CoLENSO. — On Four Notable Foreign Plants. 345 



and further it has only one other alHed genus, Morcttia (and 

 this too, hke that, containing only a single species), in the 

 fifth tribe of the extensive order of Crucifers, or Brassicacecs. 



As this plant is a very great singularity, and famed for its 

 strongly-marked hygrometrical properties, and as I have a 

 specimen to show you, I may also tell you a little about it — 

 both natural, aud legendary and mythical. 



1. Natural. — It is a small, annual, dwarf, shabby-looking 

 plant, only a few inches high ; it has one stout tap-root, and 

 its stem, also stout, is short and very much dichotomously 

 branched from the neck, and expanding while young ; leaves 

 small, oblong; flowers minute, white; pods also small, ven- 

 tricose ; seeds few. After flowering the leaves fall off, and 

 the branches and branchlets become dry, hard, and woody, 

 and are soon contracted into a globular form. In this state 

 the little plant is easily withdrawn from the sand by the 

 wind, hurried from place to place, and blown from the desert 

 into the sea, or into any water, and as soon as it is wetted the 

 branches relax and expand as if its life was renewed ; the 

 valves of the pod open, and the tiny seeds cast on the shores 

 are scattered with the sand by the winds until they are 

 settled, when they spring into life and take root. If this 

 plant is taken up before it is withered, and kept entire in a 

 dry room, it may be long preserved, and after being many 

 years in this situation, if the root is placed in a glass of water 

 a few hours, the buds of flowers will swell, open, and appear 

 as if newly taken out of the ground, or it will recover its 

 original form in the same manner if wholly immersed in water. 



I may here mention that I have been sometimes reminded 

 of this little natural globose vegetable ball, drifted about by 

 the winds over the sandy deserts of Arabia, on seeing the 

 globular heads of the female flowers of the large indigenous 

 sea-side grass, Spinifcx liirsutus, similarly blown about by the 

 winds over the fiat sandy shores of our own coasts in my old 

 travelling - days. Indeed, there have been times — at low 

 water, and the sandy flats dry, and wind fair (behind us) — 

 when my Maori companions, carrying heavy loads, in order to 

 relieve the tedium of their long journeys, would gather a few 

 of those round, dry heads, and set them a-going before them, 

 they keeping up a kind of short run after them. From this 

 ancient Maori circumstance and juvenile custom, and the 

 natural rolling of the ball before the winds when ripe and dry, 

 they call those heads turikakoa = joyous, or nimble, knees. 



The monks of Palestine gave it the name of " the rose of 

 Jericho,"''' and also " holy rose," and of it they make a little 



*From, I suppose, " Ecclesiasticus," xxiv., 14 — "A rose plant in 

 Jericho." 



