Strobilanthes. | ACANTHACER. 243 
from the middle or lower down 2-8-seeded, tapering in a sterile 
solid base. Seeds discoid, on hooked seed-bearers.—Shrubs or herbs, 
with entire or serrate leaves. Flowers often conspicuous, in spikes, 
heads or panicles, rarely solitary or clustered in the leaf-axils. 
Bracts leafy, persistent or deciduous; bractlets small or sometimes 
wanting. 
* Capsules 6-15-seeded. Corolla yellow. 
Leaves harsh, glabrous, shortly petioled ; flowers yellow, in dense 
spikes; bracts green; capsules 6-8-seeded_ . A 
* Capsules 2-4-seeded. Corolla purple or blue. 
X Spikes head-like, on longer or shorter peduncles, ocea- 
sionally sessile; bracts conspicuous, irregularly im- 
bricate. No leafy involucre. 
All parts glandular-puberulous; flower-heads often by 2 or 3, 
axillary, on longer or shorter peduncles * ° . . &. Simonsii. 
X Flower-heads dense, at or near the base surrounded 
y floral leaves which form a conspicuous involuere. 
Stems shortly glandular-hairy ; leaves glabrous above; flower-buds 
yellowish villous; bracts leafy . : : penis . 8. lamioides. 
X Spikes lax, often interrupted ; bracts linear, acu- 
8. flava. 
minate. 
Spikes glabrous; bracts long, lanceolate, minutely appressed- 
| _ bristly (not glandular); filaments villous  .  . . — .S. fimbriata. 
Spikes and the long lanceolate bracts glandular-pubescent ; fila- 
ments glabrous ; ‘ " : i J . . S. Neesii. 
toothed and very scabrous along the thickened margins, of a harsh 
and brittle texture, more or less distinetly wrinkled, above very rough 
m very short stiff hairs arising from conical protuberances, often 
— green ; bractlets 2, as long as the calyx or a little 
longer, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, glandular-pilose; ca oo 
and rotundate ; capsules 
lanceolate, acute, puberulous, hardly 4-cornered, 6-8-se 
