Addisonia 45 



(Plate 143) 



ARCTOTIS GRANDIS 

 Arctotis 



Native of South Africa 



Family Carduaceae Thistle Family 



Arctotis grandis Thunb. Fl. Cap. 706. 1823. 



Arctotis stoechadifolia grandis Less. Syn. Gen. Comp. 26. 1832. 



An annual in cultivation, growing from one to three feet high. 

 The stems are gray-green, round, twisted, ridged, smooth at base, 

 becoming white-woolly to ciliate toward the top. The leaves are 

 numerous, partly clasping the stem, the young ones with white 

 tomentum, the older ones somewhat tomentose above, conspicu- 

 ously so beneath, mostly three-veined, oblong in general shape, one 

 to six inches long, mostly lyrate and lobed, and slightly toothed, 

 with three shallow lobes at the apex and two blunt opposite lobes 

 near the center. The flower-heads are on six- to twelve-inch pedun- 

 cles from the axils of the upper leaves, compact, rounded, red and 

 green in bud; the involucres are cup-shaped, of three outer rows of 

 oblanceolate, acuminate, green bracts with scarious margins, and 

 another row of larger, scarious, transparent bracts. There are 

 about twenty-five pistillate ray-flowers, with la vender- white ligules 

 one inch long, which are yellow-blotched at the base; the stigmas 

 are two-parted, purple. The disk-flowers are numerous, azure-steel- 

 blue, perfect, tubular, the lobes reflexed. The pappus is of a small 

 outer series, and an inner spirally twisted series of bristles. 



The arctotis is one of the South African plants which are grown 

 in our gardens as annual, summer-flowering plants, and are noted 

 for their unusual colors. Among these are Dimorphotheca auran- 

 tiaca, with peculiar chrome-orange flowers, brown on the back of 

 the ligules of the ray-flowers; Gerbera Jamesoni, with bright orange 

 and red shades; Venidium calendulaceum, probably an Arctotis, 

 with other distinct yellow shades; all of these colors uncommon in 

 our European and American plants. 



This annual has been cultivated under the name Arctotis grandis. 

 Thunberg described it as a distinct species, and some later authors 

 have called it merely a variety of A. stoechadifolia. There seem to 

 have been several forms of the species, and perhaps that with long- 

 peduncled attractive flowers was brought to Europe for cultivation, 

 and the species described from it. 



