612 Lxxi. COMPOSITE. [Pleiotaxis 



A herb ■with the habit of a Centaurea, rarely caulescent ; radical 

 leaves massed together, erect ; scapes with but few leaves ; capitulum 

 solitary, very large ; fruiting involucre spreading, 2 in. in diameter ; 

 involucral scales pluriseriate, imbricate, minutely ciliate, scattered on 

 the back with minute adpressed hairs, glabrous within, the outermost 

 ones ovate-obtuse or subacute short, the inner ones lanceolate longer, 

 the innermost ones linear, pointed, | in. long ; florets numerous, deep 

 blue ; achenes f to i in. long, longitudinally and unequally r2-ribbed, 

 sublinear, narrowed"" and often a little curved towards the base, sub- 

 compressed, very sparingly pilose with short adpressed hairs ; pappus 

 I to § in. long, of a slight rufous straw-colour, pauciseriate, setose ; the 

 setre unequal, minutely setulose ; fruiting receptacle h in. in diameter, 

 areolate, with depressions in the intervals, the edges of the areolae 

 shortly fimbriate. 



HuiLLA. — In rather dry thickets near Huilla, plentiful ; fr. Nov. 

 1859. Coll. Carp. 677. 



74. ERYTHROCEPHALUM Benth. in Benth. & Hook. f. Gen. 

 PI. ii. p. 488 (1873). 



Hcsmastegia Klatt in Annal. Naturhist. Wien, vii. p. 102 

 (1892). Megcdotheca Welw. ex 0. Hoffm. in Engl. Bot. Jahrb. 

 XV. p. 541 (1893). 



1. E. dianthiflorum O. Hoffm., I.e., and in Bol. See. Bret. x. 

 p. 183 (1893). 



Megalotheca dianthijlora Welw., I.e. 



PuNGO Andongo. — A perennial herb, with a habit slightly Car- 

 duacous ; stems slender, simple and one-headed or branched from the 

 middle and several-headed ; capitula homogamous, many-flowered, 

 bright purple throughout except the anthers ; involucre campanulate ; 

 the scales imbricate, pluriseriate, broadly lanceolate and crowded at 

 the base, from the middle towards the apex lanceolate and rather 

 lax, the outer ones shorter, mostly much acuminate, the inner ones 

 elongated, liguliform, rather obtuse, spinulose-denticulate especially 

 towards the apex ; florets all tubular, blood-red ; the corolla glabrous, 

 pentagonal at the bottom, then abruptly contracted into the filiform 

 tube and at the top abruptly again dilated into the shorter widely 

 campanulate 5-cleft limb ; the lobes shorter than the tube, reflexed, 

 triangular lanceolate ; anthers exserted, rather rigid, loosely cohering, 

 appendaged at the apex each with an erect oblong-globose stipitate 

 gland, caudate at the base ; the tails fimbriate-lacerate at the tip, pilose, 

 empty, pellucid, nearly flat, broadly linear ; filaments naked, inserted 

 in the bottom of the corolla-throat, nearly flat ; pollen spherical, 

 tolerably large, coarsely echinate ; ovary somewhat compressed, sub- 

 pentagonal or rarely hexagonal, oblong, narrowed-subtruncate at 

 both ends, pilose especially on the angles, surmounted by 5 or rarely 

 6 compressed unequal narrowly linear-lanceolate much acuminate 

 deciduous palese which are pilose-serrulate on the margin and more or 

 less as long as the corolla-tube ; style red, strong, glabrous ; its 

 branches semi-cylindrical, flat inside, with a semicircular ring of hairs 

 below the apex ; achene glabrate or pubescent, much larger than the 

 ovary, very hard, ovoid-oblong, obtusely 5- or 6-angled, brown, truncate 

 at the apex surmounted by the small cyathiform 5-crenate nectary ; 

 the angles thick, obtuse, more prominent near the base, gibbous- 

 protruded at the apex ; pappus obsolete ; receptacle paleaceous, the 

 palese more or less similar to the involucral scales, nearly flat, strongly 



