410 HORTUS MORTOLENSIS 
A very old specimen, bearing this name, in the garden, I pre- 
sume is the O. decumana brought from Kew in 1868. It fully 
agrees with Console’s plant, as specimens received from Palermo* 
show, and the late Dr. A. Weber shared the opinion that this is 
O. decumana. The description of Haworth agrees well with our 
plant, especially as he compares it with O. Ficus-indica, evidently 
meaning thereby the plant which we now generally know as 
O. Ficus-indica Guss. No doubt O. decwmana is very similar to 
this species and more so to O. elongata, but its joints are far 
longer, thicker, and not at all tuberculated, with only a very few 
prickles. The flowers. are orange red and very conspicuous. It 
is certainly specifically distinct from both. 
De Candolle,+ Pfeiffer} and Labouret§ merge O. elongata and 
O. decumana into one species ; hence Console’s new name for the 
plant can be explained, the more so as I am informed by Prof. Borzi 
that Console knew O. robusta under the name of O. decwmana. 
Haworth says that he is not sure whether O. decwmana is 
really O. maxima Mill., at any rate, the name O. decwmana cannot 
be used for O. Ficus-indica, as recently proposed by-Mr. Burkill. || 
O. elongata, an old inhabitant of the garden, determined by the 
late Dr. A. Weber, agrees perfectly with the description given by 
Prince Salm- Dyck. 
For O. Engelmanni we are indebted to Sir Edmund Loder, of 
Leonardslee, Horsham. 
O. exaltata. This new species stands very close to O. swbulata, 
and may be easily mistaken for it, but when grown side by side 
the differences are quite obvious. O. exaltata is a taller plant 
with generally longer branches, and somewhat glaucous instead 
of grass green. The tubercles are more elongated and differently 
marked. The leaves are shorter, the spines, when young, are not 
white, but yellowish brown, generally stouter and stiffer. I have 
not yet seen a flower of it. It isan old inhabitant of our gardens, 
sometimes called O. Cumingi. It probably comes from about 
the same region as O. subulata. 
O. Ficus-indica, the common prickly pear, is planted every- 
where along the coast and has become -subspontaneous in South 
France, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Greece, &c., on the Red 
Sea coast, and in South Africa. Its fruits are not eaten here to 
the same extent as in Southern Italy. Daniel and Thomas 
Hanbury planted O. Ficus-indica in a great many places in 
the garden on May 20th, 1868. 
Mr. Burkill has shown‘! that this cannot be Miller’s plant, 
* Through the kindness of Prof. A. Borzi, Director of the Palermo Botanic 
Garden. 
+ De Candolle, Prodr. iii. p. 473. 
t Pfeiffer, Enwmeratio Diagnostica, p. 152. 
§ Labouret, Monographie de la Famille des Cactées, p. 347. 
|| J. H. Burkill, *‘ Determination of the Prickly Pears now Wild in India” 
(in Records of the Botanical Survey of India, iv. p. 6), pp. 288-289. 
{| See also J. D. Hooker & B. Daydon Jackson, Index Kewensis, vol. iii. 
p- 387. 
