606 LXXI, COMPOSITA. [ Othonna 
6. 0. brachyanthera Hiern, sp. n. 
An erect rigid herb, resembling a Senecio in habit ; rootstock 
thick, dark, oblong or ovoid, glabrous, with numerous stiff erect 
long glabrous often blackened bristles (apparently the remains of 
the petioles of the leaves of previous seasons) at the apex, abrupt 
and with several diverging more or less thickened fibres at the 
base ; stems several, simple and undivided up to the inflorescence, 
yellowish-green or towards the base purplish, striate-sulcate, 
straight or nearly so, glabrate or obsoletely or somewhat cottony, 
leafy, 1 to 2 ft. high; radical leaves obovate or oblanceolate, 
yellowish-green, rounded and sometimes minutely mucronulate at 
the apex, attenuate to the petiolate base, herbaceous, crenulate, 
more or less floccose especially beneath when young, with loose 
white cotton, soon glabrate, ranging up to 10} in. long (including 
the petiole) by 14 in. broad or more; stem-leaves alternate, 
obovate narrowly elliptical or lanceolate, obtuse or the upper 
ones subacute, more or less narrowed to the sessile base, herbaceous, 
yellowish-green, crenulate or the uppermost ones minutely so, 
glabrate or obsoletely floccose, suberect, ranging up to 44 in. long 
by 2 in. broad; capitula discoid, campanulate, 2 to } in. long, 
erect, many-flowered, quasi-calyculate at the base, on unequal 
slightly cottony pedicels ranging up to 1 in. long and rather 
densely arranged in a flat-topped bracteate branched terminal 
cyme of 2 to 3 in. in diameter; bracts narrow, the lower ones 
like the uppermost leaves and the upper ones like the scales at 
the base of the involucre: flowers yellow; scales of the quasi- 
calyculus subulate, small, few; involucral scales 11 to 14, narrowly 
oblong, thinly hairy on the back, straminous except the dark 
ciliolate pointed tip, equal, imbricate, uniseriate, rigidly subscarious 
on the lateral margins, + to + in. long, united at the base around 
the top of the nearly naked or papillose not squamose receptacle ; 
flowers numerous, yellow, tubular, rather exceeding the involucre, 
about 2 in. long; corolla 4 to } in. long, glabrous, bullate at the 
base, funnel-shaped above the middle, 5-lobed ; the lobes lanceolate, 
thickened along the margins and at the darker tips; anthers 
about =}, in. long, cohering near the apex, shorter than the 
slender filaments, shortly appendaged at the apex, obtuse and 
- exappendiculate at the base, included ; style included or nearly so, 
darker than the corolla or stamens, not branched, only notched 
at the apex, included, about equalling or a little exceeding the 
anthers; achenes } to } in. long, oblong or at length oval and 
somewhat compressed, somewhat pubescent, marked with about 
10 longitudinal ribs, each rib consisting of 2 adjacent parallel 
lines ; pappus whitish, copious, deciduous, about + in. long, setose ; 
the setz subuniseriate, very slender, minutely barbellate; nectary 
at the base of the style bullate. 
Hvriia.—In the drier thickets about Lopollo, in company with 
Thymeleacez ; fl. and fr. end of Nov. 1859. No. 3683. In shrubby 
places near Lopollo ; fl. and fr. Dec. 1859. No. 3682. 
The quasi-calyculus is exceptional in Othonna and gives the capitula 
