2 Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. 
Good Hope " and described and figured by him in his " Historia Eryn- 
giorum," the species A. ciliaris was prior and even subsequently con- 
founded with the genus Astrantia, Baillon reducing it to Eryngium in 
1880, while Bergius united it with Jasione, overlooking the characteristic 
structure of the ovary and adjacent parts. Three of the pioneers of South 
African botany, Drege, Ecklon, and Zeyher, contributed four other species 
— A. lo7igifolia, E. Mey., A. cordata, E. Mey., A. amatymhica, and 
A. serrata, Ecklon and Zeyher — which were subsequently reduced by 
Sonder in the Flora Capensis to two, viz. : A. amatymhica, Eckl. and 
Zeyh., and A. ciliaris, Delaroche, but from an examination of the typical 
forms of these five proposed species, I am disposed to regard them as 
distinct. A new species, Alejndca TJiodei, collected by Thode at Mont 
aux Sources on the Drakensberg Eange and subsequently by Galpin on 
Ben MacDhui at 8,800 to 9,900 feet above sea-level, exhibits unmistakable 
affinities with the Abyssinian A. peduncularis , Steud. 
The distribution of the species is obviously coastal, extending in a 
south-westerly direction to the districts of Swellendam and in a northerly 
as far as Abyssinia, where, curiously enough, the prevailing species 
A. peduncularis, Steud., appears to have been only collected by Schimper, 
a German naturalist, held captive by the Abyssinians for several years. 
The greatest concentration of the species south of the tropic is in the 
Natal Eegion, but whether they are gregarious or not I am unable to say. 
Their economic properties are limited ; Wood and others state that the 
leaves of several species, including A. Baurii, O. Kuntze, known as 
''Ikokwane" or " Ikokwaan," are eaten either cooked or raw by the 
natives, while the tropical species A. propinqua, Diimmer, according to 
Buchanan, yields a kind of salt after the ashes of the roasted leaves have 
been washed ; on the authority of Galpin, the roots of A. amatymhica, 
Eckl. and Zeyh., are used by the natives as a cure for dysentery. 
ALEPIDEA, Delaroche. 
Flowers in heads, hermaphrodite or rarely unisexual, regular, sessile 
or subsessile, crowded, 7-30 in a head. Eeceptacle nude, flat or slightly 
convex. Calyx superior, 5-toothed ; teeth persistent, erect, deltoid or 
membranous, acute to mucronate, keeled, often papillate. Petals 5, free, 
epigynous, oblong with an abruptly inflexed point forming a slight notch 
at the point of inflexion, keeled within, deciduous, white. Stamens 5, 
free, epigynous ; filaments filiform, slightly dilated at the base ; anthers 
introrse, oblong, 2-celled, dorsifixed, longitudinally dehiscent. Ovary 
2-celled with a pendulous ovule in each cell. Styles 2, erect or reflexed, 
stout or filiform, obtuse, truncate or slightly capitate. Fruit ovoid, 
obovoid or suborbicular, occasionally compressed, more or less distinctly 
