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Habitat : Natal. Summit of Mont aux Sources, 10-11,000 

 feet altitude. March, 1898. M. S. Evans, No. 744. 



Lythrum rivulare, Wood & Evans. 



Suffruticose, erect. Stems many from a woody root, copiously 

 branching ; leaves scattered, petiolate, lanceolate, acute, entire, 

 margins reflexed, glabrous. Peduncles axillary, solitary 3- 

 1 flowered by abortion, the one flowered peduncles with a pair 

 of bracts above the middle, the 3-flowered peduncles with 

 smaller bracts, the lateral flowers only, having a pair of 

 bracteoles below the calyx, the central flower without bracteoles. 

 Bracts linear, equalling the pedicels, bracteoles smaller. Calyx 

 8-costate, 4-toothed, Petals 4, ovate, Stamens 4, exserted. 

 Flowers pink. 



The plant 15 to 18 inches high. Leaves J inch long, less 

 than 1 line wide. Calyx 1 line long, petals equalling calyx. 



Habitat : Natal : Province of Zululand near Tugela River, 

 J. Wylie (Wood, No. 5689). 



This plant differs from L. sagittaefolium, Sond, which also 

 has 4 stamens, by form size, and indument of leaves, and also 

 in inflorescence, and from L hyssoplfolium in size and position 

 of leaves, mode of inflorescence, and number of stamens. 



Indigenous Food Plants. — In my Report for 1894 I gave a 

 list of indigenous plants with the uses to which they are applied 

 by the natives. This list, however, referred chiefly to medi- 

 cinal plants, though a few others were included in it. It occurs 

 to me that a list of the plants used as food by the natives would 

 be interesting, and though I cannot hope that the list will be a 

 complete one, still it may perhaps call attention to the subject, 

 and elicit information that may lead to the publication of a 

 supplementary list on a future occasion. I have thought it 

 best now to divide the list into two sections, the first including 

 the wild fruits of the colony, the second those plants which are 

 used as vegetables or in other ways as food. It can hardly be 

 said that our list of indigenous fruits is a large one, or that 

 many of them are of value, still there are some that might per- 

 haps be improved by cultivation, and it may therefore be of use 

 in this way to enumerate them. Some of the plants noted can 

 scarcely be considered to be really of value as food, though 

 probably in times of great scarcity they may have been so used ; 

 now, however, they are only eaten by children or herd boys 

 when out with the cattle, and some of the more insignificant 

 ones I have for the present omitted altogether. 



It will be seen that in this list the plants are for convenience 

 arranged alphabetically ; in a future and more complete list it 

 may be as well to arrange them systematically in botanical 

 sequence. 



