444 Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. 
Found near Uitenhage, Port Elizabeth, and Grahamstown ; also at 
Beaufort West(?). 
Flowers in winter, especially June. The following specimens belong 
to it : Zeyher 757 (on the banks of the Bushman's Eiver and on hills near 
Addo) and Schlechter 2600 (Uitenhage), I. L. Drege 43a, 119 (Port 
Ehzabeth), Miss M. Daly and Miss M. Sole 203, and W. G. Bennie 500 
(Grahamstown) . 
The extreme variability of this species in the shape and size of the 
leaves and of the length of the peduncle is remarkable. The style is 
dimorphous, sometimes reaching to the level of the inner stamens, in other 
cases reaching to the level of the outer ones. The flowers have an 
unpleasant though not very pronounced smell. 
It looks sometimes very much 
like Lachenalia kunickiana, Schlecht. 
(Schlechter 10471) but is quite distinct 
from it. I do not know, however, 
why Schlechter placed his plant under 
Lachenalia and not under Polyxena 
to which it seems to belong. 
I have no doubt that Thunberg's 
plant collected between the Sundays 
River and Fish Eiver, and described 
by him, though imperfectly, as Mauhlia 
ensifolia (Prodr., p. 60, and Flora 
Cap., ed. Schult., p. 308) is our plant. 
Unfortunately, the illustration in his 
Prodr. (t. 1) is very poor, and this has 
probably led to its being included in 
Polyxena pygmcea, Kunth., a plant of 
which very good illustrations were 
Fig. 2.— Polyxena. (J nat. size.) published by Jaquin (Ic. ii., t. 380), 
by Redoute (Lil., t. 386), and in the 
Bot. Mag. (t. 554). The other illustrations quoted by Baker under 
P. pygmcBa in the Flora Cap., vi., p. 421, are not known to me. 
Zeyher, who collected both species, referred his Lislap plant (No. 1716) 
rightly to P. pygmcea, while he referred the specimens from the neighbour- 
hood of Uitenhage (No. 757) to Massonia angustifolia, Spr. It is, how- 
ever, very different from this species (now known as Polyxena angustifolia, 
Bak.) as represented by Bot. Mag. (t. 736). 
The chief differences between P. pygmcea and P. ensifolia are as 
follows : In P. pygmcea the tube of the corolla is three times longer than 
the limb, in P. ensifolia it is only about double the size ; in the former the 
limb is spreading from the base, and the segments are strongly recurved, 
