[Plate 41.] 



THE ANGLEBEARING LEAF-CACTUS. 



(PHYLLOCACTUS ANGULIGER.) 



A Fine Greenhouse Shrub, with White Flowers, from the West op Mexico, belonging to 



the Order of Indian Figs. 



Specific Character. 



THE A N GLEBE A RING CACTUS.— Branches leafy, stiff, flat, thick, pinnatifid, the lobes being nearly right-angled 

 triangles. Flowers brown without, white within. Sepals longer than the petals. Stigmas nine to ten. 



Phyllocactus anguliger, " Lcmaire, Jardin fieuriste, 1, 6 ; " according to the Gardener's Magazine of Botany. 



THIS noble plant is nearly related to the Cereus eremites of the Botanical Register, 

 which itself stands in close affinity to the Cereus Fhyllantkns of the Botanical 

 Magazine, which is very different from the Cactus Fliyllantlius of Linnaeus. Of the three, 

 the last is the least showy, but all must rank among the most striking of the white-flowered 

 species of this great order. The present opens its flowers by day, retains them in beauty and 

 fragrance for several hours, and yields a succession for days together ; they are less white 

 than in the other two species, on account of the dark brown tinge of the sepals ; but, on that 

 very account, the petals, which are much sharper pointed than in C. crenatus, are, perhaps, 

 more conspicuously fair. 



In Hartweg's meagre account of his journey to California, this plant is first mentioned 

 as occurring near Matanejo, a village in the west of Mexico, at no great distance from Tepic. 



" The vegetation/' says this collector, " as far as the small village of Matanejo, where 

 we arrived in the evening, affords little interest at this season. The copsewood covering the 

 sides of the ravines is composed of deciduous leafless shrubs, only relieved by a giant Cereus, 

 forming a singular tree ; this generally has a single stem, two or four feet high, by eighteen 

 inches in diameter, when it divides into numerous triangular branches, rising perpendicularly 

 to the height of twenty to thirty feet. In May it yields a delicious fruit, called Pitaya, 

 when it is much sought after by the natives. Leaving Matanejo early the following 

 morning (Jan. 22nd), we soon entered a forest of oaks; here I found two species of 



