eee, 
Pachycarpus.| ASCLEPIADEA (Brown). 715 
cucullate, very spreading, or spreading at the base with erect or 
incurved tips, rarely wholly erect and then with reflexed sides and a 
single keel down the face, usually with a pair of contiguous often 
fleshy keels or a longitudinally fissured fleshy hump at the base and 
prolonged beyond into a linear, lanceolate, dilated or 3-lobed blade, 
occasionally reduced to the keels or hump only, rarely keeled to the 
apex or without keels. Staminal column arising from the bottom of 
the corolla, often with the filament part undeveloped, very broadly 
conical from the anther-wings being very broad and projecting at 
the base, or pentagonally cylindric with them less developed. 
Anthers with terminal membranous appendages. Pollen-masses 
solitary in each anther-cell, pendulous, attached in pairs to the 
pollen-carriers by well developed caudicles. Style truncate, 
excavated, 5-lobed or produced into a beak or column at the apex. 
Follicles solitary (in all the specimens seen), coriaceous, stoutly 
fusiform or ovoid-fusiform, very obtuse, winged, at least on the 
upper part, sometimes toothed or echinate along the wings. Seeds 
crowned with a tuft of hairs. 
Erect perennial herbs ; rootstock probably tuberous or of thick fleshy roots ; 
leaves opposite ; flowers in pairs or in pedunculate 2- to several-flowered umbels, 
lateral at. the upper nodes and terminal, large or of moderate size. 
Disrris. Species 27, one extending into and another endemic to Tropical 
Africa, 
Although Pachycarpus was established by E. Meyer as long ago as 1837, it has 
not been recognised as a distinct genus by other authors, probably because 
E. Meyer based the generic characters chiefly upon the fruit, and included some 
species that belong to other genera. Different authors have united it variously 
with Gomphocarpus, Asclepias or Xysmalobium, but (as it appears to me) without 
sufficient investigation, since the very different coronal structure, different character 
of the whole flower and fruit, united to the different habit of almost all the species, 
are, I think, sufficient to warrant its retention as a distinct genus, which can moreover 
be very easily recognised by the general appearance alone. /. Gerrardi, however, 
is so closely simulated by Asclepias macra, that dried specimens cannot be dis- 
tinguished without dissection, when the former is seen to have the spreading 
dorsally flattened (but keeled) corona-lobes of Pachycarpus, and the latter the 
characteristic erect Jaterally compressed complicate-cucullate corona-lobes of 
Asclepias. For convenience I have used the term keels throughout for all the 
keel modifications or processes upon the base of the corona-lobes. 
_ * Leaf-blade 4-24 in. broad, 7 (rarely 10) times as long 
as broad, elliptic, oblong, lanceolate, linear-lanceolate 
or linear-oblong : 
Corolla lobed to the middle or slightly beyond, large, 
globose, yellow or greenish, with or without purple- : 
_ brown spots ... Ae a ee ae .-. (21) grandiflorus. 
Corolla lobed at least to 2 of the way down, often nearly 
\\ to the base : 
Corona-lobes erect, oblong, with reflexed sides form- 
ing a single keel down the inner face and a 
linear tooth on each side at the base spreading ae 
out under the anther-wings es ses «» (1) Galpinii. 
Corona-lobes abruptly incurved from a spreading 
base, with erect tips, linear or slightly dilated at 
the 1-2 lin. broad tips, without keels... ... (14) dealbatus, 
