HO PH ANEROG AMI A. 



in the district of Waimea, in the same island. The two forms appa- 

 rently grow in the same stations. 



Stems about a foot high, woody, branching, often much branched, 

 erect or spreading, in some specimens half an inch in diameter at the 

 base; the bark smooth and thin, brownish. Leaves crowded, even 

 imbricated on the sterile branches, but not exceeding the internodes on 

 the upper part of the flowering shoots, two-ranked (but only the al- 

 ternate pairs exactly superposed), subulate, pungently acute, canalicu- 

 late and with incurved margins, nerveless, or obscurely one-nerved, 

 rigid, persistent, their connate bases somewhat appressed, especially 

 on the sterile branches, above at length spreading or recurved, half an 

 inch or less in length, and more rigid in the first variety, in which 

 they are perfectly glabrous, as is the whole plant ; in the var. (3. they 

 are less rigid, more spreading, and, at least when young, a little pubes- 

 cent with fine viscous hairs (as are the branches and inflorescence), 

 their margins especially pubescent-ciliate ; the larger cauline ones 

 from an inch to an inch and a quarter long ; those of the inflorescence 

 reduced to subulate bracts. Flowers rather few (5 to 12), racemi- 

 forrn-paniculate, at first spreading or drooping, erect in fruit : pedun- 

 cles about 3 lines long, bibracteolate in the middle and one-flowered, 

 or sometimes two-flowered. Calyx half an inch long, tubular, soon 

 becoming strongly clavate, glabrous, greenish, often tinged with purple, 

 five-toothed ; the teeth ovate, about a line in length. Petals with a 

 small cuneate and two-lobed or deeply obcordate lamina, exserted about 

 3 lines beyond the calyx, apparently greenish-white and turning 

 purplish; the dilated claw crowned at its summit with a small and 

 fleshy two-parted appendage. Stamens 10, included : the five filaments 

 opposed to the petals adnate to the base of their claws. Stipe 3 lines 

 long, about twice the length of the cylindraceous ovary, which is three- 

 celled at the base. Styles 3. Capsule partly exserted, ovoid, 

 six-valved at the apex, many-seeded. Seeds minutely reticulate- 

 roughened. Embryo curved about half way round. 



I know of no species with which this remarkable, shrubby Silene 

 may be compared. It belongs to the section Slplionomorpha ; but it 

 is altogether peculiar in its aspect. The foliage somewhat resembles 

 that of some of the numerous Baillardiaz of the same district, or of a 

 Struthiola. 



