414 LILIACEiE. 



longer than their pedicels : male sepals Ye inch, female 

 smaller. Berry UXoYz inch, red at first, turning black 

 or blue. t. 261. Wight Ic. t. 2059. 



Nilgiris : Ootacamund and below, flowering January. More 

 frequent at lower levels, Pykara, Karteri, Kotagiri, Coonoor. 

 Pulneys : not on the Kodaikanal downs, but below at level of 

 Shembaganur, etc. Fyson 654, 1042^ 1740, 2583. Bourne 163. 



Gen. Disi Throughout India, from Kashmir to Khasia, Travancore, 

 etc. 



ASPARAGUS. F.B.I. I III. 



Asparagus. 



Herbs with stout creeping rootstock, and slender 

 ribbed or grooved green stems, with no true leaves, but the 

 latter reduced to small, sometimes spine-tipped, scales 

 subtending a bunch of narrow green needle-like spiny 

 or flattened branchlets (cladodes). Flowers small, with 

 jointed stalks, in the axils of scales : of the type usual 

 in this family. Fruit a globose berry, enclosing two to 

 six seeds with black brittle testa. 



Species about loo, in the Old World, both temperate and 

 tropical, mostly in dry places. 



Asparagus subulatus Steiidel ; F.B.L vi 315, III 6. Stem 

 erect, tall, smooth, with straight thorns, above each of 

 which is a small scale, and a branch. Cladodes six to 

 twelve together, /^ to J^ inch long, angled, stiff. Flowers 

 solitary, one on each side of a branch on short stalks 

 which are jointed above the middle. Berry Y> inch. 

 t. 262. Wight. Ic. t. 2053 (A. asiaticus). 



On the Nilgiri and Pulney downs. Peculiar to these hills. 

 Fyson. Bourne 254, 1250,* etc. 



The spine is really a short branch (a) arising in the axil of the thin 

 scale (i) but breaks through this as it developer, as will be seen on examin- 

 ing the youngest parts. At the back of the branch is another thin scale (2) 

 this is really a leaf on the spine, and in its axil the branch {b) is developed. 

 Round the base of each short flo wer -stalk (<:) are three small scales, the one 



