910 cvi. CYTiNACE^. [PUostyles 



flowers and fruits of the PUostyles ; and even two species of Curculio 

 were met with in one and the same flower. 



Welwitsch considered that the flowers of this plant are not theo- 

 retically without peduncles, any more than those of Lemna or Pistia, 

 but that the stalks are extremely reduced, just as the axis of the 

 inflorescence in Compositce ; this view is confirmed by the spiral 

 arrangement of the bracts. 



2. HYDNORA Thunb. ; Benth. & Hook. f. Gen. PI. iii. p. 120. 



Aphyteia L. ex Achar. Dissert. PI. Aphyt. p. 8 (22 June 1776). 



1. H. africana Thunb. in Vet. Acad. Handl. Stockb. xxxvi. 

 p. 69. t. 2 (1775). Aphyteia Hydnora Achar., l.c^ p. 10, c. tab. 



Var. longicollis Welw. in Trans. Linn. See. xxvii. pp. 66, 94 

 (1869); Hook. f. in DC. Prodr. xvii. p. 109 (1873) ; Ficalho, PI. 

 Uteis, p. 244 (1884). 



//. longicollis Welw., I.e., t. 21 ; Solms in Engl. & Prantl, Nat. 

 Pflanzenfam. iii. 1, p. 285 (1889). 



MossAMEDEs. — A fleshy-coriaccous plant, like a fungus in shape, 

 dusky-brickred throughout ; smell stercoraceous ; rhizome or under- 

 ground stem thick, dull and purple- dusty outside, pale brickred inside, 

 5- to 7-gonal, horizontal or obliquely ascending, sparingly and 

 remotely dichotomous, fleshy inside, beset along all the angles outside 

 with blunt papilliform warts, perennial, parasitical on the roots of 

 ZygophyUum orbiculatum Welw. (herb. no. 1637 and Coll. Carp, 27) 

 and on a succulent Euj^horbia (which it ultimately kills; cf. Welw. 

 herb. no. 643), growing all the year round, producing in succession 

 flowers from the angles of the rhizome, of which the first appear 

 to be rudimentary and to constitute the rows of tubercles on 

 the angles ; perianth tubular, 3 to 8 in. high, an inch in diameter, 

 obconic-cylindrical, bluntly rounded at the base, attenuate to the 

 sessile base and there connate with the ovary, gradually widening 

 upwards, deeply and transversely wrinkled, orange-red tending to 

 brickred inside, dusky-cinnamon in colour outside, 3- or very rarely 

 4-cleft at the apex ; the segments of the limb valvate in aestivation, 

 ragged inside, connivent or even connate to the extreme tip ; the 

 sinuses rounded, not lobulate at the base ; some or all of the segments 

 very broadly furrowed within, bearing in the furrow a gland which 

 covers all the upper part of the cavity of the furrow and is at first 

 white and soon becomes dusky ; the substance whitish-subferruginous, 

 soon deliquescing and at the same time turning dusky and stinking 

 after the manner of certain fungi ; stamens isomerous with the 

 perianth segments, 3 or 4, and opposite to them ; filaments inserted 

 on a ring at the middle of the tube and concrete with it ; anthers 

 cohering at the base, free at the apex, pyramidal-conical, blunt, 

 many-celled, whitish-straw in colour ; the cells parallel, unequal in 

 length, transverse, variously curved or bent ; ovary inferior, adnate 

 to the tube below the anthers, 1 -celled ; placentas very numerous, 

 densely ovuled, perpendicularly dependent in the cavity of the tube, 

 bright white ; ovules bright white ; stigma subsessile, thick, broadly 

 pulvinate, somewhat 3- or 4-lobed, sordidly purple-dusky, pale brick- 

 red inside ; the lobes shortly convex, delicately but clearly marked 

 with transverse furrows. On maritime sandy hills near Mossamedes 

 and as far as Cabo Negro, plentiful ; fl. and fr. April, 23 June, and 

 July 1859. No. 530. 



The plant in all parts and especially in the rhizome abounds in a 



