606 Lxxi. COMPOSITE. [Othonna 



6. 0. braehyanthera Hiern, sp. n. 



An erect rigid herb, resembling a Senecio in habit ; rootstock 

 thick, dark, oblong or ovoid, glabrous, with numerous stifT erect 

 long glabrous often blackened bristles (apparently the remains of 

 the petioles of the leaves of previous seasons) at the apex, abrupt 

 ■ and with several diverging more or less thickened fibres at the 

 base ; stems several, simple and undivided up to the inflorescence, 

 yellowish-green or towards the base purplish, striate-sulcate, 

 straight or nearly so, glabrate or obsoletely or somewhat cottony, 

 leafy, 1 to 2 ft. high; radical leaves obovate or oblanceolate, 

 yellowish-green, rounded and sometimes miniitely mucronulate at 

 the apex, attenuate to the petiolate base, herbaceous, crenulate, 

 more or less floccose especially beneath when young, with loose 

 white cotton, soon glabrate, ranging up to 10|^ in. long (including 

 the petiole) by 1^ in. broad or more; stem-leaves alternate, 

 obovate narrowly elliptical or lanceolate, obtuse or the upper 

 ones subacute, more or less narrowed to the sessile base, herbaceous, 

 yellowish-green, crenulate or the uppermost ones minutely so, 

 glabrate or obsoletely floccose, suberect, ranging up to 4|- in. long 

 by 2 in. broad ; oapitula discoid, campanulate, f to i in. long, 

 erect, many-flowered, quasi-calyculate at the base, on unequal 

 slightly cottony pedicels ranging up to 1 in. long and rather 

 densely arranged in a flat-topped bracteate branched terminal 

 cyme of 2 to 3 in. in diameter ; bracts narrow, the lower ones 

 like the uppermost leaves and the upper ones like the scales at 

 the base of the involucre : flowers yellow ; scales of the quasi- 

 calyculus subulate, small, few; involucral scales 11 to 14, narrowly 

 oblong, thinly hairy on the back, straminous except the dark 

 ciliolate pointed tip, equal, imbricate, uniseriate, rigidly subscarious 

 on the lateral margins, ^ to I- in. long, united at the base around 

 the top of the nearly naked or papillose not squamose receptacle ; 

 flowers numerous, yellow, tubular, rather exceeding the involucre, 

 about f in. long ; corolla i to ^ in. long, glabrous, bullate at the 

 base, funnel-shaped above the middle, 5-lobed; the lobes lanceolate, 

 thickened along the margins and at the darker tips; anthers 

 about -^ly in. long, cohering near the apex, shorter than the 

 slender filaments, shortly appendaged at the apex, obtuse and 

 exappendiculate at the base, included ; style included or nearly so, 

 darker than the corolla or stamens, not branched, only notched 

 at the apex, included, about equalling or a little exceeding the 

 anthers ; achenes |- to ^ in. long, oblong or at length oval and 

 somewhat compressed, somewhat pubescent, marked with about 

 10 longitudinal ribs, each rib consisting of 2 adjacent parallel 

 lines ; pappus whitish, copious, deciduous, about i in. long, setose ; 

 the setse subuniseriate, very slender, minutely barbellate ; nectary 

 at the base of the style bullate. 



HuiLLA.- — In the drier thickets about Lopollo, in company with 

 Thymeteacere ; fl. and fr. end of Nov. 1859. No. 3683. In shrubby 

 places near Lopollo ; fl. and fr. Deo. 1859. No. 3688. 



The quasi-calyculus is exceptional in Othonna and gives the capitula 



