CEREUS. 31 



shaped stigma. The flower has a delicious vanilla-liVo odour. 

 Introduced from the West Indies in 1700 and first flowered at 

 Hampton Court. 



C. kewensis. 



A hybrid raised at Kew from C. Macdonaldid' and C. nycticalus. 

 Stems up to 12 feet in length and an inch in diameter, serpentine, 

 with three to five ribs and a few short spines. Flowers about a foot 

 long and wide, the tube clothed with fleshy purplish scales ; sepals 

 brownish-yellow ; petals white ; style and stamens yellow. They 

 ex pa id at dusk and close at dawn and are slightly fragrant. 



C. Lemairei. 



In size, fragrance, and brilliancy of colour this species 

 resembles C. grandiflorus, but the tube is covered with large green, 

 crimson -edged scales ; the sepals do not spread out star-like, and 

 they are tinged with crimson ; the stem is triangular, and the 

 angles bear distant spines instead of clusters. It was introduced 

 into England through Kew, in 1854, from the Botanical Garden of 

 Hanover. It blossoms in June, the flowers remaining open for 

 several hours after sunrise. 



C. Macdonaldise. 



A magnificent Cactus, its flowers being over a foot in diameter. 

 Stems slender, cylindrical, not angled, bearing at irregular intervals 

 rather fleshy tubercles instead of spines, and branching freely. The 

 flowers are produced on both young and old stems in summer. The 

 stems being pliant, they may be trained round a balloon trellis. 

 Writing of this plant, Sir Wm. Hooker said : " Certainly, of the many 

 floral spectacles that have gratified lovers of horticulture at the 

 Royal Gardens, Kew, of late years, few have been more striking 

 than this to those who were privileged to see the blossoms in bud 

 and fully expanded. The plant was received from Honduras 

 through the favour of Mrs. MacDonald, and was planted at the back 

 of the old Cactus-house, and trained against a wall. It first showed 

 symptoms of blossoming in July, 1851. A casual observer might 

 have passed the plant as an unusually large form of the ' night- 

 blowing Cereus ' (C. grandiflorus}* Lut the slightest inspection of the 

 stems and flowers, the latter 14 inches in diameter by 14 inches long, 

 shows this to be a most distinct species." 



C. Napoleonis. 



Like C. grandiflorus, but the flowers sometimes open early in 

 the morning and fade in the afternoon. The tube is 6 inches long, 

 curved and clothed with rose-tinted scales, which become gradually 

 larger towards the top, where they widen out into a whorl of greenish- 

 yellow sepals, above which are the white petals forming a broad 

 shallow cup, 8 inches across, with a cluster of yellow stamens in the 



