408 LXV. CACTACES. [Hariota 
sometimes rooting at the base, usually proliferous in a verticillate manner 
at the apex ; branches smooth, cylindrical, glaucescent-green, jointed, 
the younger ones squamulose ; flowers whitish, tending toa pale-sulphur 
colour, rather small, very crowded, lateral on the scars of fallen scales, 
scentless ; calyx adnate to the ovary, with a superior free unequally 
toothed or lobed limb ; petals 6 or 7; stamens about 20, about as long 
as the petals or a little shorter, with erect filaments and whitish 
anthers ; style rather thick, erect ; stigma 4-partite, with ovate-oblong, 
obtuse, thick, erect-spreading lobed segments ; ovary 1-celled, many- 
ovuled ; placentation parietal ; berry subspherical-urceolate, as large 
as a moderate-sized pea, from whitish to pale-yellowish, almost pellucid, 
scarred with the remains of the calyx-limb ; pulp viscid, investing the 
seeds; seeds black, glossy, subpyriform, some almost reniform. 
Terrestrial, by the very high volcanic, almost vertical, rocks of the 
fortress of Pungo Andongo, on the south-west side, in company with 
orchids and species of Sarcostemma, not uncommon ; fl. and nearly ripe 
fr. beginning of Dec. 1856 ; ripe fr. Jan. 1857. No. 878. 
Welwitsch obtained in April 1866 a flowering and fruiting specimen 
of this species cultivated in Kew Gardens from Jamaica, and, after 
carefully comparing it with the above Nos., satisfied himself as to the 
specific identity, noticing only that the Angolan plants were a little 
more robust. 
LXVI. FICOIDE. 
In Angola proper a variety of Halimwm Portulacastrum covers 
extensive tracts in the island of Loanda, and various species of 
Mollugo grow by sandy road sides leading into the interior and 
about stagnant pools in the littoral and also in the mountainous 
regions ; the New Zealand spinach, Tetragonia expansa Murr., has 
been introduced. 
The corm-like form of rootstock in the Psammatropha which 
occurs in Huilla is very interesting, and recalls the corm-mass 
which occurs above the ground in several species of Cissus and 
Puachypodiwm ; this condition indicates a hot and rainless winter, ‘ 
the enlargement of the stem providing, as it were, winter-quarters 
and store-houses during the trying winter season when everything 
of a tender uature is scorched up or disintegrated. 
In Limeum the presence or absence of petals can never serve 
for the discrimination of species, much less for divisions into 
sections, as used in the Flora Capensis, for sometimes in the same 
plant both apetalous and petaliferous flowers are met with; the 
division into sections, according as the corymbs are sessile or 
pedunculate, is also of doubtful application. 
It is yet to be ascertained whether all the species of Limeum 
are poisonous, or only a few of them, or possibly none ; Welwitsch 
noticed that L. glomeratum E. & Z. was eaten by oxen about 
Humpata. The variety leiocarpum of L. viscosum L. contains in 
abundance a material for producing a yellow dye. 
The occurrence in Mossamedes of two species of Mesembryanthe- 
mum suggests a sub-tropical affinity for the flora of that district, 
or almost a Cape connection. 
