156 Rev. R. T. Lowe on a new Species of Convolvulus. 



with quite small and inconspicuous leaves and flowers in pro- 

 portion to its size, like some closely-browsed or clipped- down 

 thorny bush, and of the shape exactly of a miniature Stone- 

 Pine {Pinus Pinea, L.). Root woody, very hard and stiff, nearly 

 or quite simple and tap-shaped, covered with a rugged, longitu- 

 dinally-striated, brown bark, and from the thickness of the 

 little finger to that of the thumb at the crown, where it imme- 

 diately divides into a dense mass of very short, stiff, woody, 

 closely interlacing and entangled branches, forming a very hard, 

 rigid, spinous, cushion-like, grey, flattened head, convex in the 

 centre, from 3 or 4 to 18 inches in diameter, and from 1 to 6 

 inches thick in the middle ; so hard, compact, and woody, that 

 it will often bear the weight of a man standing or even stamping 

 on it, without yielding or sensible disfigurement. Young shoots 

 originating chiefly from within or beneath the roof-like cushion 

 or pileus formed by the older, outwardly-knobbed, spurred and 

 stunted, interlacing branches; straight, hard, stiff, rigid, spine- 

 like, seldom more than 1 or 2 inches long, round, terete, sharp, 

 and hard-pointed, finely and evenly striate longitudinally, very 

 finely and minutely cinereo-puberulous. Leaves 2 to 5 or 6 

 lines long, and ^-1 line broad, thickish in substance, subcon- 

 duplicate, clothed with adpressed silky-grey hairs, linear-oblong, 

 subspathulate, obtuse. Flowers pretty, but small and rather 

 inconspicuous, solitary, axillary, subsessile in the axils of the 

 leaves on the young shoots, light rose-pink or purple, much 

 resembling those of C. arvensis, L., but very much smaller, 

 being only 4 or 5 lines in diameter. Calyx bracteolate ; sepals 

 and the adpressed bractlets oblong, short, one-third or one-fourth 

 the length of the corolla, silky grey. Corolla 5 or 6 lines in 

 diameter, three or four times the length of the bracts and sepals, 

 funnel-shaped, 5 -angular, and outwardly silky-pubescent in five 

 longitudinal rays or narrow acuminate stripes. 



The flowers continued to expand successively for several weeks 

 after the plants had been deposited in a basket kept in a dry 

 place, — deriving probably, whilst growing in those arid wastes, 

 their chief supply of moisture from the air, and depending only 

 secondarily upon the soil. Indeed, at this moment, though more 

 than a year and a half has elapsed since they were rooted up, 

 they look very much the same as when actually growing. 



I was informed by a Spanish gentleman in the house of my 

 kind and hospitable friend Don. Ramon Paez, at Puerto de 

 Cabras, in Fuerteventura, that in Spain the name " Chaparro w 

 designates some species of dwarf shrubby oak. 



Specimens of entire plants of Convolvulus caput-Medusce have 

 been placed in the Banksian and Hookerian herbaria. 



Lea Rectory, Aug. 6, 1860. 



