiform, beaked, smooth or covered with subulate pro- 
cesses. Seeds crowned with a tuft of hairs. 
Perennial herbs, with a tuberous rootstock and erect or rarely decumbent, 
usually slender stems; leaves opposite, alternate or whorled, linear to elliptic, 
sometimes cordate or hastate at the base; flowers often small, in pedunculate or 
sessile umbels, lateral at the nodes and terminal. 
Distr1B. Species about 120, the others in Tropical Africa, 
This genus presents to the student unusual difficulties in the determination of 
the species, because the external appearance of the stem, leaves and flowers is 
often alike in a whole group of species, whilst the structure of their corona- 
lobes and often the staminal column is entirely different. On the other hand, 
their foliage is sometimes so variable that two individuals with flowers that are 
identical in structure are totally different in appearance. It is frequently 
scarcely possible to name a species by comparison, without dissecting the 
flowers, In dried specimens the coronal structure is often so much altered and 
more or less obliterated by pressure, that it is frequently necessary to examine 
several flowers before their true structure can be determined. In some cases 
this does not appear to have been done, hence the discrepancies in some exist- 
ing descriptions, Sometimes it is nearly or quite impossible to decide from 
dried flowers if the corona-lobe is continuous with the point, or whether the 
latter is an appendage arising from the apex of the inner face; in a few species 
both conditions appear to occur, The length and entireness of the point or appen- 
dage of the corona-lobes are sometimes variable to a limited extent in the same 
species, as is also the pubescence on the inner face of the corolla-lobes. As 
pointed out in the Flora of Tropical Africa (iv. i. 358), it is not possible to 
draw a rigid technical distinction between Schizoglossum and Xysmalobium, and 
S. crassipes might with almost equal right be placed in the latter genus, its 
corona-lobes being very similar to those of X. brownianwm. Some plants which 
might perhaps be sought for here should be looked for in Krebsia, which only 
differs in the peculiar character of its corona-lobes. The pupillation or pubes- 
cence on the inner face of the corolla-lobes is often nearly or quite invisible when 
the flowers are wetted for dissection. I have been enabled to identify the 
majority of the species (of this and other genera) described by Dr. Schlechter, 
owing to the kindness of Dr. Harry Bolus of Cape Town, who has portions ot 
the type specimens of most of them, presented to him by Dr. Schlechter, and 
has most liberally lent his collection of ‘Asclepiads to Kewe 
Umbel solitary, terminal; corona-lobes produced into 
a long subulate or filiform’ point behind a shorter 
subulate-filiform appendage on the inner face (see also : 
8. pilosum) a ee swe (59) capitatum. 
Umbels 2 or more to a stem or branch, occasional 
solitary and terminal in 42, S. pilosum; 43, S. 
pulchellum ; 49, 8. Conrathii; 60, S. restioides, and 
72, S. Buchanani: 
* Umbels all pedunculate or the uppermost occa- 
sionally sessile; corona-lobes never produced into 
a subulate point behind their appendage when the 
latter is present : 
“aes . 
