72 CACTACEOUS PLANTS. 



the slender species are pretty when grown in this manner. A warm dry 

 position is required either in the store or intermediate house, but the best 

 known Mistletoe Cactus, R. Cassytha, can be grown under a glass case in 

 a room, where it will produce its little white berries freely. The dwarf 

 E. mesembryanthemoides and the yellow-flowered B. salicornioides can be 

 grown in the same way. 



E. Cassytha, Gaertner.— This ia the true Mistletoe Cactus, and as such 

 has been known for considerably over one hundred years, as it was intro- 

 duced by Phillip Miller in 1758 from the "West Indies, and some old writers 

 have even mentioned the plant as a Viscum. In Miller's " Gardeners' 

 Dictionary " (Martyn's edition) it is described under the title Cactus pen- 

 dulus, a name which was also adopted by several other writers (Swartz, 

 Brown, and Alton), though a few have probably referred to the same plant 

 under the name of Cactus parasiticus. The stems are cylindrical and pipe- 

 like, producing their branches in whorls of three to six, upon the sides of 

 which the small white flowers are produced, and are followed by the 

 white semi-transparent berries that have gained the plant its popular 

 name. These certainly bear a remarkable resemblance to Mistletoe berries 

 in form, colour, and substance, and it appears to be one of those peculiar 

 cases of mimicry that occur in certain families of plants, some of which 

 have been so interestingly described by Mr. Leo H. Grindou in his 

 "Echoes of Plant Life." It is strange, however, that though many plants 

 assume a more or less striking resemblance to the Cactese there are com- 

 paratively few of the latter that mimic other plants. Yet amongst the 

 Ehipsalises we have four or five remarkable examples of this kind in addi- 

 tion to the one already noted ; for instance, R. salicornioides, which, as its- 

 name impUes, is much hke our British Glasswort, Salicoi'nia herbacea; 

 E. mesembryanthemoides, which resembles some of the Figwort family ; 

 while several species, as E. crispata, E. pachyptera, and R. Swartziana, 

 have flattened crenated leaf-like stems exactly of the PhyUocactus form. 

 On the other side Euphorbia mauritanica has cylindrical pipe-likebranches 

 precisely similar to Ehipsalis funalis. 



E. MESEMEEYANTHEMOiDES, Decandotte. — A dwarf much-branched plant 

 with trailing stems, bearing small cylindrical branches, covered with tufts 

 of fine hair. The flowers are about half an inch in diameter, with five or 

 six greenish white semi-transparent tapering sepals and petals, and are 

 borne singly near the apex of the short branohlets. The fruit is similar to 

 that of E. Cassytha, but smaller. This plant was described by Haworth as 

 a variety of R. salicornioides, from which, however, it is quite distinct, and 

 it was first flowered by W. Christy, Esq., Clapham, in 1831. 



E. (Haeiota) SALICORNIOIDES, Haworth. — The division or genus Hariota. 

 was founded by Endlicher upon this species, the chief distinguishing 

 characters relied upon being the position of the flowers — namely, at the 

 points of the branches, instead of being produced at the sides as in the other 

 Bhipsalises, and in their colour being yellow instead of white. Though very 



