NAT. ORDER.— CACTE.E. 181 



patent ; the outer ones short, thick, and fleshy, the inner from half an 

 inch to an inch long- ; style, long-er than the stamens, pale yellow, 

 thickish, swollen downwards, solid, or with only a thread-like, central 

 hollow towards the top ; stigma of generally five, sometimes four, pale- 

 yellow, finally ferrug-inous bordered, erect, subconnivant, ovate lobes ; 

 filaments and anthers pale ; gcnnen half or three-quarters of an inch 

 long-, cup-shaped at top, uneven, bearing a minute, fleshy, ovate-globose, 

 yellowish, deciduous leaf at the summit of each irregular tubercle, in- 

 side of which is a fascicle of short, minute, chestnut bristles ; a verti- 

 cal section discovers the central, subtriangular, cell-hke ovarium, con- 

 taining from one to five ovules ; fruit subglobose, approaching to oval 

 more or less, with the cup-sliaped hollow at the top obsolete, so as to 

 be often truncate, from an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, the 

 color of a Magnum-bonum Plum ; perfectly even, but furnished with 

 short, dense fascicles, tufts, or branches, of rich chestnut-colored 

 bristles, contrasting beautifully with the delicate transparent yellow of 

 the thin, smooth skin ; a few of these are twice as long as the rest ; 

 all are extremely deciduous, brittle, and a.cute, so as to render the ex- 

 amination of the fruit more than ordinarily troublesome. It is hardly 

 possible to touch the plant when in fructification v/ithout getting the 

 skin or clothes full of these bristles ; inside of the fuit })alc yellowish- 

 white, containing in the middle from one to four, much flattened, rather 

 large round seeds, three or four lines in diameter, enveloped in a sin- 

 gular, dense, cottony mass of fibres ; the fruit is rather agreeable, juicy, 

 with a fine acid, somewhat resembling an indifferent, hard-fieshed, or 

 unripe Plum, with a smell and slight flavor like the leaf-stalks of gar- 

 den Rhubard. Its principal flowering season is May and June. 



