ADDISONIA 47 
(Plate 24) 
PEDILANTHUS SMALLII 
Small’s Boot-flower 
Native of Florida 
Family EuPHORBIACEAE SpurGcE Family 
Pedilanthus Smallii Millsp. Field Mus. Bot. 2: 358. 1913. 
A profusely _prapsiing shrub about six feet high, with branches 
and branchlets more or less strongly zig-zag; the branchlets are 
slender and beat plainly evident stipular glands. The leaves vary 
from ovate to ovate-lanceolate, are acute, and densely crisp- 
uberulent when young, retaining some of this pubescence in 
age; aa are sessile and bear an inconspicuous keel along the 
page oe The bright pink or salmon-colored ‘flowers’ 
e clust at the tips of the young branchlets where they spring 
frotti teaflike bracts which are ovate-lanceolate, attenuate to the 
apex, pilose, and longer than the flower stems; the flower-like 
involucres are glabrous without _ within, about five-eighths of 
an inch long and have an upper fissure opening back to the appendix 
and a shallow lower cleft; _the rman lobes of the tube are ovate, 
tips while the fifth (superior) lobe is strap-shaped, blunt, and free 
except at its ies reget The pedicels of the male and f emale flowers 
the apex and strongly marked by a longitudinal channel as if nearing 
bilobation, or even deeply bilobed; the four appendicial glands are 
grouped in pairs, the inner pair withered and minute. The fruits 
have not been seen 
It is stated above that this peculiar species is a native of Florida, 
as it has been found wild only in pinelands near Miami, where 
John K. Small discovered itin 1904. It has however been collected 
from plants cultivated in gardens at Antilla and Havana, Cuba, 
and may yet be found wild in some remote and so far botanically 
unexplored part of that island. This shrub and in fact all of its 
congeners may readily be grown, under proper temperature condi- 
tions, from cuttings, even though these cuttings may have been 
deprived of moisture for weeks, as the stems and branches are 
filled with a sticky milk which quickly seals up the cut surface and 
effectually prevents evaporation of the natural moisture within. 
The Pedilanthi or Boot-flowérs form a very interesting and strik- 
ing group of peculiar and ornamental shrubs or shrubby herbs 
