Stapelia, | ASCLEPIADE& (Brown). 939 
3789! Var. €: Malmesbury Div. ; Paarde Berg, Pillans, 625! Robertson Div. ; 
western aspect of Kogmans Kloof, Pillans, 601! 633! Var. ¢: Robertson Div. ; 
hills near Robertson, Pillans, 603! Kruispad, Pillans, 677! Var. 6: Worcester 
Div. ; near Worcester, Cooper, 2703 bis ! 
CenTraL Rearion: Ceres Div. ; Mitchells Pass, near Ceres, all the following :— 
Var. 8: Barkly, 36! 54 partly! MacOwan, 2244! 2255! Pillans, 36! and (a 
rather pale form), 630! also cultivated specimens! Var. @: Pillans, 89! 97! 
Var. 1: Barkly, 54 partly ! : 
WESTERN Recron : Little Namaqualand ; Barkly, 28 bis ! 
S. hirsuta is the second species of the tribe Stapelix discovered in South Africa, 
apparently towards the end of the 17th century. Like S. variegata, it varies con- 
siderably in its flowers, the principal varieties being enumerated, but other forms 
in cultivation raised from seeds produced by insect agency in Europe do not 
quite correspond to any of the above and are certainly hybrids between forms of 
S. hirsuta or between it and some other species. Var. wnguipetala I now believe 
to be one of these, as no wild example is known. The specimen labelled 
S. hirsuta in the Linnean Herbarium consists of a single flower of the var. patula, 
from which the corona has been removed. This, however, is not the form 
described by Linneus in his Hortus Clifortianus and preserved in the Hortus 
Cliffortianus Herbarium (now at the British Museum), and as that was evidently the 
form commonly cultivated (since all the other specimens I have seen bearing date 
between 1727 and 1800 belong to it), I have taken the Hortus Cliffortianus speci- 
men as the type. This form seems to have disappeared from cultivation, and I 
have never seen a living cultivated example of it. Thunberg states that S. hirsuta 
grows ‘‘on mountains near Cape Town, near Paarl and elsewhere,” but as I have 
shown in the Journal of the Linnean Society, xvii. 166, his Herbarium contains 
3 unlocalised forms under that name, one of which is probably typical S. hirsuta, 
one the variety afinis, and the other I think is a distinct and at present other- 
wise unknown species. So far as known to me no form of this species is now 
found on the mountains near Cape Town. Commelin’s figure (a good one for 
that period) quoted by Linnzus represents the form of var. patula in which the 
dorsal wing of the inner corona-lobes is entirely adnate to the inner horn, but this 
appears to be an unstable character. The type specimen of S. lanifera, Haw. (a 
single flower), at Oxford, is very instructive as to variability of the inner corona 
lobes ; three have the dorsal wing adnate for all its length to the inner horn, one 
free for # and the fifth quite free to the base, thus combining the characters 
of the type and var. afinis, The var. lutea is a curious and distinct form, dis- 
covered in April, 1906, by Mr. C. Piers, who only found a single plant, growing 
amongst var. afinis, of which it is evidently a seedling form, The variety grata 
may perhaps be only a slight form of typical S. hirsuta, but the corona more 
nearly resembles var. patula. Of S. villosa I have only seen one flower preserved 
in alcohol, which I cannot now distinguish from typical S. hirsuta, and suspect 
that the locality ‘* Little Namaqualand ” may be an error. 
[8. 8. hamata (Jacq. Stap. t. 50) ; stems erect, 5-6 in. (up to 1 ft., 
Jacquin) high, 4-6 lin. square, with slightly compressed toothed 
angles when young, becoming flat-sided with age, velvety-puberulous ; 
teeth with erect or incurved rudimentary leaves about 1 lin. long ; 
flowers 2 to several on a very short stout peduncle at the base of 
the stems, successively developed ; pedicels about 2 in. long, velvety ; 
sepals about 4 lin. long, lanceolate, acute, velvety ; corolla sub- 
globose and subacute in bud, when expanded about 4—4} in. in 
diam. with the recurved lobes extended, puberulous on the back, 
transversely rugose on the inner face, dark purple-brown (paler or 
yellowish-tinted at the centre), with numerous transverse yellow 
lines on the lower 3 of the lobes, covered on the flattish disk and 
very base of the lobes with rather short erect purple hairs, which 
