82 8. E. RHAMNIFOLIUS. 



shilling. Prickles strong, straight, patent or declining, froiQ 

 a long compressed base, usually yellow or tipped with red or 

 tinged similarly with the stem. Leaves quinate. Leaflets 

 coriaceous, flat, usually finely but not quite equally serrate, 

 or sligiitly doubly serrate towards the tip, dark dull gf'een 

 with a few hairs chiefly on the ribs above, hard grey- or 

 greenish-felted and with hairs on the ribs beneath ; all stalked ; 

 basal with manifest but short stalks, obovate or oblong, 

 acuminate, not imbricate, usually spreading or directed 

 backwards; intermediate long-stalked, obovate, cuspidate; 

 terminal long-stalked, often slightly cordate, and broad at 

 the base, then widening gradually up to about the middle, 

 from thence narrowed to an acute or sub-cuspidate point; 

 furrowed petioles and under side of midribs with strong 

 hooked prickles; stipules linear-lanceolate. 



Flowering shoot from brown scales clothed with ashy 

 down, angular or slightly furrowed, with clustered hairs and 

 subsessile glands. Frickles few, strong, deflexed, from a ■^ry 

 long base, reddish with yellow tips. Leaves ternate, rarely 

 quinate, the uppermost floral leaves simple. Leaflets clothed 

 like those of the stem, obovate or oblong, acuminate or cuspi- 

 date, often incise-serrate, lower unequal at the base; when 

 quinate the basal leaflets are sessile and, as well as the inter- 

 mediate, are usually wedge-shaped below; petioles and under 

 side of midribs with small hooked prickles. Panicle some- 

 times rather pyramidal, usually broad, blunt, convex and dense 

 at the top, compound, hairy, ashy-tomentose with very short 

 setae especially towards the top of the rachis and branches; 

 prickles many, long, slender, deflexed, from very long bases ; 

 branches axillary, patent or ascending, racemose, rather 

 distant, becoming shorter, closer together, and more corymbose 

 upwards, upper branches from the axils of simple ovate 

 leaves, few uppermost extra-axillary. Sepals ovate-acumi- 

 nate with a narrow point, hairy and felted, and with a few 



